Week 24: Our Stars

Dr. Olawale Amubieya MD, PhD is a pulmonary and critical care fellow who will be joining the faculty of UCLA as an assistant clinical professor in the UCLA Heart and Lung Transplant Program, division of pulmonary & critical care. Wale graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and completed his medicine residency here at UCLA. He conducts research on the social and environment impacts on lung transplant outcomes under the mentorship of John Belperio, MD, Sam Weigt, MD, Keith Norris, MD, PhD and Ninez Ponce, PhD.

Xinjiang Cai, MD, PhD is a cardiology fellow who will be joining the faculty of UCLA as a clinical instructor in the division of cardiology. Xinjiang graduated from Hunan Medical University and completed residency in medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (Bronx) Program. He conducts research into the regulation of vascular calcification by adventitial endothelial cells, under the mentorship of Kristina Bostrom, MD, PhD.

Srinivas Chivukula, MD, PhD is a neurosurgery resident at UCLA. He graduated from University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He has studied functional surgery, neuroprosthetics, and pain processing under the mentorship of Richard Anderson, PhD at Caltech.

Amy Cummings, MD, PhD is a hematology and oncology fellow who will be joining the faculty of UCLA as an assistant professor in the division of hematology and oncology. Amy graduated from Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California and completed her medicine residency here at UCLA.  She conducts research on integrating multimodal data for personalized models of cancer, under the mentorship of Alex Bui, PhD.

Ardalan Davarifar, MD, PhD is hematology and oncology fellow who will be joining the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville as an assistant clinical professor.  Ardalan graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and completed his medicine residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He conducts research on reconstruction of evolutionary trajectories in primary tissue and patient-derived tumor organoids in patients with metastatic osteosarcoma under the mentorship of Alice Soragni, PhD.

Tasha Lin, MD, PhD is a hematology and oncology fellow who will be joining the faculty of UCLA as a clinical instructor in the division of hematology and oncology. Tasha graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School and completed her medicine residency at the Mayo Clinic. She conducts research on role and function of IGF2BP3 in MLL-AF4-mediated leukemogenesis under the mentorship of Dinesh Rao, MD, PhD.

Katie Strobel, MD, MSCR is a neonatology fellow who will be joining the faculty in the department of pediatrics, division of neonatology at University of Washington/Seattle Children as an assistant professor. Katie graduated from the Medical College of Wisconsin and completed her pediatrics residency at UCLA. Her research is investigating the influence of maternal insulin resistance and adiposity on fetal body composition in the third trimester of pregnancy using 3D free-breathing MRI, under the mentorship of Kara Calkins, MD.

Amy Vandiver, MD, PhD is a dermatology resident who will be joining the faculty of UCLA as a clinical instructor in the division of dermatology. Amy graduated from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and completed her dermatology residency here at UCLA. She conducts research into mitochondrial genetics in cutaneous aging under the mentorship of Michael Teitell, MD, PhD and Jon Wanagat, MD, PhD.

Sriram Anbil, MD graduated from the University of Texas School of Medicine in San Antonio and will be moving on to the University of Pennsylvania for hematology and oncology fellowship training.  

Kathleen Fenerty, MD graduated from Indiana University Medical School and will be remaining at UCLA as a fellow in hematology and oncology. 

Although not featured in the Star Program graduation, I want to bring your attention to one other physician scientist pipeline training program within the department of medicine. This is the R38 Research Scientist Training Program (RSTP) program. Funded by an award from the NIH it provides salary support for up to one year of research training during residency and eligibility to compete for early faculty career development awards. Our current RSTP trainees are Dr. Stephanie Wang who was mentored by Kalyanam Shivkumar MD PhD (cardiology) and John Belperio MD (pulmonary). Stephanie is planning on pursuing a career in pulmonary and critical care medicine and I will be one of the first to tell you about her publication from her studies in neural control of respiration in disease states when it comes out!

Our other RSTP fellow is Dr. Richard Leuchter who is conducting health services research in various topics including a machine learning model to predict response to diuretic therapy and a novel EHR-based nudge to reduce inappropriate transthoracic echocardiograms without hard stops, under the mentorship of Catherine Sarkisian, MD, MSPH. Richard has already published a couple of papers including a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine.