CHIRAL Leadership

Sarwat Chaudhry, MD is a board-certified internist who completed her clinical training at the University of Chicago. She came to Yale for the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, and now holds a faculty position as Associate Professor of Medicine in the Section of General Medicine. Her work focuses on improving the care and outcomes of hospitalized patients, with a focus on older patients hospitalized for cardiovascular disease. Dr. Chaudhry serves as Associate Dean of Student Research and is Co-Director of the National Clinician Scholars Program at Yale.

Dr. Venkatesh is an Associate Professor and Chief of the Section of Administration in 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.

As Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery and Radiology & Biomedical Imaging, Dr. Matouk brings to the CHIRAL team a wealth of knowledge regarding neurosurgical interventions for patients with atraumatic intracranial hemorrhage. His expertise has been invaluable to our team’s approach to improving the safety and quality of care transitions for patients transferred to YNHH with atraumatic intracranial hemorrhage.

As the Medical Director of the Yale-New Haven Adult Emergency Department, Dr. Parwani brings a deep knowledge and understanding of the operational nuances of navigating patient care transfers via the YNHH Emergency Department. This knowledge has been, and will continue to be a great asset to the CHIRAL team.

Dr. Pham, Medical Director of Y-Access, YNHH’s patient transfer service, brings to the CHIRAL team an invaluable understanding of the process by which patients are transferred from outside hospitals to YNHH. This understanding has been instrumental in the formation of our team’s approach, and will inform our intervention roll-out and evaluation.

With clinical experience in both Emergency Medicine and Surgical Critical Care, Dr. Sather brings a unique blend of clinical expertise to the CHIRAL team. In addition, Dr. Sather’s role as the Director of Quality Improvement within the Emergency Department at Yale New Haven Hospital, a position he has held since 2014, informs our team’s approach to improving the safety and quality of care transitions for patients transferred to YNHH with atraumatic intracranial hemorrhage.

After completing training in neurology and a fellowship in vascular neurology and neuro-critical care at Harvard, he was appointed the first neurology trained neuro-intensivist at the University of Maryland and R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center. At Yale, he is the founding Chief of the Division of Neurocritical Care & Emergency Neurology and Associate Chair for Clinical Research for the Department of Neurology. His interests are in the advancement of therapies for devastating acute neurological syndromes, especially those complicated by brain ischemia, swelling and hemorrhage. He is a nationally recognized clinical and translational scientist and has directed several multicenter studies. 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 spurned the creation of new technologies in drug delivery and neuroimaging. His research group uses clinical trials as a platform for discovery, which includes novel imaging and serum based biomarkers for the neuro-ICU. In recent years, this platform has expanded to trials of prevention and recovery in brain injury. His team at Yale has served as a national model for academic critical care neurology units.

He is currently the principal investigator for two NIH U24 Neuroscience Networks, NeuroNEXT and StrokeNet and three additional RO1/UO1 awards from the NIH. Dr. Sheth has served as PI or co-PI for 8 multicenter clinical trials in stroke, as well as chair for clinical endpoint and data safety monitoring committees for several pivotal studies. He is the winner of the prestigious Robert Siekert Award from the American Heart Association (AHA) and the Derek Denny Brown Award from the American Neurological Association. His research has been funded by the NIH, American Academy of Neurology, AHA, and the US Army. Dr. Sheth is the author of over 200 publications and has served on study sections for the NIH, AHA, FDA and NASA. He is an Associate Editor at Neurology and on the editorial boards for Stroke and Neurosurgery.  His work has been showcased in The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, 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. His highly collaborative work is dedicated to the improved understanding of neurological disease in the critically ill. Dr. Sheth is committed to the care of his patients with acute brain injury.

Dr. Ulrich, Professor and the Vice Chair of Operations for the Yale Department of Emergency Medicine, brings to the CHIRAL team a wealth of expertise. In practice for nearly 30 years, Dr. Ulrich is highly respected for his understanding of, and improvements to, the delivery of high-quality care within emergency departments. His knowledge, especially regarding patient process and flow through the ED, is a valuable advantage for the CHIRAL team.