Current Residents

Akash completed a 7-year combined undergraduate and MD program before starting neurology residency. While in medical school, he was extensively involved in the free healthcare clinic providing services for several hundred under- and uninsured patients. He had several teaching and tutoring roles, and was a member of the student government throughout his medical school career. He has studied neurological causes of respiratory weakness in the ICU setting, and is first author on several papers and presentations. He has performed as a DJ and stand up comedian, and has directed and edited several short films and educational videos.

Med School and Undergrad: Augusta University.

While at Yale before medical school, Emily worked on the REDUCE trail, focusing on the optimal method of blood pressure reduction and maintenance after ICH. She also worked on a study of percutaneous tracheostomy in patients with severe stroke, and a study of biomarkers for epilepsy in post-TBI patients. She has worked as a volunteer for a crisis text line, a member of the curriculum development team in medical school, and on a project for learning functional anatomy through yoga. She enjoys playing with her two Australian Shepherds, Kurt Vonnegut, synth-wave music, skiing, inventing health desserts, spicy food, and yoga.

Undergrad: Brandeis University

Medical School: Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine

Elizabeth’s PhD research focused on innate immunity, with a particular focus on studying neuro-immune interactions in an animal model of multiple sclerosis. She has also studied gene regulation in zebrafish development, resulting in new knowledge about DNA methylation in gut inflammation. She worked as a volunteer in a group that delivers farmed fresh produce to food-insecure community members with chronic illness. She served as a volunteer teacher for a health education course at a local high school, and as co-president of Duke Advocates for MD/PhD Women in Science. She enjoys birdwatching, reading, listening to music, and spending time with friends and family.

Undergrad: Yale University

Medical School: Duke University School of Medicine

Vanessa has studied the historical trend of female participation in cardiology careers in Brazil and evaluated the research basis of neurology teaching in Brazil. She has also studied CT features of cerebrovascular complications of patients with severe COVID-19. She served as coordinator of education in the neurology interest group and founded a program that offered free college preparatory class for low-income teenagers. She enjoys cooking traditional Brazilian dishes, exploring new restaurants, reading, tasting new types of coffee and wine, outdoor activities, running, and strength training.

Medical School: Universidade Federal Fluminense (Brazil)

Mohamed has studied the natural history of the descending thoracic and thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysms and contributed to a study of dried blood samples (DBS) of more than 200 patients with different metabolic and genetic diseases. His activities include working as a presenter and discussant at a global morning report session called Clinical Problem Solvers. He worked as a COVID-19 first responder during the early stages of the pandemic in Saudi Arabia and served as a batch leader for his class in medical school. He was an event organizer for a nonprofit that focuses on improving the mental and psychological status of children with cancer. He enjoys baking for family and friends, etymology, and piano.

Medical School: Alfaisal University College for Medicine

Patrick has worked on several projects to improve understanding of the evolution of drug resistance in tumors by using analytical and computer simulation models. He has also studied objective methods of measuring diet and activity levels, implementing novel strategies to analyze misreporting in dietary and activity questionnaires. He is co-leader of a statistics in medicine club, volunteered as a tour guide and host for his medical school’s admissions committee, and was master of ceremonies for the annual medical school variety show. He enjoys piano, chess, intramural and club sports (especially soccer and basketball), fiction, sailing, and travel.

Undergrad: Oberlin College

Medical School: Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine

James has performed translational research to evaluate the utility of serum biomarkers in primary progressive multiple sclerosis. He has also studied the epigenetic mechanisms of neurobehavior in premature infants and studied the relationship between spatial attention and memory in toddlers. He has served as a facilitator in the cultural determinants of health and disease course and as a volunteer vaccinator for the Duke COVID vaccine clinic. He was the director and writer of the Duke Student-Faculty Show and enjoys musical theater, cake decorating and pastry making, learning about ancient Egypt, and painting with acrylics.

Undergrad: Brown University

Medical School: Duke University School of Medicine

Rachel has collaborated on a study exploring the effects of pain neuroscience education in children with headache. She also assessed staff attitudes and beliefs regarding trauma-informed care in a federally qualified health center. She runs an online shop that sells vintage home décor and furniture and worked as a personal care assistant and behavioral therapist for a nonverbal young man with autism. She was a COVID-19 vaccination clinic volunteer and leader of the public health interest group in medical school. She enjoys vintage shopping, travel, exploring new places, and mixed-media painting.

Undergrad: University of Massachusetts

Medical School: The Robert H. Larner, M.D. College of Medicine, University of Vermont

Kevin's PhD thesis focused on cellular and molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity within interneuron microcircuits involved in reward-related behavior. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship, where he studied synaptic modifications elicited by arousal-promoting monoamines in the nucleus accumbens. His activities include working as a volunteer in the student-run free clinic and mentor for undergraduate and doctoral students during graduate school. He enjoys surfing, powerlifting, snowboarding, longboarding, soccer, and cooking.

Undergrad: Ramapo College

Medical School: Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (MD/PhD)

Jackson has studied stroke severity in patients with concurrent COVID-19 using the NIH national COVID cohort collaborative database. He also contributed to a study assessing frequency, risk factors, management, and outcomes of arterial and venous thromboembolic complications of COVID. His activities include several teaching assistant roles, working as a leader of the student-run journal club, and as a senior clinician in the student-run free clinic. He was also a volunteer for a local community service board that provides mental health and addiction services. He enjoys reading (fiction, memoir, philosophy), acoustic guitar, virtual reality games, and DIY projects (he has built an electric guitar).

Undergrad: University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Medical School: University of Virginia School of Medicine

Ahmed worked on a national multi-center study on the natural history of partially treated aneurysms using flow diversion devices. Prior to internship, he worked with the group of Brian Koo, MD, on several studies on the association between REM Sleep Behavior Disorder and IBD. He also worked with Emily Gilmore, MD, MS, on establishing Yale's repository for traumatic brain injuries on REDCap, with longitudinal follow-up for clinic patients. He has extensive clinical experience in both Egypt and the United States.

MBBCh: Beni Suef University

PGY1: Westchester Medical Center

Yang received a summer fellowship to study the transition readiness of pediatric epilepsy patients and introduce a virtual multidisciplinary transition clinic. She also collaborated on a retrospective study examining the utilization and outcome of ECT among patients with treatment-resistant mood disorders. She was co-leader of a youth engagement program through the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and co-chair of the Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association. She served as a preceptor in the longitudinal clinical skills course, and prior to medical school, she had several roles in business and finance. She speaks six languages, and enjoys modern dance/barre, hikes with friends, fitness games on Switch, ice skating, foreign movies, audiobooks and podcasts, and cultivating houseplants.

Undergrad: Princeton University

Medical School: Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine

EdM: Harvard University

Mohsen has identified the issue of dietary errors experienced by patients at a hospital and developed a QI program to reduce these errors. He also worked on researching and analyzing Medicare Part D and Medicaid spending and prescription trends of anti-seizure medications. He has been SIGN co-president, a peer mentor for junior medical students in the clerkship, and a community educator at Brain Day 2022. He is co-founder of an organization that supplemented classroom medical teaching through pop culture film viewings, and he has held multiple peer educator roles. He enjoys cooking, movies and movie soundtracks, cycling, soccer, and celebrity-read audiobooks.

Undergrad: Wayne State University

Medical School: Wayne State University School of Medicine

Ben completed a scholarly research project that focused on novel neuroplastic therapies for the treatment of depression and how a narrative medicine approach is uniquely suited to helping patients integrating traumatic experiences into their sense of self. He was part of the Literature and Medicine Scholarly Track in medical school. He designed and implemented a nutrition workshop for parents at a school for children with cognitive and developmental challenges, and he has an interest in climate health and medical sustainability.

MD/MS: Georgetown University School of Medicine

Undergraduate: Bucknell University

PGY1: MedStar Washington Hospital Center

Mary has investigated the therapeutic benefit of virtual reality exposure therapy for patients with post-traumatic stress symptoms after hospitalization in the ICU. She also performed a needs assessment to address difficulties associated with cardiac arrest survivorship. She worked with a process innovation team over nine months to design a patient admission process for a hospital-at-home program. She participated in a longitudinal curated curriculum of medical ethics, philosophy, and humanities for M1 and M4 Columbia medical students. She is an artist and potter and has contributed work to the student-run art and literary journal several teaching and mentoring roles while in medical school. She enjoys fitness and the outdoors, the arts, crosswords, and foreign languages.

Undergrad: Yale University

Medical School: Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons

Chara has studied the developmental mechanisms of specification of skin-innervating mechanosensory neurons and researched the role of p53 in motor neuron death in a mouse model of Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). She has also performed neuropsychiatric behavioral studies on patients with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) using cognitive neuroscience assays. She was an organizing committee member for the World Hellenic Biomedical Summer School and an executive board member and communications chair of Harvard Graduate Women in Science and Engineering (HGWISE). She has held several teaching roles. She enjoys baking, flow yoga and learning new languages.

Medical School: University of Ioannina

PhD: Harvard University

Wendy worked on a quality improvement study to optimize referrals for outpatient lumbar puncture (LP) procedures to improve patient experiences and safety while ensuring efficient use of departmental resources. She has also analyzed data by demographic characteristics to determine if a disparity exists in patient awareness of surgical interventions for refractory epilepsy. She has been a member of the Racial Justice and Equity Committee at her medical school and has held several leadership roles in her school’s chapter of the SNMA. She has been a volunteer in the student-run free clinic and a hospital child life volunteer. She enjoys violin (fiddle and classical music), piano (baroque, classical and contemporary pieces), wheel throwing ceramics, watercolor painting and historical dramas.

Undergrad: College of St. Benedict

Medical School: Penn State College of Medicine

Laura has examined associations between brain oxygenation patterns & cognition in multiple domains, as assessed by a neurocognitive test battery. She has also assessed the impact of endovascular therapy in late-presenting stroke patients in the DEFUSE 3 trial on self-reported quality of life measures, including ability to participate in social roles & activities, cognitive function and depression. She is a student member of the Buddhist Community at Stanford, a peer mentor within the Stanford Medicine Student Wellness Committee, and co-leader of SIGN. She was the neurology clinic co-coordinator at the student-run free clinic. She enjoys languages (Chinese, Spanish, German, Russian), several different approaches to meditation and mindfulness, book clubs, tennis, volleyball and genealogy.

Undergrad: Harvard University

Medical School: Stanford School of Medicine

Sebastian has been in a research fellowship at the University of Iowa since 2021 and has directed multiple projects about the 3D analysis of intracranial aneurysms and atherosclerotic plaques utilizing 7 Tesla Vessel Wall Imaging.

He has also led various multi-center studies studying intracranial dural arteriovenous fistulas in collaboration with the CONDOR consortium. His work has been presented at ISC (International Stroke Conference) and SVIN (Society of Vascular and Interventional Neurology).Through his research he produced an artwork that was featured as the cover of the Stroke: Vascular and interventional neurology journal from the AHA. He also coordinated an international clinical observership in Stroke at the University of Iowa obtaining a DEI award.

As a medical student, he organized two fundraising projects to support patients with neurological conditions in a small community near Quito, Ecuador.

He is a big fan of music, specially Luis Alberto Spinetta, reading tales by Jorge Luis Borges, and watching his soccer team win (sometimes).

Undergrad: Universidad San Francisco de Quito

Medical School: Universidad San Francisco de Quito

Nadia has conducted a survey of the community to characterize factors related to COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy among the general public and to gauge the perspectives of healthcare workers on end-of-life care with respect to COVID-19. She also worked on conceptualizing a novel way to explore how specific subsets of neurons activated by pain communicate spatially and temporally to drive pain transmission and pain-dependent behaviors. She was lead volunteer for PROPEL, a non-profit organization that supports leadership development and post-secondary planning for high-risk and low-income middle- and high-school students from Title I schools. She also volunteered with HCOP, a community outreach program designed to provide disadvantaged students with opportunities to learn about careers in healthcare. She enjoys astronomy, amateur astrophotography, coffee, baking, live comedy, and spending time with friends, family, and her cat.

Undergrad: Florida Atlantic University

Medical School: Florida Atlantic University Schmidt College of Medicine

Sam has supported research teams at the University of Zimbabwe with implementation of projects aimed at increasing capacity-building among HIV-positive persons in resource-limited settings. She was also co-lead of her medical school's LGBTQ+ student interest group, treasurer of her school's chapter of SNMA, and worked with a program in Zimbabwe to assist female high-school students interested in STEM disciplines to identify and apply for international educational scholarships. She originally trained as a pharmacist and had been a pharmacy school preceptor before starting medical school. She enjoys playing topgolf, visiting local parks, travel, audiobooks, and watching TV dramas.

Undergrad: Georgia State University

Medical School: Central Michigan University College of Medicine

DPharm: Virginia Commonwealth University

Wayne has collected retrospective studies on the safety and efficacy of tPA in patients with moyamoya disease. He has also utilized natural language processing to extract and manually identify and confirm large MCA strokes through radiological reports and imaging analysis. He has served in multiple peer advising roles, including the teaching clinical skills elective. He has served on the nutrition metabolism and lifestyle committee, the vertical integration nutrition committee and the longitudinal teaching committee. He is co-founder and co-lead of a COVID outreach program for children and student co-leader for an adult immunization program. He enjoys making latte art, from tulips to swans and even horse heads, cooking five-course healthy meals for friends and family, hiking in the redwood forests of northern California, and carving plant and leaf-themed wood utensils from lumber in his backyard.

Undergrad: University of California, Berkeley

Medical School: Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

Ian has worked on testing for concussion, including clinical and salivary markers in order to make concussion diagnosis and treatment more accessible and mobile. He was part of a three-year leadership track within the medical school. He was SIGN co-president, peer mentor through the SNMA, and part of UB Heals, a student-run street medicine program that provides outreach and basic medical care for the unhoused in the local community.

MD: University of Buffalo

Undergrad: Boston University

Kurtis studied traumatic brain injury and dementia within the Framingham Heart Study (FHS), and he investigated anxiety, depression, and CPAP usage in patients with obstructive sleep apnea. He served as a student ambassador for the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center Ambassador program, was in the Parkinson's Partners service-learning group, and has had several teaching roles, including as a tutor for Medical Mandarin course.

MD: Boston University

Undergrad: Tufts University

Jonadab worked on projects that focused on MS cortical lesion formation and repair and clinical outcomes and on imaging biomarkers of cognitive reserve in MS. He also spearheaded a more independent project investigating how cortical curvature changes in healthy aging versus in MS and its impact on disability. He co-founded and voluntarily instructed a medical English language program at his medical school, and worked in a neurocritical care unit after graduation.

MD: Universidade Federal Fluminense

During his independent research elective, Ibrahim used the Nationwide Readmission Database to assess the outcomes and predictors of readmission among patients with TIA, SAH, ICH, and PACNS. He has an interest in global health and was selected to participate in service learning trips in Vietnam and Jordan during medical school. He has been a competitive debater since high school and was a member of the WCM-Q debating society. He was a member of his class' executive committee.

MD: Weill Cornell Medical

Undergrad: Qatar

Claire studied a cell signaling protein (RGS4) by performing various behavioral assays and gene expression analysis to elucidate its role in chronic stress and neuropathic pain. She was also involved in a project studying how ketosis modulates neuron signaling. She was part of an advocacy program involving workshops to increase knowledge and engagement in the legislative process. She served as SIGN VP and as a neurology clerkship TA and has had several other volunteer and outreach roles.

MD: Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University

Undergrad: University of California, Los Angeles

Aaron's thesis investigated the macrophages responding to peripheral nerve injury. Prior to his MSTP training, he studied genetic epilepsy models using Drosophila, focusing on Sodium-Potassium ATPase (NKA) mutants, some of which were based on human epilepsy mutations. He was band director and band member for the SWRU student-run free clinic fundraiser. He also served as a small group facilitator and clinical skills preceptor in medical school.

MD/PhD: Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine

Undergraduate: Michigan

Geffen's MPH thesis focused on the investigation of public restroom access and adult-sized changing tables, an accommodation used to change individuals who need assistance with toileting. She was a peer coordinator for the third-year neurology clerkship and was a founder of a disability-focused interest group and director of allyship for the disabled medical students' association. She has been a premed mentor and provided strategy consulting for an initiative within the Public Health Institute, aiming to make toxin-free plastic alternatives, such as glass bottles, accessible to pregnant individuals.

MD: Emory School of Medicine

MPH: University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health

Undergraduate: University of California, Berkeley

Sarita developed and carried out a masters-level clinical thesis project entitled "Radiologic Characterization of Cortical Lesions in Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy (PML)." She has also studied electrical stimulation techniques to improve outcomes after spinal cord injury. She was leader of her school's SIGN chapter, editor of Stethos: a Medical Humanities Journal, and a member of the Art and Practice of Medicine (APM) Steering Committee.

MD/MS: Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine

Undergraduate: University of Washington

At the University of Pittsburgh, Dengyu led studies on subcortical involvement in speech and language, utilizing intracranial recordings in patients undergoing DBS surgery. He participated in a 15-day Cultural Immersion Program hosted by the University of Ghana with 19 fellow Tsinghua students, aiming to increase the understanding of Ghanaian and African cultures, histories, and societies. He is currently working as a tutor for high school students in biology and English, and as a mentor for students as they prepare for the National College Entrance Examination.

MD: Tsinghua University

Jasmin conducted an honors thesis in which she investigated the use of fMRI to measure the efficacy of cognitive rehabilitation in individuals with acquired brain injuries. She has had several leadership roles, including President of SNMA, VP and clinical director for UConn Immigration Rights Initiative (UIRI), and social media intern for the Women Neurologist Group. She was on the AAN Health Care Equity Work Group, the Physicians for Human Rights Student Advisory Board, and UConn's Student Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity Committee.

MD: University of Connecticut School of Medicine

Undergraduate: Trinity College

Julia performed a large-scale analysis of the causes of coma using the National Inpatient sample, and was a co-author for a review article on the role of speech-language pathology in the neurocritical care unit. She has served as SIGN Co-President and as a counselor at an overnight summer camp for children with cancer, and she is founder and president of Canadians at NYMC Student Support Group. She has a strong interest in medical education and was a neurology education scholar, modeled on the Osler Apprenticeship.

MD: New York Medical College

MSc: McGill University

Undergraduate: McGill University