Alicia Rodriguez Pla, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Rodriguez-Pla is a Senior Associate Consultant in Rheumatology at Mayo Clinic in Arizona. She earned her medical degree from the Universidad de Navarra in Spain, and went on to rheumatology training at the Hospital Santa Creu i Sant Pau and Hospital Malalties Reumatiques, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (Spain). She then earned her Ph.D. from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, working in translational and epidemiological research on giant cell arteritis.

Her longstanding interest in vasculitis led her to pursue post-doctoral training in the United States, from 2003 to 2007, as a visiting post-doctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Rodriguez-Pla gained further experience in translational research in vasculitis and had the opportunity to see many patients with vasculitis. During her last two years at Johns Hopkins, she was funded through a Vasculitis Clinical Research Consortium (VCRC)/Vasculitis Foundation (VF) fellowship. She also received a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) degree at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2007.

After practicing as a clinical rheumatologist in Spain, she returned to the U.S. at the end of 2008 and worked in lupus research at Baylor Institute for Immunology Research in Dallas. She then completed a clinical fellowship in rheumatology at Boston University and residency in internal medicine at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, Mass.

After completing her clinical training, she worked as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson where she was the co-founder and the Co-Director of the Scleroderma Center and the founder and Director of the Vasculitis Center. At University of Arizona, she was a preceptor in the fellows clinic.

She has authored several case reports and research papers, primarily related to autoimmune conditions, especially in the field of vasculitis and scleroderma. Her clinical and research interests are vasculitis and scleroderma.

Research interests:

• Vasculitis and scleroderma

Board certifications:

• Internal Medicine, 2018
• Rheumatology, 2019