CHIRAL Leadership

Sarwat Chaudhry, MD is a board-certified internist who completed her clinical training at the University of Chicago before coming to Yale for postdoctoral fellowship training in the Clinical Scholars Program. She holds a faculty position as Professor of Medicine in the Section of General Medicine. She also serves as Associate Dean of Student Research and Co-Director of the National Clinician Scholars Program. Dr. Chaudhry leads an active portfolio of NIH-funded research, focusing primarily on diversifying the physician and physician-scientist workforce. She is also leading work focused on improving the quality and safety of hospital-based care.

Dr. Venkatesh is a Professor of Emergency Medicine and Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Yale University. He is also Scientist at the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation. He has been funded by the NIH, AHRQ, and the Emergency Medicine Foundation to study health system outcomes and efficiency, and he is supported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as co-Principal Investigator of the Emergency Quality Network (E-QUAL) and for the development of the Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings. He has received over $6 million in grant funding and published over 80 peer-reviewed papers and is senior editor of The Evidence book series. He is national leader within ACEP and SAEM and he serves on expert panels for the National Quality Forum (NQF), Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and CMS. His work is also funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the Addiction Policy Forum to advance the quality and delivery of emergency and acute care for opioid use disorder. Dr. Venkatesh earned his undergraduate degree at Northwestern University. He went on to earn an MBA from Ohio State University before completing medical school at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Most recently he completed Emergency Medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General Hospitals and the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program here at Yale University. He is originally from Dayton, OH and resides in New Haven.

Dr. Charles Matouk, Associate Professor of Neurosurgery and Radiology & Biomedical Imaging, is a cerebrovascular neurosurgeon with expertise in the open and endovascular treatment of vascular disorders of the brain and spinal cord. He completed his certification examination in neurosurgery from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 2009. He completed a 2-year clinical fellowship in Endovascular Neurosurgery / Interventional Neuroradiology as well as a Vascular Biology Research Fellowship studying human vascular endothelial cells in health and disease at the University of Toronto. He has special interest in treating brain aneurysms, vascular malformations of the brain and spinal cord, carotid occlusive disease, and acute stroke syndromes. He also has an interest in general neurosurgery including adult-onset hydrocephalus.

Dr. Sather’s expertise is in the diagnosis and management of critical illness. Dr. Sather currently serves as the Director of Safety and Quality for the Department. He has been instrumental in the creation of clinical guidelines for the management of critically ill patients within the Yale-New Haven Health System. His research focus is similarly focused on the improvement in critical care delivery, transitions in critical care, and the reduction of diagnostic error. He is Principal Investigator of a Diagnostic Excellence Initiative award from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to develop a composite measure of diagnostic performance in Pulmonary Embolism. He was also a project Principal Investigator of the AHRQ funded Patient Safety Learning Laboratory project that applied system engineering and process improvement to inter-hospital transfer care of patients with intracranial hemorrhage. Dr. Sather is also currently involved in trials of early care for septic shock and a study of retrograde endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta in cardiac arrest. Dr. Sather is an established educator at the undergraduate and graduate medical education levels as core faculty member of the clinical reasoning curriculum for the School of Medicine, teacher of a popular weekly seminar in clinical reasoning for the EM clerkship, and as faculty lead of the Critical Care Area of Concentration for emergency medicine residents. Dr. Sather in actively engaged in University and Health System service as a member of the Yale School of Medicine Admissions Committee and the Yale-Haven Hospital Mortality Review Committee.

Dr. Kevin Sheth is a founding Director of the Yale Center for Brain & Mind Health and the Vice Chair for Clinical and Translational Research for the departments of Neurology. and Neurosurgery. He leads prevention efforts in neurologically vulnerable populations and works towards advancing therapies for acute brain injury such as stroke and brain hemorrhage. In pioneering the development of new strategies to treat brain swelling, his work has changed the fundamental approach to brain injury in the ICU and spurred the creation of new technologies in drug delivery and neuroimaging. Highly collaborative, interdisciplinary efforts from the lab have culminated in the first phase III trial to prevent brain swelling in stroke, the first phase III NIH funded prevention trial in brain hemorrhage, and the deployment of the first portable bedside MRI for brain injury in the world. His team at Yale has served as a national model for academic critical care neurology units. In recent years his group has also turned their attention to public health prevention efforts, focusing on cardiometabolic risk factors that can prevent decline in brain health resulting from stroke, dementia, and depression. He is currently a principal investigator for two NIH neuroscience networks, StrokeNet, and SIREN. He is a multi-PI for four additional RO1/UO1 awards from the NIH. Dr. Sheth has served as PI or co-PI for 8 multicenter clinical trials in stroke. He is a winner of the prestigious Robert Siekert Award from the American Heart Association (AHA), the Derek Denny Brown Award from the American Neurological Association and an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). Most recently, he was the recipient of the Stroke Research Mentorship Award from the American Heart Association. Dr. Sheth is the author of over 300 publications. His work has been showcased in The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, NPR, and CNN. Finally, Dr. Sheth has formed exciting partnerships with entrepreneurs, pharmaceutical companies, and medical device start-ups to bring forward highly innovative solutions. These efforts have resulted in extensive knowledge of FDA pathways, development of phase I-III drug programs, and implementation of new technology into the clinical workspace. The principal theme of his efforts are towards collaboration and an improved understanding of neurological disease.