Current Trainees

At age 11, I decided to watch some TV instead of do the chores my mom asked of me. Instead of typing the numbers to cartoons, I ended up watching a documentary about how a young physician used cutting edge research to guide novel therapies against epilepsy. I was hooked. Throughout my training, I've strived to figure out what makes diseases "tick" to find new ways to treat them. At Villanova, I joined a cancer immunology lab to study the mechanism that described how cancer cells cause apoptosis of T cells. During a summer, I did a research fellowship at Drexel University to study the mechanisms that confer resistance to multiple sclerosis in mouse models. I joined the MD/PhD program at SUNY Upstate interested in further studying the immune system. In Dr. Andras Perl's lab, I set out to study endosomal trafficking in SLE, but was fascinated by metabolism and the liver. I ended up with two thesis projects: Defining mechanisms of oxidative stress-mediated hepatocarcinogenesis and investigating endosomal trafficking-mediated hepatotoxicity in SLE, the latter of which was funded by an F30 from NIDDK, Upstate's first. Yale's PSTP drew me for a few reasons. The internal medicine training is top-notch, the research here is world-class, and our Liver Center is funded by a P30 from the NIDDK. My research interests focus on how our environment can impact our organ systems, with the liver as the interface. For example, can the food we eat predispose us to anxiety depending on how healthy our liver is? I've had to be very careful throughout my training. Making sure I put in the right orders for my patients, pipetted the right samples in the right tubes, and picked the right answer on the exam...but I still change the channel without looking at the remote. Who knows what I'll come across next.

Aaron S. Eisman is an M.D. / Ph.D. in Biomedical Informatics and Computational Biology. He earned his Sc.B. in Applied Mathematics at Brown University. Subsequently, he spent two years as a clinical research coordinator for the Cardiopulmonary Exercise Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital under the direction of Dr. Gregory Lewis. As a member of that research team, Dr. Eisman worked on a project demonstrating that increased pulmonary capillary wedge pressure relative to cardiac output during exercise predicts exercise capacity and heart failure outcomes. These findings have informed the definitions of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (2021) and pulmonary hypertension (2022) in the European Society of Cardiology / European Respiratory Society guidelines. Dr. Eisman returned to Brown University for his M.D. and Ph.D. training under the direction of Drs. Neil Sarkar and Elizabeth Chen. For his Ph.D. thesis, he presented a translational bioinformatics framework that bridged 1) health informatics, where aggregate electronic health records provide a clinical rendering of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and primary prevention practices, 2) bioinformatics by leveraging multi-omics data to elucidate the biological basis of serum cardio-metabolic protein-to-metabolite interactions, and 3) a translational mechanism whereby the knowledge produced from one end of the translational bioinformatics spectrum becomes the data for investigation in the other. Dr. Eisman is now an Internal Medicine Resident at Yale-New Haven Hospital as part of the Physician-Scientist Training Pathway in Cardiovascular Medicine.

Carey Jansen is an M.D. / Ph.D. in Cancer Biology and Immunology. Carey received a B.S. in Biology with High Distinction, as well as a second major in Global Public Health, from the University of Virginia, where she developed her passion for translational biomedical research. In her PhD training at Emory, she studied immune response to cancer, focusing on mechanisms of immune infiltration & organization in solid tumors in the laboratory of Dr. Haydn Kissick. This work established that anti-tumor T cell responses rely on the presence of a TCF1+ stem-like CD8 T cell, and that these cells and maintained and differentiate in intratumoral T cell niches (Nature, 2019). Her subsequent study extended these findings, establishing a role for these intratumoral immune niches in the response to immunotherapy and in multiple tumor types and locations, including in immunologically challenging settings such as in brain metastases, regardless of primary tumor type. Her research interests include continued efforts in understanding the basic mechanisms of the immune response to solid tumors and in translating research findings for optimizing biomarker use and treatment selection in medical oncology. Throughout the course of her career, she has also invested in serving the scientific community and specifically developing resources and support for the physician-scientist community through her leadership in the American Physician Scientists Association and the successful launch the Behind the Microscope podcast, among others. Carey is passionate about science advocacy and communication, mentoring, and advocating for the inclusion and support of women in careers in science and medicine. Dr. Jansen is now an Internal Medicine Resident at Yale-New Haven Hospital as part of the Physician-Scientist Training Pathway in Medical Oncology. Dr. Jansen is a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Association for Cancer Research, the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer, and the American Physician Scientists Association, and is interested in a career as a physician-scientist specializing in medical oncology.

Talal El Zarif, MD, is an Internal Medicine resident in the Physician-Scientist Training Program (PSTP) at Yale University. Originally from Sidon, Lebanon, he earned his medical degree from the Lebanese University. Following medical school, he pursued a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Cancer Center in the lab of Professor Matthew Freedman, focusing on cancer epigenomics and liquid biopsies for early detection of cancer. Dr. El Zarif also led clinical and translational research at the Lank Center of Genitourinary Oncology under the mentorship of Professor Toni Choueiri, investigating predictive biomarkers, clinical outcomes, and immune checkpoint inhibitor toxicities in patients with cancer. His work has been published in Nature Medicine, Cancer Cell, Journal of Clinical Oncology, European Urology, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Clinical Cancer Research, Cell Reports and other leading journals, and has been presented at national and international conferences. Currently, Dr. El Zarif’s clinical interests lie in Cardio-Oncology, where he seeks to bridge his oncology research expertise to study cardiovascular disease and side effects, particularly in patients with cancer receiving systemic therapies such as immune checkpoint inhibitors. He is an active member of the American College of Cardiology, American Society of Clinical Oncology, and the American Association for Cancer Research and aspires to pursue a career as a physician-scientist specializing in cardiology.

I'm Marc, a PGY-1 in internal medicine who ultimately will be training in Heme/Onc as a part of the phsyician-scientist program. Originally an organic chemist in undergrad, I transitioned into cancer cell biology for my PhD. In Neil Ganem's lab we discovered that loss of the Hippo Pathway potently potentiates melanocyte transformation into melanoma even in the absence of oncogenic BRAF signaling as well as what miRNA permit whole-genome doubled cancer cells to escape arrest. Along the way I was fortunate enough to help out with multiple projects ranging from finding new kinases that mediate Hippo pathway signaling (Sanghee Lim's work), what controls cell fate following mitotic slippage (Amanda Bolgioni's work), and finding ways to selectively target whole-genome doubled cancer cells (Ryan Quinton's work).

Omar El-Charif is a resident physician in the Department of Internal Medicine at Yale New Haven within the Physician-Scientist Training Program. Dr. El-Charif's research interests involve using high-throughput multi-omic data to develop predictive signatures that personalize diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic decisions. His expertise includes Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS), transcriptomics, functional SNP analysis, and eQTL-mapping. He is also passionate about teaching-learning and medical education. Aside from work, he loves to listen to, play, and compose music, and pursue the best of each dish in town.

Nathan M. Johnson MD, PhD attended the University of Oregon from 2007-2012 where he obtained his B.S. in Biology. During this time he was a member of Prof. Charles Kimmel’s Lab studying zebrafish craniofacial development and pathways of early bone development through the generation of transgenic reporter lines. He went on to work as a Laboratory Technician in Dr. Lisa Maves lab from 2012-2015 at Seattle Children’s Hospital developing a zebrafish model of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). This model was used for high throughput drug screening, and subsequently, for elucidating the mechanisms behind identified drugs. During this time he was also part of projects characterizing the causal gene of Acromelic Frontonasal Dysostosis (AFND) in collaboration with Dr. Michael Cunningham, and evaluating the role of private binding site recognition in steering lineage specifications for master regulators of myogenesis and neurogenesis in collaboration with Dr. Stephen Tapscott at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He joined the Physician Scientist Program at Tulane University School of Medicine in 2015, earning his MD and PhD in immunology and cell-based immunotherapy in 2022. His graduate work was in the laboratory of Dr. Stephen Braun at the Tulane National Primate Research Center and involved the generation of genetically modified T cells targeted to HIV envelope protein utilizing a CAR T cell approach. In a reversal of the critical step in the HIV viral lifecycle whereby virus targets CD4+host cells using its Env glycoprotein, their genetic modifications featured a CD4 directed CAR, effectively steering host immune responses to target and kill Env expressing infected cells. Their CAR constructs featured two novel aspects: bicistronic inclusion of an maC46 domain to prevent viral infection of transduced T cells and a starting population for transduction of CMV- specific T cells aimed to impart in vivo persistence based on the long-lasting effector memory properties observed in CMV immune responses. They hypothesized that continuous stimulation of CD4-CAR T cells through their rhCMV-specific TCR would maintain activated T effector memory CTL capable of targeting HIV infected cells. The constructs were tested in a non-human primate model, the rhesus macaque, to show both clinical relevance and safety. In 2022 he joined the Yale Physician Scientist Training Program (PSTP), completing his Internal Medicine Residency in 2024, and currently joining the section of Rheumatology to complete his fellowship. He aims to build off his prior experience with genetic engineering, immunology, and cell-based immunotherapy to explore new therapeutic options for those suffering from rheumatologic conditions.

Sukrit Narula is an internal medicine resident at Yale New Haven Health. He completed his undergraduate training at Stanford University where he graduated with honors. He then obtained his medical degree from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he graduated with a Distinction in Research. Sukrit is part of the ABIM Physician-Scientist Research Pathway wherein he will undergo fellowship training with the Cardiovascular Medicine section. Prior to Yale, his research in cardiovascular disease epidemiology was conducted at the Population Health Research Institute in Canada. He has been an author on multiple peer-reviewed manuscripts, including first author publications in high impact journals like The Lancet and the Journal of The American College of Cardiology.

I completed my MD/PhD at Augusta University (Medical College of Georgia) in type 1 diabetes genetics. My career goal is to be an academic pulmonary and critical care physician. Outside of medicine and research, I enjoy outdoor activities and hanging out with my two- and four-legged family members!

Etienne Leveille is a hematology & oncology fellow in the ABIM Physician-Scientist Research Pathway at the Yale School of Medicine. He completed his medical school at McGill University, where he also studied the genetics of Parkinson’s disease and hereditary spastic paraplegia under the supervision of Dr. Ziv Gan-Or and mechanisms of inhibition of apoptosis in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma with Dr. Nathalie Johnson. While at McGill , Etienne was also the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the McGill Journal of Medicine. Etienne is a member of the Center of Molecular and Cellular Oncology and studies ferroptosis and other novel therapeutic approaches in B-cell malignancies under the mentorship of Dr. Markus Müschen.

I completed my BS in Biological Sciences at the University of Arkansas BS followed by MD and PhD in Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. My specialty interest is in endocrinology with a research interest in Bone and Skeletal biology. My hobbies include cooking, soccer, playing with our 3 dogs.Yale is such an amazing place to work. From your co-residents to fellows to attendings and leadership, everyone has been so genuinely nice and helpful. You never feel alone, and everyone wants you to succeed. When you put that kind of environment together with the great minds and resources that Yale offers, there is so much opportunity for you to become a successful Physician Scientist. Selected articles:MacLeod RS, Cawley KM, Gubrij I, Nookaew I, Onal M, O’Brien CA. Effective CRISPR interference of an endogenous gene via a single transgene in mice. Scientific Reports. 9, 17312 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-53611-6 MacLeod RS, Meyer MB, Xiong J, Cawley KM, Liu Y, Onal M, Benkusky NA, Thostenson JD, Pike JW, O’Brien CA. Deletion of a putative promoter-proximal Tnfsf11 regulatory region in mice does not alter bone mass or Tnfsf11 expression in vivo. PLOS ONE. 16(5): e0250974 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0250974

Phyllis is a cardiology fellow in the ABIM Physician Scientist Training Program. She is completing her post-doctoral research fellowship under Dr. Rohan Khera through the T32 Implementation Science Fellowship. She graduated from Yale College with a B.S. in Physics and then completed her M.D./Ph.D. at Columbia University, where she developed machine learning methods to improve the phenotyping of stroke in the electronic health record and improve the power of genome-wide association studies in the UK Biobank. Most recently, she completed her internal medicine residency at Yale New Haven Health. Her interests include the development of methods to improve precision medicine in cardiology, harmonization of multi-modal and multi-site data, and characterizing the gray areas between clinical trial and real-world patient populations.

Dr. Brandon Lee completed his MD and PhD in Immunology at the University of Chicago. He conducted his research with Dr. Juliane Bubeck Wardenburg and showed that Staphylococcus aureus hemolysin-alpha expression suppressed the formation of T cell memory and cytokine production during skin infection, impeding the development of protective, adaptive immunity to S. aureus infection. His research interests are focused on host-microbe communication and interactions; specifically, how microbes may interpret and adapt to signaling by the host immune response.

Shan Parikh is a clinical fellow in cardiovascular medicine and a member of the Physician-Scientist Research Pathway at Yale School of Medicine. He completed both a medical degree and a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. As a Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt (Department of Pharmacology, Vanderbilt Center for Arrhythmia Research and Therapeutics), Shan utilized human induced pluripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocytes for the investigation of contractile dysfunction and arrhythmogenesis in inherited cardiomyopathies. As a physician-scientist at Yale, Shan is interested in investigating cardiac disease and delivering state of the art care to patients with cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Neima Briggs is a physician–scientist and faculty in the Section of Infectious Diseases at Yale School of Medicine. His research examines immune responses to infections, with the goal of advancing new diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines for parasitic diseases. He leads active international collaborations, including with Baylor College of Medicine/the National Autonomous University of Honduras and the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Dr. Briggs earned his MD and PhD in the Medical Scientist Training Program at UTHealth Houston, where he conducted graduate research with Drs. Peter Hotez and Jagan Sastry. He completed internal medicine residency and infectious diseases fellowship in the Yale Physician-Scientist Training Program, followed by postdoctoral training in the Department of Immunobiology under Dr. Joseph Craft. He is ABIM Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases and holds advanced certification (CTropMed®) in Travel and Tropical Medicine through the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. As a founding member of Yale's Travel and Tropical Medicine Clinic, he provides pre-travel consultation and care for patients with tropical infections. Dr. Briggs has received multiple distinctions for his research and global health work, including recognition as a Fulbright Scholar (Spain), The Wit Family Distinguished Scholar in Inflammation Science, and recipient of the Yale Physician-Scientist Development Award, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund/ASTMH Tropical Medicine Fellowship (Brazil), the Patterson Trust Mentored Research Award, and the ASTMH Benjamin H. Kean Fellowship (Honduras).

Dr. Goheen serves as faculty Instructor in the Section of Infectious Diseases within the Department of Internal Medicine. As a physician scientist, her current research focuses on the mosquito vector’s role in malaria transmission dynamics and drug resistance spread in sub-Saharan Africa with lab work based in the Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases Department in the Yale School of Public. This vector-based malaria work builds on the blood stage malaria pathogenesis expertise she gained in graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she completed her PhD in Microbiology and Immunology examining the cellular level relationship between iron deficiency anemia, iron supplementation, and malaria susceptibility. Throughout her research career, Dr. Goheen has collectively spent several years working throughout sub-Saharan Africa, including her PhD research conducted in The Gambia and her current work focus in Burkina Faso. Within her clinical specialty of Infectious Diseases, she has specific interest in tropical medicine and helped start the Travel and Tropical Medicine Clinic at the Yale Center for Infectious Diseases.

I am an Instructor in the Division of Digestive Diseases. My research is focused on understanding interactions between inherited (genetic) and lived risk factors for hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common form of liver cancer, with the goal of improving medical decision-making for hepatocellular carcinoma screening and treatment. Prior to beginning a career in medicine, I completed a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) with a concentration in Epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health, at which time I was awarded the Dr. Theodore Colton Prize for Excellence in Epidemiology. I then worked in health system program monitoring and evaluation for several international health non-governmental organizations prior to attending medical school at the University of Pennsylvania and then completing Internal Medicine residency and Gastroenterology fellowship at Yale New Haven Hospital.

Evangelos (Evan) K. Oikonomou, M.D., D.Phil. is a cardiologist, physician-scientist, and Assistant Professor in the Section of Cardiovascular Medicine (Internal Medicine) at the Yale School of Medicine. He specializes in the application of computer vision and statistical machine learning to advance precision phenotyping in cardiovascular disease. His research is grounded in developing scalable, cost-effective digital tools that can be integrated into existing care pathways to improve diagnosis, risk stratification, and therapeutic decision-making. He graduated as valedictorian from the University of Athens Medical School and earned his doctorate (D.Phil.) in Medical Sciences from the University of Oxford. He subsequently joined the Physician-Scientist Training Program at Yale, where he completed his internal medicine residency and clinical fellowship in cardiology. His post-doctoral research was supported through an NIH F32 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. He is also the recipient of Young Investigator Awards from the American Heart Association (2021, 2023), American College of Cardiology (2024), European Society of Cardiology (2018, 2019) and the Society for Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT, 2017). His interdisciplinary research spans multiple domains of AI in cardiovascular and cardiometabolic medicine. He has: Developed and translated perivascular adipose tissue imaging biomarkers into clinically actionable tools for vascular inflammation and cardiovascular risk assessment using routine cardiac CT; Designed and validated deep learning algorithms tailored to point-of-care echocardiography for the diagnosis of both common and under-recognized cardiomyopathies; and Led data-driven evaluations of treatment effect heterogeneity across clinical trials, contributing to the design of adaptive, precision-enriched trial frameworks. His work has been published in The Lancet, JAMA, The Lancet Digital Health, European Heart Journal, JACC, Circulation, JAMA Cardiology, and Diabetes Care, among others. Looking ahead, Dr. Oikonomou is focused on leveraging multimodal AI to redefine diagnostic and prognostic frameworks in cardiovascular disease, from subclinical detection to dynamic risk prediction, with an emphasis on real-world implementation and equity in access to advanced diagnostics. A detailed list of Dr. Oikonomou's bibliography can be accessed at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/evangelos.oikonomou.1/bibliography/public/ or https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GgJv1SMAAAAJ&hl=en

Dr. Eric Isaac Elliott obtained his MD and PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in 2018. His research was conducted in the laboratory of Dr. Fayyaz Sutterwala and Dr. Suzanne Cassel on Nucleotide-Binding Leucine Rich Repeat-Containing Receptors (NLR) that form inflammasomes; central to his thesis work was the regulation of NLRP3 inflammasome activation by mitochondria and the novel role for the mitochondrial phospholipid cardiolipin in NLRP3 and caspase-1 recruitment. His research interests remain focused on innate immune mechanisms for sensing pathogens and cell stress, and how activation or dysregulation of these systems relate to infectious disease susceptibility and auto-immune/inflammatory disease processes. Select Publications:Elliott EI, Miller AN, Banoth B, Iyer SS, Stotland A, Weiss JP, Gottlieb RA, Sutterwala FS, Cassel SL. Cutting Edge: Mitochondrial Assembly of the NLRP3 Inflammasome Complex Is Initiated at Priming. J Immunol. 2018 May 1;200(9):3047-3052.Ulland TK, Jain N, Hornick EE, Elliott EI, Clay GM, Sadler JJ, Mills KA, Janowski AM, Volk AP, Wang K, Legge KL, Gakhar L, Bourdi M, Ferguson PJ, Wilson ME, Cassel SL, Sutterwala FS. Nlrp12 mutation causes C57BL/6J strain-specific defect in neutrophil recruitment. Nat Commun. 2016 Oct 25;7:13180.Elliott EI, Sutterwala FS. Monocytes Take Their Own Path to IL-1β. Immunity. 2016 Apr 19;44(4):713-5.Elliott EI, Sutterwala FS. Initiation and perpetuation of NLRP3 inflammasome activation and assembly. Immunol Rev. 2015 May;265(1):35-52.Iyer SS, He Q, Janczy JR, Elliott EI, Zhong Z, Olivier AK, Sadler JJ, Knepper-Adrian V, Han R, Qiao L, Eisenbarth SC, Nauseef WM, Cassel SL, Sutterwala FS. Mitochondrial cardiolipin is required for Nlrp3 inflammasome activation. Immunity. 2013 Aug 22;39(2):311-323.

Dr. Jeremy B. Jacox, MD, PhD, is an Instructor in the Department of Medicine (Medical Oncology) at Yale School of Medicine and a Medical Oncologist at Smilow Cancer Hospital. He earned his bachelor’s degree from MIT before pursuing his MD and PhD at Yale University School of Medicine. Under the mentorship of Dr. Ruslan Medzhitov, Dr. Jacox completed his doctoral studies in immunobiology, focusing on how intracellular circuits based on growth factors regulate macrophage and fibroblast interactions in both homeostasis and melanoma. His work was supported by a Ruth Kirchstein F30 NRSA Fellowship from the National Cancer Institute, and his PhD dissertation work awarded with Distinction and the MD/PhD Prize from Yale. Dr. Jacox completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital through the Physician-Scientist Training Program and continued his specialized training with a fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at Yale Cancer Center. His clinical practice primarily focuses on the treatment of patients with gastrointestinal cancers. During his post-doctoral fellowship, mentored by Dr. Mandar D. Muzumdar, Dr. Jacox investigated the impact of obesity and extreme dietary conditions on the development of pancreatic cancer. He also explored how targeting the tumor microenvironment can enhance anti-tumor immunity in pancreatic cancer. His research efforts have been supported by the ASCO Conquer Cancer Foundation Young Investigator Award, the Yale Cancer Center Advanced Training Program for Physician Scientists (T32), and the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation (KL2). Dr. Jacox's interests include community service and his faith, DIY (home and auto), and being with his family. Since meeting his spouse on the Yale shuttle bus, they have raised a family of five precious children together, his greatest accomplishment.

Dr. David Schoenfeld, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor (Medical Oncology) in the Department of Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine and Yale Cancer Center. At Yale Cancer Center, he is a member of the Skin and Kidney Cancer Program and specializes in the care of patients with melanoma and advanced skin and kidney cancers. He received his medical degree and a Ph.D. in Cellular, Molecular, and Biomedical Studies from Columbia University as part of the Medical Scientist Training Program. He then joined the ABIM Physician-Scientist Training Program at Yale through which he completed Internal Medicine residency and Hematology/Oncology fellowship training, as well as a T32 research fellowship. He is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Medical Oncology. Dr. Schoenfeld’s research aims to gain a better understanding of the tumor immune microenvironment in renal cell carcinoma and melanoma, develop better biomarkers of response and toxicity to immunotherapy, and bring new immunotherapies to patients through preclinical studies and early phase clinical trials. He is a member of the Cancer Immunology Research Program at Yale Cancer Center. He has also been the recipient of a NCI K12 Immuno-Oncology Training Program Award and a Kidney Cancer Research Program Academy of Kidney Cancer Investigators – Early Career Scholar Award from the Department of Defense. Through his bench-to-bedside research efforts, Dr. Schoenfeld hopes to contribute to the development of more effective and safer treatment options for cancer patients, while providing compassionate and comprehensive care.