Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine Scholars

Adewole S. Adamson, MD, MPP

Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine (Division of Dermatology), University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School

Bio

Adewole (Ade) Adamson, MD, MPP, is a dermatologist and assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at Dell Medical School. His clinical interest is in caring for patients at high risk for melanoma of the skin, such as those with many moles or a personal and/or family history of melanoma. He is interested in how artificial intelligence can be leveraged to take care of this patient population.

His research involves understanding patterns of health care utilization including overuse and underuse. He is interested in how effectively and efficiently the health care system delivers care to patients with melanoma. He is passionate about health disparities, access to specialty care and costs. He speaks nationally about health care quality, value, and the application of evidence-based medicine within dermatology.

Adamson is a proud graduate of Morehouse College, receiving a Bachelor of Science in Biology and French. He earned a medical degree with honors at Harvard Medical School as part of the health sciences and technology program with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While in medical school he spent a year conducting research in immunology at the National Institutes of Health and later earned a Master in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School as a Zuckerman fellow in the Center for Public Leadership.

He completed his internship in internal medicine at The Mount Sinai Hospital followed by residency training in dermatology at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas. After graduation, he spent three years on faculty at the UNC at Chapel Hill.

AZA Stephen Allsop, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine; Director, Center for Collective Healing, Howard University

Bio

AZA Allsop, MD, PhD, serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine and Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Howard University Hospital. With an academic foundation in Biology, Philosophy, and Jazz Studies from North Carolina Central University, AZA deepened his exploration into social neuroscience in the Tye lab at MIT as part of the Harvard Medical School-MIT MD-PhD program. At the core of AZA’s research is the quest to understand how the brain processes social information, and its consequential effects on cognition and behavior. He believes that uncovering these mechanisms has the potential to redefine mental health treatments and provide deeper insights into societal behaviors. AZA also delves into the roles of music, mindfulness, and psychedelics in influencing social bonds and stress resilience. Leading his independent research lab, AZA champions studies on the social brain and alternative healing avenues, with a specific emphasis on supporting underserved communities. He also plays a pivotal role as the Director of the Center for Collective Healing at Howard University. Throughout his career, AZA has seamlessly merged academic rigor with initiatives that have tangible societal benefits, consistently pushing the frontiers of neuroscience and deepening our grasp of human interconnectivity.

Rima A. Arnaout, MD

Associate Professor in Residence, University of California San Francisco

Bio

Dr. Rima Arnaout is Associate Professor of Medicine, a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator, and faculty in the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute, the Biological and Medical Informatics program, and the Center for Intelligent Imaging at the UCSF. She is investigating whether machine learning can be used to detect standard and novel patterns in biomedical imaging in a scalable fashion, with the goals of decreasing diagnostic error in medical imaging and uncovering new phenotypes for precision medicine research. Dr. Arnaout completed her undergraduate degree at MIT, her MD at Harvard Medical School, residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, and cardiology fellowship at UCSF.

Swathi Arur, PhD

Associate Professor and Deputy Chair, Department of Genetics, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

Bio

Dr. Arur established her laboratory in the Department of Genetics at MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2010. Over the last 12 years, her lab has built a strong foundation for understanding how female nutrition regulates reproduction and progeny survival and defined new molecular targets of cancer metastasis. Discoveries in the Arur Lab are primarily driven via federal, state, and private funds, in particular the National Institute for Health, American Cancer Society, Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, Anna Fuller Foundation among others. Dr. Arur obtained her Ph.D. with Prof. M.K. Bhan from the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences in India and conducted her postdoctoral work at Washington University School of Medicine with Prof. Tim Schedl. Dr. Arur serves on the Board of Directors at Genetics Society of America, she Chairs the Awards Committee for GSA, serves as a standing study section member of the NIH study section (CMIR); as an Editor at Development (published by Company of Biologists, UK). Dr. Arur is the co-chair and chair of the Gordon Research Conference in Developmental Biology in 2023 and 2025, respectively, (these are leading scientific meetings in the field). Dr. Arur was awarded the MD Anderson Presidential Scholar Award in 2017 and the Distinguished Faculty Mentor at MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2018. In 2020, Dr. Arur was Elected Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Sciences.

Peter Croughan, MD

Deputy Secretary, and Interim State Health Officer Louisiana Department of Health

Bio

Peter Croughan is an Internist with a background in health policy and state-level administration, currently pursuing certification in Addiction Medicine. He was born and raised in rural Cajun Louisiana before heading to Yale University, where I majored in History of Science and Medicine. He then worked in health policy research at PolicyLab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, before heading to UCSF for medical school, where I served as president of the student body. In 2017, Croughan took time away to work as Policy Director for Dr. Rebekah Gee and the Louisiana Department of Health, the state’s largest agency with over 5,600 employees and a $14 billion annual budget. There he spearheaded a statewide cancer strategy, analyzed state funding of graduate medical education, and developed the Hepatitis C subscription model. This new pharmaceutical payment model – the first in the US – allows unlimited access to Hep C medications, led to 12,425 cures to date, and serves as a model for the national elimination campaign launched this year. In 2018, Croughan assumed the role of Chief of Staff for the Department, where he was responsible for policy development, quality improvement, communications, external affairs, and legislative strategy. In 2020 Croughan returned to clinical practice at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he is completing Internal Medicine – Primary Care training.

Cesar de la Fuente, PhD

Presidential Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania

Bio

César de la Fuente is a Presidential Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. His research goal is to combine human and machine intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery and develop useful tools and life-saving medicines. He pioneered the development of the first computer-designed antibiotic with efficacy in animal models, demonstrating the application of AI for antibiotic discovery and helping launch this emerging field. His lab has also been in the vanguard of developing computational methods for proteome mining, leading to the breakthrough discovery of a whole new world of antimicrobials. These efforts explored the human proteome as a source of antibiotics for the first time and have dramatically reduced the time needed to discover preclinical candidates from years to days. De la Fuente’s group was also the first to find therapeutic molecules in extinct organisms, launching the field of molecular de-extinction. His lab also invented low-cost diagnostics for COVID-19 and other infections. De la Fuente has received over 60 national and international awards. He is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), becoming one of the youngest ever to be inducted. He was recognized by MIT Technology Review as one of the world’s top innovators, was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Langer Prize, an ACS Kavli Emerging Leader in Chemistry and received the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Young Investigator Award and the ACS Infectious Diseases Young Investigator Award. He also received the Thermo Fisher Award, EMBS Academic Early Career Achievement Award, the prestigious Princess of Girona Prize for Scientific Research, and the ASM Award for Early Career Applied and Biotechnological Research. De la Fuente has been named a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate several times, has given over 200 invited lectures and his scientific discoveries have yielded multiple patents and over 120 publications.

Anwesha Dey, PhD

Senior Director and Distinguished Scientist, Discovery Oncology, Genentech

Bio

Anwesha Dey is a Senior Director and Distinguished Scientist in the Discovery Oncology Department at Genentech. Prior to this position, she held postdoctoral research fellowships in the laboratory of Vishva Dixit at Genentech and at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB), A*STAR, Singapore in the laboratory of Sir David Lane. She obtained her PhD in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Summers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at UMBC, Maryland. Her scientific research at Genentech is focused on understanding the biology of Hippo and PI3K signaling pathways and how they can be targeted for cancer therapy. She has led drug discovery programs at Genentech and research from her lab has provided the foundation for developing first and best in class targets for therapeutic intervention. Dr. Dey has served as the co-chair of the AACR and FASEB meetings on the Hippo pathway — leading scientific meetings in the field. She serves on the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of the Keystone Symposia and is a recipient of the 2022 Genentech Women’s professional Emerging Leader Award, 2023 Changemaker of the year award at Genentech and 2023 Distinguished Alumni award recipient from University of Maryland. She is passionate about mentorship, Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion and a significant contributor to Genentech’s efforts in this area.

Joseph L. Dieleman, PhD

Associate Professor, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington

Bio

Joseph Dieleman, PhD, is Associate Professor of Health Metric Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle. He also leads the Resource Tracking research team at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). This team has completed research focused on estimating healthcare spending by disease, tracking of development assistance for health and government health spending, projecting healthcare spending, and using novel methods to estimate healthcare value, cost of illness, and poverty rates at the subnational level. His projects are split between global research, seeking to understand financial flows for health in a wide variety of contexts, and US research, seeking to describe how healthcare is purchased. In both cases the goal is to provide information that is useful to policymakers and can contribute to improving health equity and outcomes, while maintaining or reducing inefficient spending. Dr. Dieleman received his PhD in Economics at the University of Washington.

Dustin T. Duncan, ScD

Associate Professor of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University

Bio

Dustin T. Duncan, ScD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, where he directs Columbia’s Spatial Epidemiology Lab and co-directs the department’s Social and Spatial Epidemiology Unit. Dr. Duncan is a Social and Spatial Epidemiologist. His research broadly seeks to understand how social and contextual factors especially neighborhood characteristics influence population health, with a particular focus on HIV epidemiology and prevention and sleep epidemiology and promotion. Dr. Duncan’s intersectional research focuses on Black gay, bisexual and other sexual minority men and transgender women of color. His work appears in leading public health, epidemiology, medical, geography, criminology, demography, and psychology journals. Working in collaborations with scholars across the world, he has over 200 high-impact articles, book chapters and books, and his research has appeared in major media outlets including U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN. Dr. Duncan’s recent work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the HIV Prevention Trials Network, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Verizon Foundation, and the Aetna Foundation. He has received several early career and distinguished scientific contribution awards including from the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science (IAPHS). In 2020, he received the Mentor of the Year Award from Columbia University Irving Medical Center’s Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research.

Ellen F. Eaton, MD, MSPH

Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Alabama Birmingham

Bio

Ellen Eaton is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and Director of the UAB 1917 HIV Clinic Outpatient-based Opioid Treatment Clinic. Her patient care and research is focused on infectious outcomes of substance use and mental health disorders. She studies low barrier interventions, such as patient reported outcomes, telehealth, and peer navigation, to improve diagnosis and treatment of addiction in the Deep South. She has recently extended her work to Zambia, another resource poor setting, to test low barrier therapies for substance use as a means to improve HIV outcomes.

Utibe R. Essien, MD, MPH

Assistant Professor of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA; VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System

Bio

Utibe R. Essien, MD, MPH is Assistant Professor of Medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and Associate Vice Chair of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the Department of Medicine. He is a general internist at the Greater Los Angeles VA where he teaches medical students and residents and provides medical care to hospitalized patients. Dr. Essien is a proud New Yorker, earning his BA from New York University and MD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. He trained in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School. After residency he remained at MGH to complete an NIH-funded T32 general internal medicine research fellowship and received a Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Dr. Essien’s research focuses on detecting, understanding, and eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in the use of novel, evidence-based medications and technologies, particularly in the management of chronic cardiometabolic diseases such as atrial fibrillation. In 2021, he introduced the concept “pharmacoequity,” providing a new research and policy framework for achieving equitable access to life-saving therapies. He is an emerging leader in the field, as recognized by over 100 peer-reviewed publications and research grants from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the American Heart Association.

Dr. Essien’s leadership has earned him numerous awards including the 2023 Young Physician Scientist Award from the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), the 2024 Society of General Internal Medicine Outstanding Junior Investigator of the Year Award, and election as a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. His research and writing has been featured in several national news outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times and NPR. He also serves as an Associate Editor for JAMA Network Open.

David Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, MSc

Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania

Bio

David Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, MSc, is the Founding Director of the Center for Cytokine Storm Treatment & Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the youngest faculty members to receive tenure in the history of the School of Medicine. Dr. Fajgenbaum is also the co-Founder & President of the Castleman Disease Collaborative Network, co-Founder & President of Every Cure, and national bestselling author of ‘Chasing My Cure: A Doctor’s Race to Turn Hope Into Action.‘ Dr. Fajgenbaum is also a patient battling a deadly disease which he discovered a repurposed treatment for that is saving his life and others. He has also advanced 18 other repurposed treatments for diseases they weren’t initially intended for. He recently co-founded Every Cure to unlock additional indications for FDA-approved medicines and is pioneering novel AI-driven approaches to enable this. In February 2024, ARPA-H awarded a $48.3M contract to advance Every Cure’s AI platform. Dr. Fajgenbaum also serves on the Board of Directors for the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA.

Elizabeth M. Cespedes Feliciano, ScD, ScM

Research Scientist, Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research

Bio

Elizabeth Cespedes Feliciano is a Research Scientist with the Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente Northern California. She is an emerging leader in the science of how energy balance influences the outcomes of chronic diseases. Her work integrates informatics with molecular epidemiology to understand how body composition influences progression and survival in cancer and aging.

Dr. Feliciano’s novel findings have helped to move the field beyond body mass index as a measure of obesity to establish the importance of muscle mass and adipose tissue distribution in multiple clinical conditions, including surgical outcomes, treatment toxicity, and cancer survival. Her research is supported by multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health and foundations.

Dr. Feliciano earned her master of science in social and behavioral health and her doctorate in nutrition and epidemiology from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

Holly Fernandez Lynch, JD, MBe

Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics and Law, Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Bio

Holly Fernandez Lynch, JD, MBE, is Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, as well as assistant professor of law at Penn Carey Law School. She pursues conceptual and empirical research and scholarship with the goal of influencing institutional and governmental policy. Her work focuses on clinical research ethics and regulation, priority setting in research, access to investigational medicines outside clinical trials, FDA pharmaceutical policy, and the ethics of gatekeeping in health care.

Professor Fernandez Lynch is founder and co-chair of the Consortium to Advance Effective Research Ethics Oversight (www.AEREO.org), an organization working to evaluate and improve IRB quality and effectiveness, and an active member of the NYU Working Group on Compassionate Use and Preapproval Access (CUPA). She serves as a member of the boards of Public Responsibility in Medicine & Research (PRIM&R) and the American Society for Law, Medicine, and Ethics, and as “ethicist in residence” at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She was previously a member of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP).

Professor Fernandez Lynch has worked as an attorney in private practice, as a bioethicist serving NIH’s Division of AIDS, as an analyst with President Obama’s Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, and as executive director of Harvard Law School’s bioethics and health law research program. She was named a Greenwall Faculty Scholar in 2019 and elected a fellow of the Hastings Center in 2021.

Forum Kamdar, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota

Bio

Forum Kamdar is an advanced heart failure physician-scientist focused on advancing the care of patients with neuromuscular cardiomyopathies through clinical and translational research. She is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Cardiovascular Division and Lillehei Heart Institute at the University of Minnesota. She has spearheaded a multi-faceted approach to address major gaps in care and knowledge of the increasingly prevalent cardiomyopathy associated with neuromuscular disorders. She helped to develop a novel interdisciplinary program in Neuromuscular Cardiomyopathy, including a multi-specialty clinic to screen and treat cardiovascular involvement in adult muscular dystrophy patients. This has reduced the barriers to care for neuromuscular patients and addressed a gap in the clinical cardiovascular care for patients that have been highly underrepresented in cardiovascular care. She leads a multi-center network funded by the Muscular Dystrophy Association to understand outcomes advanced heart failure therapies in neuromuscular cardiomyopathy. Additionally, she developed and validated a Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) human stem cell cardiomyocyte model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy cardiomyopathy and identified major clinical gaps in care for patients with dystrophic cardiomyopathy. Her laboratory is elucidating fundamental mechanisms of DMD cardiomyopathy disease progression to identify novel therapies to ultimately treat DMD patients. Dr. Kamdar has received funding from national and international foundations as well as the federal government. For her outstanding contributions, Dr. Kamdar has received multiple awards including the American Society of Clinical Investigation Young Physician-Scientist Award, University of Minnesota Medical School Emerging Alumni Award, and American Heart Association Young Investigator Award.

Gunisha Kaur, MD, MA

Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology; Director, Human Rights Impact Lab, Weill Cornell Medicine

Bio

Dr. Gunisha Kaur is a physician-scientist who has dedicated her career to advancing the health of forcibly displaced individuals such as refugees and asylum seekers. She has used her extensive background in neuroscience research as an analytical framework to pioneer the study of human rights using scientific methodology. Her research has been supported by funders such as the National Institutes of Health, the Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research, and Cornell University.

Dr. Kaur’s academic writing on forcibly displaced populations has been published by high impact medical journals such as The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. She has also translated her medical and scientific expertise in mainstream outlets including TIME, CNN, and NBC News. Dr. Kaur has given over 100 national and international keynote presentations and talks, including with global leaders, at the United Nations, and for the U.S. Government.

Dr. Kaur is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, a Medical Director of the Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights, Founding Director of the Human Rights Impact Lab, and a Stephen M. Kellen Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations. She earned her B.S. from Cornell University in 2006, graduated from Weill Cornell Medical College in 2010, and completed her Anesthesiology Residency training at Weill Cornell Medical College/New York Presbyterian Hospital in 2014. She earned a Master’s Degree in Medical Anthropology from Harvard University in 2015.

Jerreed D. Ivanich, PhD

Assistant Professor, Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Bio

As a member of Alaska’s Metlakatla Indian Community (Tsimshian), Jerreed is dedicated to health research for North American Indigenous (Alaska Native, American Indian, First Nations, and Native Hawaiian) populations. Dr. Ivanich is an Assistant Professor at the Colorado School of Public Health, Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for American Indian Health. His work meets at the intersections of prevention science, social network analysis, and adolescent health to reduce substance use and suicide in tribal communities. Through community-based participatory research, Dr. Ivanich aims to take the knowledge and strengths of tribal communities and put them in dialogue with the broader research field to improve public health and advance scientific methods.

When Dr. Ivanich is not working, he loves spending time with his wife and two amazing daughters. They all enjoy skiing together in beautiful Colorado. As a solo hobby, Dr. Ivanich recently picked up triathlon training and racing and loves that this allows him to connect to nature while exercising. The activity that fills his spiritual cup is volunteering to teach an early morning church seminary class to local high school sophomore students three days a week.

Lucinda B. Leung, MD, PhD, MPH

Assistant Professor of Medicine & Psychiatry, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and West Los Angeles VA Medical Center General Internal Medicine - Health Services Research

Bio

Lucinda Leung is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. She is a general internal medicine physician at VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, who teaches medical students and residents, as well as cares for hospitalized and clinic patients. Dr. Leung was a first-generation college student who earned her A.B. at Dartmouth College, M.D. at Brown Medical School, M.P.H. at Harvard School of Public Health, and Ph.D. at UCLA School of Public Health. She completed fellowship through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation VA Clinical Scholars Program and was selected Chief Fellow for UCLA’s Specialty Training and Advanced Research Program. Dr. Leung is a board-certified Clinical Informatics subspecialist.

Dr. Leung’s expertise is in health services research to optimize care for primary care patients with mental health needs. Her work focuses on interdisciplinary team-based care models augmented by virtual care modalities. Poor mental health care access for her patients undermines her ability to successfully treat their medical conditions. Partnering with healthcare system leaders in the Veterans Health Administration and large health care organizations, Dr. Leung studies how to integrate mental health services into primary care practice (e.g., patient-centered medical home, collaborative care for depression, telemedicine), as well as its impact on care utilization, quality, and costs across populations, especially among safety-net patients. She and her research team employ wide-ranging methodologies (e.g., mixed methods research, implementation science cohort analyses, causal inference, pragmatic clinical trials) to understand how to redesign health services to help ensure the best outcomes at the highest value. She has been awarded more than 5 million dollars in federal funding (e.g., VA, National Institutes of Health), has published in leading peer-reviewed journals (e.g., Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA series), and has provided expert consultation to federal and state agencies (e.g., Government Accountability Office). Dr. Leung was recognized with the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System’s Research Impact Award in 2022 and with the Society of General Internal Medicine’s Excellence in Clinician Investigation in 2023, a top honor for early-career general internists in California/Hawaii.

Dr. Leung is supported by a VA Health Services Research & Development (HSR&D) Career Development Award to adapt and test primary care-based depression collaborative care models to increase uptake of effective digital mental health treatments for veterans. She recently obtained VA Merit funding to study potential disruption to depression care services during the COVID-19 pandemic, including downstream effects on psychiatric morbidity and mortality from suicide. Dr. Leung is also leading an NIH R01 that examines the effect of pandemic-related state policy changes surrounding telemedicine on patient-reported mental health care access, cost, symptoms, and functioning, with focus on Medicaid populations.

Margaret McNairy, MD, MSc

Associate Professor of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine and Center for Global Health, Weill Cornell Medicine

Bio

Dr. Molly McNairy is an internationally recognized physician scientist with over 15 years’ experience as a front-line doctor and public health researcher in global epidemics and health systems research. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell in the Center for Global Health and Division of General Internal Medicine and Chief of Hospital Medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. She directs the Weill Cornell Global Health Research Fellowship. She graduated from the University of North Carolina as a Morehead Scholar and received her medical doctorate from Harvard Medical School, with training at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. During her medical training, she received a Fulbright Scholarship to study health economics and policy at the London School of Economics and the London School of Tropical Medicine. Her research focuses on understanding modifiable poverty-related drivers of HIV and cardiovascular disease and applying this data to design targeted interventions for prevention and treatment. Her work includes epidemiologic cohort studies, clinical trials, and implementation science. She has been funded by the NIH (NIAID, NHLBI, Fogarty), CDC, and numerous other foundations. She has served as a technical advisor to Ministries of Health, WHO and CDC. She has received awards for her leadership and mentorship track-record, with a focus on women physician scientists. She lives in New York City with her husband and three children ages 6, 9 and 12.

Meredith T. Niles, PhD

Associate Professor of Food Systems and Policy, Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences, University of Vermont

Bio

Dr. Meredith Niles is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences and the Food Systems Program at the University of Vermont, and serves as the Associate Director of the Food Systems Research Center, a joint effort with the US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service. Her interdisciplinary research in food systems, health and environment examines how to achieve sustainable food security along with the food and agriculture system pathways to improve health and environmental outcomes. Her research primarily focuses on the impact of climate change, disasters and other crises like pandemics on food security and health outcomes, as well as the drivers and barriers for farmers to adopt more sustainable management practices for climate change, water, and health outcomes. She is a founding member and director of the National Food Access and COVID research Team (NFACT), a consortium of researchers from 18 study sites in 15 states examining the impact of COVID-19 on food security and access. Her research has resulted in more than 75 peer-reviewed publications, 30 policy briefs and government reports, and garnered international recognition.

Dr. Niles holds a B.A in political science with honors in environmental studies from The Catholic University of America and a PhD in ecology with a focus on human ecology and environmental policy from the University of California- Davis. She was a Sustainability Science post-doctorate fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government exploring smallholder farmer experiences with climate change and food security in 15 countries. Prior to her academic career Dr. Niles worked at the United States Department of State on the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and several environmental and food non-profits. She is passionate about making research more publicly available through open access, serving on the board of directors for the Public Library of Science (PLOS), one of the world’s largest non-profit academic publishers, from 2014-2022.

Akinyemi Oni-Orisan, PharmD, PhD

Associate Professor, University of California, San Francisco

Bio

Dr. Akinyemi Oni-Orisan (he/him/his) is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is a licensed pharmacist with practice experience in Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, cardiac stepdown, and outpatient (advanced dyslipidemia clinic) settings. He has board certifications in applied pharmacology from the American Board of Clinical Pharmacology and in clinical lipidology from the Accreditation Council of Clinical Lipidology. The long-term research goal of Dr. Oni-Orisan’s lab is to improve pharmacological regimens for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease in ancestrally diverse populations through precision medicine. To accomplish this objective, his group combines computational approaches in pharmacogenomics and pharmacoepidemiology using electronic health record-linked biorepositories. His lab is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate genetic determinants of efficacy and safety for statin therapy in diverse populations. Dr. Oni-Orisan serves as Diversity Leader for the Department of Clinical Pharmacy to champion diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism efforts in the department.

Dr. Oni-Orisan earned both his BS in biology (2006) and PharmD (2010) degrees at the University of Michigan. He received his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences (2015) from the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics at the University of North Carolina. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Clinical Pharmacology Training Program (2017) at UCSF. Dr. Oni-Orisan then joined the faculty at UCSF in 2017. He received mentored early career training in research through an NIH Career Development Award (2018-2023) from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

Cynthia E. Rogers, MD

Professor of Psychiatry, Washington University

Bio

Cynthia Rogers, M.D. is Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at Washington University in St. Louis and Co-Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Dr. Rogers graduated with a B.A. in psychology from Harvard University and completed her M.D., psychiatry residency, and child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at Washington University. She is an academic child psychiatrist whose program of research focuses on improving the psychiatric outcomes of infants through understanding the underlying neural mechanisms of social-emotional development and psychopathology and the impact of social determinants of health on these mechanisms. Dr. Rogers co-directs the Washington University Neonatal Development Research (WUNDER) group, a multidisciplinary lab which uses multimodal MRI to understand how poverty, racism, prematurity, and prenatal substance exposure affect the brain at birth, alter brain development across childhood, and relate to child psychiatric disorders. Dr. Rogers serves as prinicipal investigator of multiple NIMH and NIDA funded longtidinal research studies and serves as Associate Director of the Healthy Brain and Child Development national consortium study. Dr. Rogers clinical work centers on addressing the impact of social determnants of health to reduce development of psychiatric disorders in perinatal and child populations. She co-directs the Washington University Perinatal Behavioral Health Service which serves perinatal women with psychiatric and substance use disorders and she leads a teaching consultation clinic for formerly preterm children with early developmental and social-emotional delays. She serves on the editorial board of Biological Psychiatry and a Deputy Editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and is a member of several professional societies, including the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the FLUX Society, and the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.

Benjamin N. Rome, MD, MPH

Instructor in Medicine, Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital

Bio

Benjamin N. Rome, MD, MPH is general internist and health policy researcher at Harvard Medical School and a faculty member in the Division of Pharmacology and Pharmacoeconomics in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Within the Division, Dr. Rome works within the Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) to study the evaluation, regulation, cost, and use of prescription drugs in the United States. His research interests include how drug prices affect patient adherence and clinical outcomes, value-based drug pricing, and policies to make medications more affordable to patients. His work has been has published in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Health Affairs, and JAMA Internal Medicine. His research has also been featured in a Congressional report about rising prescription drug prices and he has testified in front of the US House of Representatives about evidence-based drug approval during the Covid-19 pandemic. Dr. Rome received his undergraduate degree in community health from Brown University, his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, and his Master of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health while he was a general internal medicine fellow at PORTAL. He trained in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is a practicing primary care physician at the Phyllis Jen Center for Primary Care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Anita Shukla, PhD

Elaine I. Savage Associate Professor of Engineering, Brown University School of Engineering

Bio

Anita Shukla is the Elaine I. Savage Associate Professor of Engineering and core faculty member in the Center for Biomedical Engineering at Brown University. Professor Shukla’s research involves the development of nano- to macroscale responsive and targeted biomaterials for drug delivery, with a focus on treatment of bacterial and fungal infections. Professor Shukla is the recipient of several national and University honors and awards for both her research and teaching, including a National Academy of Engineering Grainger Grant (2021), Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) (2019), a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award (2020), an Office of Naval Research Director of Research Early Career Grant (2017), and a Brown University Early Career Research Achievement Award (2020) and Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (2017). She has mentored 12 Ph.D. students, 7 postdoctoral researchers, 12 Sc.M. students, and more than 45 undergraduate researchers. Her dedication to research and mentorship were recognized twice by a student body selected Tau Beta Pi Research Excellence Award (Rhode Island Alpha Chapter, 2019 and 2022). Prior to joining Brown in 2013, Professor Shukla was a National Institutes of Health Ruth Kirschstein postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University. She received her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2011 as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Professor Shukla also received an M.S. in Chemical Engineering Practice from MIT. She received a B.S. at Carnegie Mellon University in 2006 with majors in chemical engineering and biomedical engineering.

Daniel J. Siegwart, PhD

Professor and W. Ray Wallace Distinguished Chair in Molecular Oncology Research, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Bio

Daniel J. Siegwart is a Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Biochemistry, and the Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center (SCCC) at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He holds the W. Ray Wallace Distinguished Chair in Molecular Oncology Research and serves as the Director of the Program in Genetic Drug Engineering, Director of the Drug Delivery Program in Biomedical Engineering, and Co-leader of the Chemistry and Cancer Program in the NCI-designated SCCC. He received a BS in Biochemistry from Lehigh University (2003), and a PhD in Chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University (2008), studying with Professor Krzysztof Matyjaszewski. He also studied as an NSF EAPSI Research Fellow at the University of Tokyo with Professor Kazunori Kataoka (2006). He then completed an NIH NSRA Postdoctoral Fellowship at MIT with Professor Daniel Anderson and Professor Robert Langer (2008-2012). Among various honors and awards, he has been elected to Controlled Release Society (CRS) College of Fellows and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows. His research laboratory utilizes materials chemistry to enable targeted nanoparticle delivery of genomic medicines. Their efforts led to an understanding of the essential physical and chemical properties of synthetic carriers required for therapeutic delivery of siRNA, miRNA, tRNA, pDNA, mRNA, and gene editors. His lab has been at the forefront in the design of synthetic carriers for gene editing, reporting the first example of non-viral in vivo CRISPR/Cas gene editing, and has applied these technologies for correction of genetic diseases and treatment of cancer. He also developed Selective ORgan Targeting (SORT) lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for predictable tissue specific mRNA delivery and gene editing. Dr. Siegwart and his lab ultimately aspire to utilize chemistry and engineering to make a beneficial impact on human health.

Catherine Tcheandjieu, DVM, PhD

Assistant Investigator, Gladstone Institutes; Assistant Professor, University of California, San Francisco

Bio

Catherine Tcheandjieu, DVM, PhD, is Assistant Investigator at Gladstone Institutes and Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UC San Francisco since March, 2022. Born in Cameroon, her academic journey began with a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from the National School of Veterinary Medicine of Algiers, Algeria, followed by a master’s degree in Public Health and PhD in Genetic Epidemiology from the University of Paris-Saclay, France. She continued her training in genetic epidemiology through postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford University and Palo Alto Veterans Administration, focusing on the genetics of cardiovascular disease utilizing the VA Million Veterans Program (MVP) and the UK Biobank cohorts. With expertise in epidemiology, genomics, and statistics, her research aims to unravel the complex interplay between genetic and environmental factors, with a focus on population diversity, genetic and environmental variability. Her research is now supported by an American Heart Association (AHA) Second Century Early faculty Independence Award. Her impactful contributions to science include co-authoring of over 35 publications, many in leading journals, and mentoring graduate, undergraduate, and postdoctoral trainees, including those underrepresented in science, fostering an inclusive academic environment. Beyond her scientific pursuits, Dr. Tcheandjieu is an advocate for equity, inclusivity, and representation, championing diversity, inclusivity and representation in both the academic workforce and her research. She has received various awards, including the French Higher School of Public health’s graduate student Award, the Stanford Postdoc Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Champion Award, the Stanford Jump Start Award, the MVP Early Career Investigator.

Hansel Tookes, MD. MPH

Professor, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine

Bio

Hansel Tookes is a tenured Professor of Medicine at University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. He is founder of the IDEA Lab whose mission is to implement, disseminate, educate, and advocate for the health of people who use drugs. His lab also houses the IDEA syringe services program – the first legal program in Florida. Dr. Tookes spent five years advocating in the Florida Legislature for the creation of the program as an evidence-based HIV prevention intervention. In 2016, he succeeded and the pilot was signed into law. Today, Dr. Tookes serves as medical director of IDEA and successfully passed Infectious Disease Elimination Act of 2019 authorizing statewide expansion of syringe services programs. As a physician at Jackson Memorial, one of the largest public hospitals in the nation, Dr. Tookes attends on the HIV service as well as the Ryan White clinic. He is an advocate for health equity and has extensive experience working with both patients of low socioeconomic status and individuals who use drugs. His research interests include structural/systemic interventions and innovative approaches to HIV prevention and treatment. He is a 2021 recipient of a NIDA Avenir Award which is testing his innovative tele-harm reduction model for HIV treatment in a randomized controlled trial and, more recently, 3 NIDA R01s. The R01s include a trial of tele-harm reduction for the prevention of HIV, a team science cohort study, and an implementation science trial on opt-out HIV and hepatitis C testing for people who inject drugs. He has received numerous honors, including Miami Chamber of Commerce Healthcare Hero, Starbucks Upstander, and SAVE Champion of Equality. In 2023, he was appointed to the board of the HIV Medicine Association, the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS and the CDC/HRSA Advisory Committee on HIV, Viral Hepatitis, and STD Prevention and Treatment.

Carlo Giovanni Traverso, MB, BChir, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Division of Gastroenterology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School

Bio

Dr. Traverso, a gastroenterologist and biomedical engineer, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. His current research program is focused on developing the next generation of drug delivery systems to enable safe and efficient delivery of therapeutics through the gastrointestinal tract as well developing novel ingestible electronic devices for sensing a broad array of physiologic and pathophysiologic parameters.

Judy Wawira Gichoya, MBChB, MS

Assistant Professor of Radiology, Emory University

Bio

Dr. Gichoya is a multidisciplinary researcher, trained as both an informatician and an interventional radiologist. She is an associate professor in the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences of the Emory University School of Medicine and is seconded to the NIH as a DATA scholar to support the flagship DSI-Africa program building data science capacity in Africa. Dr Gichoya has active memberships in many national informatics and radiology societies and committees, and serves on the Board of Directors for SIIM and HL7. She co-chairs the SIIM Research Committee and the Medical Imaging and Resource Center (MIDRC) Bias and Diversity Working Group. At Emory, she is a member of the Emory University Artificial Intelligence for Humanity Advisory Group that supports the provost in recruiting prominent AI scholars to Emory, building a community of AI researchers, and training Emory students for future AI -driven work. She also serves on the Emory Science Gallery Atlanta Advisory Board, one of seven galleries in the world that combines science, art, technology, and design to deliver world-class educational experiences for young people. She is a member of multiple editorial boards including PLOS Digital Health, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) AI journal, and Radiology AI journal. She is a member of external advisory boards for large AI projects at Stanford University and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Dr Gichoya’s research is centered around three themes: curating diverse datasets for medical imaging, evaluating fairness and bias in algorithms, and validating AI in the real-world setting. She was recognized by her peers in 2021 as the Aunt Minnie Most Influential Radiology Researcher.

Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine Scholars Alumni

Ami S. Bhatt, MD, PhD
Maria Elena Bottazzi, PhD
Brandon Brown, PhD, MPH
Alejandra Casillas, MD, MSHS
Paul Christopher, PhD
Christopher R. Cogle, MD
Paul Cohen, MD, PhD
Carrie H. Colla, PhD
Deidra C. Crews, MD, ScM (elected to NAM 2023)
Justin Basile Echouffo Tcheugui, MD, PhD
Adaeze Enekwechi, PhD
Oluwadamilola “Lola” Fayanju, MD, MA, MPHS
Lori Freedman, PhD
Christopher Friese, PhD, RN, AOCN, FAAN (elected to NAM 2020)
Celine Gounder, MD (elected to NAM 2023)
Jordan Green, PhD
Anna Greka, MD, PhD
Marcia Haigis, PhD
Kelli Stidham Hall, PhD, MS
Sidney H. Hankerson, MD, MBA
Ronald L. Hickman Jr., PhD, RN
Ehsan Hoque, PhD
Leora Horwitz, MD
Mark Huffman, MD, MPH
Ning (Jenny) Jiang, PhD
Sandeep Kishore, MD, PhD, MSc
Caprice Knapp, PhD
Joseph A. Lewnard, PhD
Miguel Marino, PhD (elected to NAM 2022)
Raina Merchant, MD, MSHP (elected to NAM 2020)
Mark Neuman, MD
Ziad Obermeyer, MD
Minal Patel, PhD, MPH
Brea Perry, PhD
Nathan Price, PhD
Christina Ann Roberto, PhD
Suchi Saria, MSc, PhD
Margaret (Gretchen) L. Schwarze, MD, MPP
Julie Segre, PhD (elected to NAM 2019)
Jacob Sherkow, JD
Hanni Stoklosa, MD, MPH
Sohail Tavazoie, MD, PhD (elected to NAM 2022)
Hassan A. Tetteh, MD, MBA, MPA, MS
Brownsyne Tucker Edmonds, MD, MPH, MS
Jing Wang PhD, MPH, MSN, RN, FAAN
Y. Claire Wang, MD, ScD, MS
Keegan Warren-Clem, JD, LLM
Jonathan Watanabe, PharmD, MS, PhD, BCGP
Jeffrey Wickliffe, PhD, MS
Joseph C. Wu, MD, PhD (elected to NAM 2019)
Ramnik Xavier, MD, ChB

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