Year 4. July 7. Its July and We Welcome Our New Interns
I hope that many of you enjoyed the long holiday July 4th weekend. While you may have been at cookouts, barbecues or watching fireworks, our interns and residents were busy taking care of patients in the hospital. Importantly, on July 1, we welcomed a new class of incoming interns, who are already gaining their sea legs in our hospitals under the close supervision of our newly minted senior residents and our attending faculty. We also welcomed many new faculty to the department of medicine and celebrated the launch of our hospital medicine service at UCLA West Valley. The new academic year is off to a busy start, and I invite you to get a glimpse of these initiatives and to meet many of the new members of our team.
The New Residents Have Arrived
The new internal medicine residents have arrived! Our exceptional class of 46 interns officially kicked off their first year of residency at their orientation on Monday, June 16. We are thrilled to welcome them to the department and are excited to watch them grow into outstanding physicians and physician scientists!
New IM resident Kaveri Curlin, MD, who is joining us from UC Irvine, is excited for what’s to come.
“I’m most looking forward to learning a lot and seeing the growth and the progress year to year, month to month and day to day,” Dr. Curlin said. Meanwhile, Millie Kirchberg, MD, from UC San Diego, is excited to finally use the degree that she has worked towards; her fellow UC San Diego alum Ryan Miller, MD is excited to teach. At least one of our new residents cannot wait to appreciate a SoCal classic.
“I’m excited for to head to the beach and watch some ocean sunsets,” Han Hillary Ta, MD, from the University of Colorado, said.
A few more facts about our incoming class: There are 83 new residents joining us this year across eight programs. They hail from 20 different states and four countries, and 23 of them identify as underrepresented in medicine. Fourteen have advanced credentials, such as an MBA or an MPH, in addition to their medical degrees.
Learn what else our new residents are looking forward to in the video below. Welcome to the UCLA Department of Medicine (DoM)!
Trainees Reflect on First Year as Residents
Residency is well known for being one of the most challenging yet transformative periods in a physician’s career. Last year several of our new interns shared their hopes for their first year of residency. This week, they reflect on what they learned, as they make the transition from intern to senior resident.
Harini Shah, MD
“At the start of intern year, I was most excited about 365 days of sunshine. In many ways, that’s exactly what I got — sunlight on early walk-ins, golden hours after long call days, and the warmth of co-residents who made even the hardest moments feel lighter. I’ve learned that residency isn’t about doing it all perfectly, but about showing up, staying curious, and leaning on each other. I’m grateful for the patients who trusted me, my co-residents who lifted me, and the small moments of growth that quietly added up over the year. This year taught me resilience, humility, and the power of good company in every season.”
Hannah Ship, MD
“Looking back, this year has truly been everything I hoped for and more. It’s been a whirlwind in the best way — full of growth, challenges, and meaningful moments that reminded me why I chose this path.
One of the biggest things I’ve learned is how to sit with uncertainty — whether that’s working through a difficult diagnosis, navigating complex emotions, or recognizing my own limits. I’ve learned to trust my clinical instincts, ask for help when I need it, and stay grounded in compassion, even when things feel overwhelming. Most of all, I’ve come to really value being part of a team that shows up-for our patients and for each other.”
Sara Peña Carmona, MD
“At the beginning of this new academic year, I had the amazing opportunity to be an intern buddy, a position that serves as an additional support for new interns starting on inpatient rotations. I saw myself in all their nerves and uncertainty, and it was in those moments that I reflected on the transformation we through in our intern year. I look back on the countless stressful hours in the hospital and all the new rotations that were preceded by anxious, sleepless nights and realize that the imperceptible, gradual growth was happening all along the way. I realize now that the growth was not possible without all the additional support, the senior residents working longer hours behind the scenes, our attendings providing guidance unbeknownst to us interns. Now, stepping into a new role this PGY2 year, the anxiousness and excitement is not gone but amplified towards new challenges of being a senior resident!”
New Faculty Reflect on Joining UCLA
This year we welcomed a cohort of new faculty, who started on July 1. They join us from places near and far around the world, including several former Bruins! All of them are highly talented physicians who will enrich our DoM community in countless ways. We are honored to have them join us.
Below, meet your new colleagues and learn what brought them to (or back to!) UCLA!
Diana C. Cantero, PA-C
GIM/HSR - Medicine-Pediatrics
Santa Clarita
Diana received her PA degree from USC Keck School of Medicine.
“What attracted me to UCLA was my own experience as a patient. I received exceptional care, and it left a lasting impression on me. I knew I wanted to be part of a team that not only delivers outstanding patient care but also supports its providers in a way that allows them to practice with excellence. After spending over a decade working in urgent care and the emergency room, I’m excited to transition into this new role at UCLA, where I can continue serving patients and make a meaningful difference in their health and lives.”
Amir A. Ghaffari, MD, PhD
Digestive Diseases
Westwood
Dr. Ghaffari attended DGSOM for medical school and completed residency at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
“What excites me most about returning to UCLA is the opportunity to come back to an institution that shaped my foundational medical training and has always felt like home. I'm grateful to rejoin a community where I received outstanding mentorship and now have the privilege to contribute to the education and growth of the next generation of trainees. I'm also thrilled to be part of the dynamic and expanding Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) team, committed to delivering exceptional care to our diverse patient population.”
Amin Montaref, MD
Nephrology
Santa Clarita, Simi Valley, and Ventura
Dr. Montaref obtained his MD from Islamic Azad University and completed his residency at Mount Sinai Hospital, and Nephrology at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine.
“What attracted me to UCLA was its outstanding reputation for excellence in patient care, academic leadership, and its collaborative culture. From the start, I was impressed by the supportive environment within the division, the strong sense of collegiality among faculty, and the clear, shared commitment to patient-centered care. I’m most excited about the opportunity to contribute to a team that values innovation, mentorship, and continuous learning. UCLA is truly a remarkable place to work, and I look forward to growing professionally and making a meaningful impact as part of this community.”
Thomas T. Nguyen, MD, MBA
GIM/HSR
San Luis Obispo
Dr. Nguyen attended medical school at Ross University School of Medicine and completed his residency at The Jewish Hospital.
“What drew me here wasn’t just the reputation — though UCLA’s excellence in research, education, and patient care is well known. It was the people, the sense of shared purpose, and the deep commitment to serving the community. From my first conversations with colleagues here, I could tell this was a place where people care — not only about advancing medicine, but about doing so with integrity, empathy, and thoughtfulness. I’m excited to contribute where I can, whether through clinical work, mentoring, or research. UCLA offers a rare environment where all of that is possible. I look forward to learning, collaborating, and growing with this community in the years ahead.”
F. Otis Stephen, MD
Digestive Diseases
Santa Monica/Westwood
Dr. Stephen is a graduate of Ohio State University College of Medicine and trained at Johns Hopkins University/Sinai Hospital of Baltimore for residency. He completed his gastroenterology fellowship at St. Louis University School of Medicine. He attended college at UCLA.
“I was attracted to UCLA because UCLA is nationally renowned for providing excellent clinical care as well as cutting edge research, and this opportunity provided me the chance to join and collaborate with some of the best physicians and clinical researchers in the country. I am also a UCLA alumnus, so the opportunity to start a new small bowel endoscopy program at my alma mater was one that I could not pass up. I am most excited about partnering with the other programs in the UCLA Division of Digestive Diseases, such as the inflammatory bowel program and the Goodman Luskin Microbiome program, as well as the surgical programs to potentially develop one of the premier small bowel endoscopy programs in the country.”
Steven Tan, MD
Clinical Nutrition
Santa Monica/Westwood
Dr. Tan attended DGSOM for medical school and completed his residency at UCLA.
“I felt extremely well-prepared and confident after my years of training at UCLA, so it's exciting for me to be surrounded once again by the patients, staff, students and colleagues here who make up UCLA's incredibly smart, talented and diverse community.”
In addition to these fantastic new additions to our faculty, I would also like to welcome Felipe A. Saavedra Cea, MD to GIM/HSR - Medicine-Pediatrics and Tommaso Tosini, MD to GIM/HSR - Family Medicine. Please say hello when you run into them around our far flung UCLA network!
New Services Officially Launch at UCLA West Valley Medical Center
The long-awaited expansion to our services at UCLA West Valley Medical Center (WVMC) in West Hills has officially begun! On July 1 the medical center welcomed 10 new hospitalists — the first cohort out of the 40 total who will begin seeing patients there this year. Several other divisions kicked off as well.
“In the end it was a smooth transition,” Jeri Robertson, director of inpatient and hospitalist services, said. “It is wonderful to have a new hospital in the valley to expand our service mission.”
UCLA Health purchased the West Hills Hospital and Medical Center last year. Since then, we have been working hard to ensure the efficient and timely handover of services to UCLA faculty and staff. That process is spearheaded by the UCLA West Valley Steering Committee. At the department level our transition team is spearheaded by Neveen El-Farra, MD, vice chair of inpatient medical services at Ronald Reagan Medical Center and WVMC and section chief for hospital medicine. She is working closely with Aram A. Namavar, MD, MS and Jason E. Bahk, MD, co-directors for the UCLA Hospital Medicine Service.
“The feedback has been really positive and inspirational so far,” Dr. El-Farra said. “The nurses are just so ecstatic that we are there.”
One particularly heartwarming story Dr. El-Farra shared was that of a nurse who cried when a hospitalist approached her to ask if she wanted to come in and see a patient with her during MD-RN rounds, where physicians and nurses conduct rounds together. This is a very important initiative for patient care and communication that we are actively implementing across all UCLA Health hospitals — and was a sign to the WVMC nurse that they will have much more support moving forward.
“You already feel like you’re making a difference and have a presence in the lives of the patients and staff that we work with,” Dr. El-Farra said.
Emergency medicine, nephrology, hematology-oncology, pulmonary and physical medicine and rehabilitation services have already begun at WVMC as well, and some interventional cardiology services are being established. Digestive diseases will launch on Oct. 1, followed by infectious diseases.
Congratulations to all of our faculty at WVMC and thank you to the outstanding LEADERS who made this crucial transition so smooth! Your work will make the phenomenal care offered by UCLA healthcare providers accessible to many more patients, and I greatly look forward to what is to come for our West Valley facility.
Photo caption: From left to right: New UCLA West Valley hospitalists Atefeh Kalantary; Maninder Kaler; Tanvir Rahman; Mohammed Alghussein; Linda Czypinski; Dr. Bahk; Vindeep Bhandari; Eric Choi and Dr. Namavar. Photo courtesy of Dr. El-Farra.
Update on Our Strategic Plan Implementation
Given the new season and launch of a new academic year, I will provide a brief review of our progress on the UCLA Department of Medicine Strategic Plan — our roadmap to establish the DoM as a premiere academic department of medicine grounded on the core principles to lead in innovation, transform care and advance health for all.
For those of you who are new, here is a bit of history. The UCLA Department of Medicine has long been a force in science and patient care, and given the rapidly evolving field of medicine and dynamic healthcare landscape, it became imperative to organize our efforts to ensure our continued success. In 2023, department leadership launched an initiative alongside stakeholders within and outside of the department to articulate our core values and identify what is needed to help our people and patients thrive. Those efforts culminated in the unveiling of the Strategic Plan, which sets out our core values as well as strategies and tactics to achieve goals across four key pillars: research, education, community engagement and patient care.
We have made significant progress on these fronts since the launch of the plan.
Research
The efforts of our research pillar — led by Judith Currier, MD, MSc; Carol M. Mangione MD, MSPH and Cathy Rujanuruks — has focused primarily on the strategic objectives to strengthen our research infrastructure; develop, retain and recruit researchers and research staff; and raise the profile of the DoM research portfolio, internally and externally. However, federal funding cuts have generated some headwinds against these efforts, particularly those around our research infrastructure and our goal of bolstering our researcher and research staff retention and recruitment. In my recap of the DMPG Annual Retreat, I shared the department's contingency plan for meeting these challenges. We remain committed to supporting our faculty and their projects.
In spite of these setbacks, the team has made significant strides toward developing and retaining new researchers and research staff. This is most apparent in our new year-long researcher onboarding program. Closely modeled after the DMPG onboarding program for new clinical faculty, the researcher onboarding program seeks to set new faculty and staff up for success as they adjust to life at UCLA. As part of the program, team members have hosted three sessions so far covering topics like purchasing, human resources and salary structure.
Thankfully, funding challenges have not slowed down our progress towards raising the profile of our research portfolio. One key component of this are the new research websites that are under construction by the DoM communications team. Each division will soon have its own site to share its research success, which will also be disseminated in a newsletter devoted exclusively to research news.
Education
The overarching goal of our education efforts is to develop leaders who will drive the future of medicine and health sciences. To that end, a team led by Jodi L. Friedman, MD; Tamer Sallam, MD, PhD; and Douglas Ruiz Carbajal is initially focused on training leaders who provide holistic, patient-centered care and advance scientific discovery; on developing and recognizing outstanding faculty educators; and on cultivating a culture of learning that helps our faculty, staff and trainees reach their full potential.
On the training front, the education team has developed and delivered recommendations for improved mentorship and career development practices for DoM trainees; these are slated for implementation in fiscal year 2026. Towards its aim of developing and recognizing outstanding faculty educators, it has launched the Proceedings of the UCLA Department of Medicine and is working on establishing a second outlet to disseminate faculty scholarship. It is also in the process of drafting recommendations for formal department-wide faculty development curricula and ways to enhance mentorship and professional development of DoM staff, who are already benefitting from the team’s Leaning Into New Knowledge educational series.
Community Engagement
As a public university, it is our duty to work towards advancing health and improve outcomes for our diverse communities. The community engagement team, including LEADERS in the DoM’s Office of Community Engagement and Inclusive Excellence (CEIE), have focused its initial efforts on three priorities: Strengthen engagement and collaboration with organizations caring for communities with excess disease burden or risk; collaborating with health systems and community partners to advance research and policy to improve health for all; and provide high-quality health equity training for all in the DoM.
To bolster our ties with organizations that care for vulnerable communities, Daniel M. Kozman, MD, MPH is leading an ongoing effort to grow our clinical service agreements with safety net partners. Our community engagement pillar leaders are also brainstorming a pilot volunteer program for DoM staff that will help us better serve our community partners and are in the process of planning a special symposium that will help us connect with local leaders.
To meet its goal to advance research and policy to improve health for all, the team is organizing a community advisory board that will bring together expertise and lived experiences to ensure that strategic and scholarly projects in this domain are aligned with community priorities. Office of CEIE Program Manager Patrick G. Frierson has done an outstanding job spearheading our work towards our goal of providing excellent health equity training to all in the DoM through his “Lunch and Learn” series and other programs.
Patient Care
The DoM’s strategic goal for patient care is to provide the highest quality patient-centered, innovative, integrated healthcare for all. The patient care pillar team, led by Evelyn A. Curls, MD, MBA; Neveen El-Farra, MD; and Anna Dermenchyan, PhD, RN, has focused primarily on increasing access to high quality, patient-friendly, inpatient and ambulatory care; on strengthening clinical infrastructure and operational efficiencies; and on cultivating a culture and environment in the clinical setting that supports provider and staff well-being and retention.
As Dr. El-Farra described above, the new expansion of the UCLA West Valley Medical Center in West Hills is the latest example of our progress toward our goal of expanding access to care. Other accomplishments on this front include new leases in West Adams and Long Beach and forthcoming leases in Inglewood and El Segundo, that will establish additional community ambulatory facilities. We are also in proactive planning with UCLA Health for future increased capacity at Ronald Reagan University Medical Center after the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital relocates to mid-Wilshire.
Projects towards our goal of making our clinical infrastructure and operations more efficient include standardized patient referral protocols; schedule optimizations; rooming and after-visit activities for ambulatory patients; and much more. The team’s efforts toward cultivating a culture and environment in the clinical setting that supports provider and staff well-being and retention, include an expansion of our professional coaching and health system AI scribe programs, both of which have proven popular among our faculty.
I look forward to sharing more detailed updates on our progress toward Strategic Plan objectives in the near future!
Robert Reiss, MD Named the 2025 Honored Hero for the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation’s Los Angeles Take Steps Walk
I am excited to share that Robert Reiss, MD was recently named the 2025 Los Angeles Take Steps Honored Hero at the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation’s Take Steps Walk, an event that raises funds for research, advocacy work and the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
“It was an amazing day,” said Dr. Reiss, an internist at UCLA Palos Verdes Primary & Specialty Care. His son and one of his daughters, David and Erica — both of whom were diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at 11 years old — flew in from Palo Alto and Madrid. His other daughter, who does not have the condition, attended as well.
“As a surprise they introduced me, and I was a tearful mess by the time I got up onstage to give my address,” Dr. Reiss recalled.
The Honored Hero award recognizes a healthcare professional who has demonstrated profound dedication to helping those with IBD through their fundraising efforts and work with the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation. Dr. Reiss certainly fits the bill: This year he will surpass $1 million raised for the organization. He and his team, Team Reiss, raised $115,000 in 2024 and $135,000 this year. He also sits on the board of the organization and is a longtime member of the L.A. chapter.
“I want to fundraise to find a cure for this disease,” Dr. Reiss said. He noted that he is grateful that UCLA chose to be a sponsor this year.
Congratulations, Robert, on this special achievement! Your work embodies our mission to serve our community and advance health for all.
Congratulations to Our Fellowship Graduates!
While we have welcomed new trainees and faculty to our community, we also celebrate another class of fellows who have completed their training at UCLA. I am so proud of them and all of their accomplishments, and it will be an honor to watch their careers soar, within UCLA and elsewhere. Enjoy these photos from our recent fellowship graduation ceremonies!
[PHOTO GRAPHIC]
Dale.
P.S.
The response to my amphitheater picture last week was impressive with correct answers submitted by: Drs. Niloofar Nobakht and Marmar Vaseghi, Sam Martinez (DoM) and Tiffany Gardner in the DGSOM. Stay tuned for the next picture! Yes, it is the Acropolis and more specifically as pointed out by some - Odeon of Herodes Atticus near the Acropolis of Athens Greece.
As we reflect on transitions among our trainees, I was moved by a farewell gift from the X-factor chiefs. As you know, I became very attached the stuffed X, which joined the start of all my chair rounds last year. In recognition of my fondness of the yellow X, I was touched to see this parting gift from the X-factor chiefs at my door. I’ll miss working with you too!
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