Students

Dr. Blackburn is an Investigative Medicine Program student who matriculated into the program 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.

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.

Amanda Joy Calhoun, MD, MPH is Chief Resident of the Yale Albert J. Solnit Integrated Adult/Child Psychiatry program. She received her BA in Spanish from Yale University and her MD and MPH from Saint Louis University. Amanda J. Calhoun 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 and has been funded by the Yale Child Study Center Pilot Research Award and is the recipient of prestigious National Institute of Health Loan Repayment Program award. Dr. Calhoun also specializes in the effects of medical anti-Black racism. She writes for the general press and has published over 20 op-eds in the past 2 years, including, but not limited to, Boston Globe, TIME magazine, Washington Post, and HuffPost. She has been interviewed on countless radio shows and TV platforms, including CBS News, PBS Newshour, and MSNBC, discussing how racism affects the health of Black Americans and most importantly, what we can do about it.

Natalia Festa, MD, is a physician trained in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Geriatrics at Yale. She is a doctoral candidate in the Yale Investigative Medicine Program, and fellow within the Yale Program on Aging and National Clinician Scholars Program. 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. Evaluating opportunities to prolong functional independence for older adults.

Dr. Kurbatov is an Investigative Medicine Program student who matriculated into the program in 2019. He completed his undergraduate education and his MD degree at SUNY Downstate Medical Center. He is a resident physician in the Department of Surgery, Section of General Surgery, Trauma and Surgical Critical Care. He is performing his PhD studies on novel epigenetic mechanisms of chemotherapy resistance in colorectal cancer under the mentorship of Dr. Jun Lu in the Department of Genetics.

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.

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.

Michael Mensah, MD currently completing training in psychiatry at UCLA; Undergrad at Princeton, MPH at Harvard, and medical school at UCSF.Research interests: Identifying, elucidating, and implementing equity in medicine and health for and in partnership with BIPOC, women, LGBTQI, and identity intersections therein.

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.

Nadia joins Yale Radiology after completing her MD with St. George's University and her intern year in Internal Medicine at NYC Health & Hospitals | Elmhurst Hospital Center. She is excited to take full advantage of the clinical training and academic opportunities that Yale Radiology offers, and is doing so through engagement in the ABR Holman Research Pathway and the Investigative Medicine PhD Program though the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. 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. Her medical education and research foci have taken her to the UK, West Indies, Kenya, Italy, USA, and Tanzania, further fueling her passion for studying and practicing medicine in a global context.

I went to medical school with the intention of becoming an oncologist, building on knowledge I developed in biotech industry research making DNA sequencing assays for clinical research applications. That all changed when in medical school, during a research year-off working at the NIH, I discovered the emerging value of using genomics to uncover the neurogenetic mechanisms underlying serious mental illness.During that research year, working in Dr. Karen Faith Berman’s lab at NIMH, I conducted a neuroimaging-genetics study that showed for the first time a gene-dosage effect on regional white matter myelination in a clinical cohort of children with the 7q11.23 genetic Copy Number Variation (CNV). The knowledge, experience and amazing mentorship from Dr.Berman’s lab emboldened my desire to become a physician-scientist within psychiatry. For residency training, I chose Yale for it’s vibrant research community within the Psychiatry department and the Child Study Center, the ample protected research time provided during residency, and the opportunity for PhD or Master’s level training through the Investigative Medicine Program. At the start of my PGY-2 year, I joined the lab of Dr.Tom Fernandez which focuses on the genomics of childhood onset neuropsychiatric disorders like Tourettes, OCD, ADHD and Schizophrenia. I am currently working on a project investigating genome wide differential gene expression in OCD patients, with the goal of identifying gene networks and distinct biological pathways that may underlie OCD pathology. In the future, I look to further develop research skills in genomics and transcriptomics with the long term goal of becoming an independent investigator working in translational psychiatric genomics. Having grown-up in Uganda, and done college in California, I’ve come to love and appreciate the season changes in the North East! I’m still discovering good running trails in the New Haven area and I continue to be amazed by the variety of restaurants with great food in such a small city.

Dr. Tara Thompson-Felix received her undergraduate degree from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ and her MD from Rutgers, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Prior to medical school, she worked as a postgraduate research associate in the Yale Child Study Center focusing on investigating the genetic basis of developmental language and behavioral disorders. After earning her M.D., she trained in adult psychiatry at the Lewis Katz Temple University medical school. At Temple, she served as a chief resident and completed the child and research track. Her research involved collaborations with the Temple OB/GYN and neuroscience department to investigate the epigenetic landscape of fetal neural exosomes associated with in utero exposure to opiates. Based on this work, Dr. Thompson-Felix was selected as an APA research colloquium awardee in 2018. Dr. Thompson-Felix is also a National Neuroscience Curriculum Initiative (NNCI) scholar and continues to work on developing new teaching materials, including a “this stuff is really cool” talk on extracellular vesicles and clinical commentary published in the Journal of Biological Psychiatry (2019). She was awarded the 2020 George Ginsberg Fellowship award from the American Association of Directors of Psychiatry Residency Training (AADPRT), acknowledging her commitment to teaching and education. Dr. Thompson-Felix is interested in improving child development starting from the in-utero experience and maternal health. At this time, she an attending psychiatrist on the consult liaison service and a PhD candidate in the Yale Investigative Medicine Program through the Yale Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Her research focuses on understanding the impact of maternal obesity on child neurodevelopment through the characterization of and fetal neuron derived extracellular vesicles. This work is supported by various awards including the Patterson Mentored Trust Award, NRSA TL1 training program, NIH Loan Repayment Program, and 2022 YCSC trainee pilot award. In her spare time, she enjoys dancing with her kids, spending time with family and cooking cultural dishes.

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.