Faculty and Staff

Originally from Beirut, Lebanon, Dr. Rima Fawaz received her undergraduate and medical degree at the American University of Beirut. She then completed her pediatric residency at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, Gastroenterology fellowship at Montefiore Medical Center and her Pediatric Transplant Hepatology fellowship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Once she completed her training, Dr. Fawaz moved to Boston to work in the Division of Gastroenterology and Nutrition at Mass General Hospital for Children for 3 years before transitioning to Boston Children’s Hospital for 11 years to devote more time to the care of transplant patients. At Boston Children’s Hospital, she was appointed as the Medical Director of Intestinal and Multivisceral Transplant Program, spending much of her time treating complex patients with end stage liver disease and intestinal failure referred both nationally and internationally. Dr. Fawaz enjoys teaching and was part of the core faculty to staff fellow clinics. She was also an invited core faculty of the GI pathophysiology course at Harvard Medical Course for 10 weeks. Her enthusiasm and dedication to teaching has been recognized twice when she was awarded the Gastroenterology Attending of the Year award by the GI fellows at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Fawaz was recruited to Yale School of Medicine and appointed as the Medical Director of Pediatric Hepatology and Liver Transplantation in September 2019. At Yale, Dr. Fawaz is the site investigator for an INH sponsored study about treatment of immune medicated acute liver failure in children and is a co-investigator for the Wilson’s disease registry. She is also the site investigator for multiple studies involving pediatric liver transplant and cholestasis in children.

Dr. Yonathan Fuchs is a board certified pediatric transplant hepatologist at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. The focus of his practice shifted from pediatric gastroenterology to liver disease at the midpoint of his career. “The challenges and rewards of transplant hepatology are so unique. I love being a child advocate as well as a member of a multidisciplinary team that can transform a child’s life at a critical time. The greatest reward is seeing a kid being a kid again so soon after transplant.”   Dr. Fuchs received his medical degree from Tel Aviv University in Israel. He completed his pediatric residency training at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami and fellowship in pediatric gastroenterology at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New York. His interest in liver disease and immunology led him to Stanford University in California where he completed a fellowship in transplant hepatology. Dr. Fuchs is a recipient of the CF Foundation's prestigious Developing Innovative Gastroenterology Specialty Training (DIGEST) award. His current research focuses on better understanding how cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator enhancers modulate CF-related liver disease. He is collaborating with Yale's CF center in order to establish a protocol that leads to early detection of CF liver disease via biomarkers and advanced imaging. Dr. Fuchs is collaborating with Dr. Michael Schilsky at Yale University on the Wilson Disease (WD) Registry. Yale is one of several WD Centers of Excellence that aims to learn more about the spectrum of WD from infancy to adulthood. Board Certifications (ABP) General Pediatrics Pediatric Gastroenterology Pediatric Transplant Hepatology

Emily Christison-Lagay, MD is a pediatric surgeon with broad clinical interests spanning the width pediatric surgery from congenital anomalies in newborns to common childhood surgical conditions (hernias, appendicitis, gallbladder disease) to childhood tumors, trauma, and benign and malignant thyroid disease. She is the surgical director of the Pediatric Thyroid Center at Yale and the Director of Pediatric Trauma. Following completion of her pediatric surgical training, Dr. Christison-Lagay pursued additional training in the medical and surgical management of pediatric solid tumors including thoracic, liver, and renal tumors, as well as neuroblastoma, childhood sarcomas, and pediatric diseases of the thyroid. She is board-certified in surgery and pediatric surgery, Dr. Christison-Lagay completed her medical degree at Harvard Medical School and her general surgical residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital, with research in tumor angiogenesis at Boston Children's Hospital. From there, she completed a pediatric surgical fellowship at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, followed by a "super"-fellowship in pediatric surgical oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She is a member of the Children's Oncology Group and the International Society of Paediatric Surgical Oncology as well the American Thyroid Association Taskforce on Pediatric Thyroid Disease and a founding member of the Child and Adolescent Thyroid Consortium.

Robert A. Cowles, MD is a Professor of Surgery at Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Cowles obtained his undergraduate education at the University of Pennsylvania and his medical degree at Temple University. He completed a residency in general surgery at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, and spent two additional years pursuing laboratory research which was supported by a training grant from the NIH and by a research grant from the American College of Surgeons. Dr. Cowles then obtained his pediatric surgery training at the Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital at Columbia University in New York City.Dr. Cowles practices the full range of pediatric surgery with specific expertise and interest in the care of children with diseases of the gastrointestinal tract including the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, colon, liver and biliary tree. He currently co-manages patients with short gut syndrome and intestinal failure as part of a multidisciplinary team.He has been a Program Director of Pediatric Surgery Fellowships both in New York and now at Yale University with an interest in competency in surgical education.Dr. Cowles directs a research laboratory focused on the neural control of intestinal adaptation and neural processes involved in recovery from intestinal injury.Meet Dr. Robert Cowles.

Raffaella Morotti graduated from the University of Milan . She completed her residency in anatomic pathology at Yale-New Haven Hospital, followed by a fellowship in pediatric pathology at New York University. She is board-certified in both anatomic and pediatric pathology. She join the pathology faculty at Yale in 2011 and is the Director of Pediatric Pathology and the Associate Director of the Pathology Autopsy Service.

My clinical interests include caring for pediatric patients with bleeding and clotting disorders as well as those with hematologic malignancies (blood cancers). I also have a special interest in pediatric palliative care.

Dr. Schlachter is an Assistant Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at the Yale School of Medicine.Dr. Schlachter's research interests include: Liver Cancer and diseases involving the liver.Dr. Schlachter completed his surgical intern year at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and his Radiology Residency from the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. After finishing his Interventional Radiology fellowship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 2012, he was hired as an Attending where he focused on treating a wide range of vascular diseases including liver cancer. Dr. Schlachter is committed to working together to determine the most effective treatments for his patients.

Inci Yildirim, MD, PhD, is a pediatric infectious disease specialist and a vaccinologist whose clinical work and research focus on infections and vaccine induced immune response in children with hematopoietic stem cell or organ transplantation and sickle cell disease. Dr. Yildirim is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Global Health in the Section of Infectious Diseases and Global Health and an Associate Professor of Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at Yale School of Public Health (YSPH). She is also an affiliated faculty at Yale Institute of Global Health and Yale Center for Infection and Immunity. She serves as the Medical Director of Transplant Infectious Diseases at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. Dr. Yildirim is the founding Director of Yale Pediatric Vaccine Trials Program. She teaches EMD546 Vaccines and Vaccine Preventable Diseases course at YSPH.