Students

Current Students

Megan Leila Baker, MD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Clinical Instructor, Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Nephrology
Dr. Baker matriculated into the IMP in 2023. She completed her undergraduate education at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and her MD degree at Wayne State University School of Medicine. Her research interests include kidney tubule injury, lymphatics, and diabetic kidney disease. She is performing her PhD studies on the role of lymphatics in kidney disease under the mentorship of Dr. Lloyd Cantley in the Section of Nephrology.
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Holly Nicole Blackburn, MD
Resident, Department of Surgery, Section of General Surgery, Trauma and Surgical Critical Care
Dr. Blackburn is an Investigative Medicine Program student who matriculated into the IMP in 2019. She completed her undergraduate education at the College of William & Mary and her MD degree at the University of Virginia. She is a resident physician in the Department of Surgery, Section of General Surgery, Trauma and Surgical Critical Care. Her research interests include colorectal cancer, fibrosis, and inflammatory bowel disease. She is performing her PhD studies on intestinal fibrosis under the mentorship of Dr. Richard Flavell in the Department of Immunobiology.
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Prajwal Boddu, MD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Internal Medicine, Sections of Medical Oncology and Hematology
Dr. Boddu is an Investigative Medicine Program student who matriculated into the program in 2020. He completed his undergraduate education at Sri Chaitanya College in Telangana (India) and his MD degree at Osmania Medical College of the NTR University of Health Sciences in Telangana (India), followed by internal medicine residency at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center. He is a postdoctoral fellow in the Section of Medical Oncology. His research interests include RNA biology and splicing, and he is performing his PhD studies on RNA splicing in myeloid disorders under the mentorship of Dr. Manoj Pillai in the Section of Hematology.
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Amanda Calhoun, MD/MPH
2022 Chief Resident, Yale Albert J. Solnit Integrated Adult/Child Psychiatry program
Dr. Calhoun matriculated into the IMP in 2022. Dr. Calhoun received her BA in Spanish from Yale University and her MD and MPH degrees from Saint Louis University. Amanda J. CalhounShe is currently a Viola W. Bernard Social Justice and Health Equity Fellow, a Diversity Equity and Inclusion Emerging Leaders Fellow with American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and an American Medical Association and Satcher Health Leadership Institute Medical Justice in Advocacy Fellow. Dr. Calhoun has authored over 30 publications, 19 of which she is has first-authored, and has presented abstracts and oral presentations in numerous conferences. Her research focuses on the mental health sequelae of anti-Black racism in children.
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Natalia Festa, MD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale Program on Aging and National Clinician Scholars Program
Dr. Festa Matriculated into the IMP 2022. Dr. Festa trained in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and geriatrics at Yale. She received her undergraduate degree from Harvard College. She earned her MD and Masters in Business Administration at Stanford University. Her early career has focused on ascertainment of aging outcomes within administrative claims data. Research interests include the ascertainment of aging outcomes within Medicare claims and evaluating opportunities to prolong functional independence for older adults.
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Irbaz Hameed, MD
Resident, Integrated Cardiothoracic Surgery, Division of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgery, Department of Surgery
Dr. Hameed matriculated into the IMP in 2023. He completed his medical school at Southeast University, China after which he completed two years of clinical fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine. His research centers on cardiac surgical outcomes and the methodology of randomized controlled trials, observational studies, and meta-analyses. His translational research is in neurocardiology where he studies organ recovery after warm ischemia using transcriptomics and spatial multi-omics profiling technologies, with a particular emphasis on the heart-brain axis. He is performing his PhD studies on cerebral neuroprotection under the mentorship of Dr. Nenad Sestan in the Department of Neuroscience.
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Etienne Leveille, MD
Fellow, Hematology and Oncology, ABIM Physician-Scientist Research Pathway at the Yale School of Medicine
Dr. Leveille Matriculated into the IMP in 2024. 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.
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Elise Liu, MD, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology
Dr. Liu is an Investigative Medicine Program student who matriculated into the program in 2018. She completed her undergraduate education at MIT and her MD degree at the Yale School of Medicine. She completed her internal medicine residency at Yale and is a postdoctoral fellow in the Section of Rheumatology, Allergy, and Immunology. Her research interests include the pathogenesis of food allergy. She is performing her PhD studies on both the induction and the role of food-specific IgA in the gut under the mentorship of Dr. Stephanie Eisenbarth in the Departments of Laboratory Medicine and of Immunobiology.
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Benjamin Y. Lu, MD, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Medical Oncology
Dr. Lu is an Investigative Medicine Program student who matriculated into the program in 2020. He completed his undergraduate education at Rice University, his MD degree at NYU School of Medicine, and his internal medicine residency at the Yale. He is a postdoctoral fellow in the Section of Medical Oncology. His research interests include understanding the immune response to brain metastases. He is performing his PhD studies on the single-cell level characterization of T cells in metastatic brain lesions under the mentorship of Dr. David Hafler in the Departments of Neurology and Immunobiology.
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Michael Mensah, MD
Psychiatry Resident, Yale Psychology Department
Dr. Mensah matriculated into the IMP in 2021. Dr. Mensah completed training in psychiatry at UCLA following undergraduate work at Princeton, his MPH at Harvard, and medical school at UCSF. His research interests include identifying, elucidating, and implementing equity in medicine and health for and in partnership with BIPOC, women, LGBTQI, and identity intersections therein.
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Christine Miller, DO
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Pediatrics, Section of Infectious Diseases
Dr. Miller matriculated into the IMP in 2022. Dr. Miller received her undergraduate degree at Bucknell University and her DO degree at Tuoro College of Osteopathic Medicine. She is doing her thesis work in the laboratory of Dr. Akiko Iwasaki in the Department of Immunobiology on the pathogenesis of long Covid.
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Clancy Mullan, MD
Raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, Clancy attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his undergraduate degrees in Chemistry (Biochemistry, Honors and Distinction) and Traditional Mathematics. While there, he worked in the Department of Genetics under Dr. Mark Heise, studying non-coding complementary strand transcription products of alphaviruses and working on validating a methodology of producing sequence independent cDNA libraries from multiple RNA viruses. He then attended the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. While a student, he studied the role of nicotinic signaling in mitochondrial membrane preservation during ischemic preconditioning with Dr. Kaie Ojamaa. He was selected for Alpha Omega Alpha and received the 2018 graduation award from the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. Since joining the Yale Integrated Thoracic Surgery program, he has produced numerous outcomes research publications using institutional, national, and international databases. He continues his basic science training during his research hiatus as a graduate student in the Investigative Medicine Program. In the lab of Dr. Jordan Pober, he is studying endothelial alloreactivity, NF-κB regulation of endothelial cytokine expression, and novel nucleotide-based therapeutics during ex vivo organ perfusion to reduce alloreactivity. He plans to pursue a career in surgical heart failure.
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Amin Nassar, MD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Immunobiology
Dr. Nassar matriculated into the IMP in 2023. He received his medical degree from the American University of Beirut and then pursued a two-year postdoctoral training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he worked under the mentorship of Professors Dr. David Kwiatkowski, Dr. Toni Choueiri, and Dr. Matthew Freedman at Harvard Medical School. He later completed residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Nassar is interested in a career as a physician-scientist with a clinical focus in thoracic oncology. He is currently pursuing his PhD studies in tumor immunology at the Flavell lab in the Department of Immunobiology.
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Kurt S. Schultz, MD
Resident, Department of Surgery
Dr. Schultz matriculated into the Investigative Medicine Program in 2023. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and received his MD at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. His research interests include causal inference, mixed methods, and cost-effectiveness analysis. Dr. Schultz is performing his PhD studies on measuring and addressing preoperative psychosocial frailty under the mentorship of Dr. Ira Leeds in the Division of Colon & Rectal Surgery
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Nadia Solomon, MD, MSc, MA
Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Solomon matriculated into the IMP in 2022. Dr. Solomon completed her MD degree at St. George's University with internship in internal medicine at NYC Health & Hospitals | Elmhurst Hospital Center. She is enrolled in the ABR Holman Research Pathway while a student in the IMP. Her current research focuses on the application of various imaging techniques in the postmortem setting to cause of death investigation. She is also exploring related topics including child abuse imaging and other applications of imaging to forensic settings.
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Anna Sowa, MD
Fellow, Department of Pediatrics, Section of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology
Dr. Sowa joined the IMP program in 2023. She earned her MD degree from the Medical University of Warsaw in Poland. Her research interests focus on the genetics of sickle cell disease, and she is working under the mentorship of Dr. Jeffrey Gruen and Dr. Lakshmanan Krishnamurti.
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Shobana Subramanian, MD, MHS
Fellow, Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Cardiovascular Medicine
Dr. Subramanian joined the IMP program in 2024. She received her bachelor's degree from Duke University and her MD and MHS from the Yale School of Medicine. She completed her internal medicine residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital and is currently a fellow in the section of cardiovascular medicine. She is working on her PhD investigating mitochondrial metabolism in cardiac ischemia-reperfusion injury and heart failure under the joint mentorship of Drs. Elizabeth Jonas and Lawrence Young
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Enock Teefe, MD
Resident, Department of Psychiatry
Dr. Teefe matriculated into the IMP in 2022. Dr. Teefe received his training at UCLA and Rosalind Franklin Chicago Medical School, before coming to Yale for postgraduate clinical training in adult psychiatry. His PhD training is in the lab of Dr. Tom Fernandez, focusing on the genomics of childhood onset neuropsychiatric disorders. Dr. Teefe is investigating genome wide differential gene expression in OCD patients, with the goal of identifying gene networks and distinct biological pathways that may underlie disease endotypes.
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Tara Thompson-Felix, MD
Postdoctoral Fellow, Child Study Center
Dr. Thompson-Felix matriculated into the IMP program in 2021. Dr. Thompson-Felix received her undergraduate degree from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ and her MD from Rutgers, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. After earning her MD, she trained in adult psychiatry at the Lewis Katz Temple University. At Temple, she served as a chief resident and completed the child and research track. Her PhD research focuses on understanding the impact of maternal obesity on child neurodevelopment through the characterization of and fetal neuron derived extracellular vesicles.
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Long H. Tu, MD, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow; Chief Resident, Department of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging, Section of Neuroradiology and Section of Emergency Radiology
Dr. Tu was an Investigative Medicine Program student who matriculated into the program in 2019 and graduated in 2023. He is now an assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine.
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