Students & Trainees

Ryan Bahar is an internal medicine preliminary resident and aspiring clinician-educator. He will pursue advanced specialty training in diagnostic radiology at the University of California San Francisco beginning in July 2025. Ryan proudly descends from Michigan farmers on his mom's side and Iranian migrants on his father's. He grew up in Georgetown, MA, where he was valedictorian of his high school class and went on to study Neuroscience at Brown University. He graduated magna cum laude (highest honors) as the Department of Neuroscience prize recipient in 2018. In between college and medical school, Ryan pursued a Fulbright Scholarship as a cultural ambassador and English teacher in rural Czech Republic. As a medical student at Yale, he was heavily involved with radiology and medical education scholarship, studying applications of artificial intelligence in neuro-oncology under Mariam Aboian, MD, PhD, and engaging in projects aiming to uplift the role of the clinician-educator in academic medicine under Janet Hafler, EdD, and Jeremy Moeller, MD, MSc. His scholarly efforts have culminated in first-author publications in Cancers, Frontiers in Oncology, Medical Education Online, and Neurology: Education. Most recently, advised by Thilan Wijesekera, MD, MHS, he completed his doctoral thesis entitled, "Radiology Education for U.S. Medical Students in 2024: A State-of-the-Art Analysis." Outside of research, Ryan produced and oversaw the Fourth Year Show ("YSM: Yale School of Mystery"), reestablished the Medical Education Interest Group, co-developed a Medical Education elective, and collaborated on the blueprint for the new Medical Education Concentration. He also co-led the Medical Student Council, served as Head Admissions Ambassador, represented medical students through the Radiological Society of Connecticut Resident and Fellow Section, and engaged in various near-peer teaching roles. He helped developed curriculum on caring for transgender and gender diverse patients for the Clerkship precedes. He also served the broader New Haven community co-leading the Anatomy Teaching Program for high school students and volunteering as a patient navigator. In his spare time, he is an avid amateur long-distance runner (having finished the Newport Marathon and REVEL Mt. Charleston Marathon in 2023), downhill skier, and bell collector.

Whitney (she/her/hers) is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department. She is a researcher with the Housing and Health Equity Lab Whitney has worked on multiple projects in the lab, including Project ReSIDe, a mixed-methods, longitudinal R01 investigating the impacts of rental assistance and diabetes, and the COVID Eviction Project, a series of interviews investigating the impacts of rental moratoria during the pandemic. She is committed to understanding how housing can impact mental and physical health equity. Her dissertation aims to identify how housing displacement due to extreme climate events and eviction impacts individual and community health.

Kyle A. Gavulic was born in Flint, MI and raised in the small neighboring town of Goodrich. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in French and in Medicine, Health, and Society with a concentration in health economies and policies from Vanderbilt University. Prior to affiliating with Yale, Kyle served as a Health Policy Services Analyst in the Department of Health Policy in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. In this capacity, he conducted quantitative health services research under the supervision of Dr. Stacie Dusetzina, focusing on high-cost prescription drugs and the Food and Drug Administration’s accelerated approval pathway. Kyle was also a teaching and research assistant to Dr. Melinda Buntin. From July 2020 to May 2022, Kyle also served as Editorial Intern of JAMA Health Forum. Kyle is now a MD-PhD candidate pursuing a PhD in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Yale School of Public Health and a student fellow at the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at the Yale Law School. His research interests include access to health care including high-cost prescription medications, Medicaid policy, LGBTQ health, financial burden of health care spending, non-medical determinants of health, comparative health systems, and diversity of the physician workforce. His research in LGBTQ health disparities with Dr. Gilbert Gonzales and in U.S. prescription drug policy with Dr. Stacie Dusetzina has led to publications in the American Journal of Public Health, JAMA Internal Medicine, JAMA Health Forum, Journal of Adolescent Health, and Medical Care Research and Review. Kyle also has interest in medical education with a special focus on equity. Since July 2022, he has led a working group to implement new clinical skills curriculum on caring for transgender and gender diverse patients at Yale School of Medicine. He is Co-Chair of the Curriculum Working Group on the Dean's Advisory Council on LGBTQI+ Affairs. He previously served as co-leader of Yale School of Medicine's Chapter of the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) and has been a mentor to students applying to MD/PhD programs via the Program to Advance Training in Health & Sciences (PATHS).

Richard Gomez, MD, is originally from Dallas, Texas, and has lived in various places. Shortly after graduating from high school, he moved to the Bay Area to complete his bachelor's degree in biology at Stanford University. He then spent six years in Los Angeles, where he worked in different fields, including a health technical startup in Santa Monica, and clinical research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Recognizing his passion for medicine, he left sunny California to complete his medical education at Loyola University Chicago, Stritch School of Medicine. After graduation, he moved to New York City to do his general adult psychiatry residency training at New York Medical College, Metropolitan hospital, one of the community hospitals in Manhattan. Additionally, he also completed an American Psychiatric Association (APA) Child & Adolescent academic fellowship during residency. He has enjoyed the opportunity to meet and build relationships with other amazing professionals, who are passionate about child mental health. He is ecstatic to be joining the Yale Child Study Center, and in his free time, he enjoys sleeping, eating New Haven pizza, and exercising (sometimes).

Kenneth is an MD-PhD student pursuing PhD training in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Disease advised by Ted Cohen. His work uses spatial and decision-analytic methods to improve the control and care of childhood tuberculosis. His scientific interests are in using modeling to extend clinical and epidemiological research to address critical problems in public health. His career aspiration is to be a physician-scientist who advocates for children, families, and communities, with a particular focus on improving access to evidence-based healthcare.

Tyler D. Harvey is a MD/PhD candidate at the Yale School of Medicine. Previously, Tyler was a Thomas J. Watson fellow where they completed an international fellowship across six diverse low-income countries titled, "Embodied Poverty: Experiences and Voices of the Poor, Sick, and Surviving." As a graduate student in public health, Tyler served as the Executive Director of HAVEN Free Clinic, a student-run primary health care clinic that partners with Yale to provide services to the New Haven community free of charge. Most recently, Tyler was the Center Administrator at the SEICHE Center for Health and Justice, an academic center focused on addressing the health harms of mass incarceration. At Yale, Tyler is a student leader of the US Health Justice elective and a student advisor to the Health Equity Thread within the Yale School of Medicine curriculum. Tyler is also currently a research fellow with the Yale LGBTQ+ Mental Health Initiative and the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at the Yale Law School. Between 2023 - 2024, they served as a representative on the Presidential Search Student Advisory Council for Yale's next President. Tyler sees medicine and science as tools to liberate and uplift the most marginalized communities. Specifically, their research examine structural determinants of health and evaluates clinical and public health interventions aimed at eliminating health inequities for LGBTQ+ populations. This work has been published in leading medical and public health journals, such as JAMA Network Open, LGBT Health, and Social Science and Medicine and has been used alongside work with local and international agencies, including the NYC Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice and World Health Organization. Tyler was previously a Public Voices Fellow with TheOpEdProject in partnership with AcademyHealth, publishing numerous opinion pieces on health equity in top media outlets, including The Hill and Newsweek. Originally from the rural South, Tyler is a first-generation college graduate and holds a BA in Urban Studies from Rhodes College and MPH from the Yale School of Public Health.

Dr Irshad’s interest in infectious diseases first developed during their time volunteering at a local LGBTQ+ affirming sexual healthcare center in Lahore, Pakistan. There, while providing queer men and trans women, khwaja sira, healthcare around STIs and witnessing the roll out of PrEP for HIV infection among a deeply minoritized community, they felt most at home. After completing their medical education at King Edward Medical University in Lahore, Pakistan, Dr Irshad pursued residency training in primary care and social internal medicine at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine - one of the oldest programs in social medicine in the country training physicians in providing social justice focused healthcare in Bronx, NY. Dr Irshad is interested in exploring the intersection of social medicine and infectious diseases and how it drives important healthcare outcomes in minoritized patient groups. They write about intersectionality, the power of visibility and vulnerability in academic medicine. Their work has appeared in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Open Forum Infectious Diseases and Journal of General Internal Medicine. Outside of work, they can be found making leisurely trips to Zabar’s, enjoying a book at Christopher Street Pier or exploring kink-positive queer spaces.