Award Recipients
Kemar Joseph Brown, MD
Project Title: Using continental ancestry to define the human cardiac transcriptome in health and disease
Mentors: Christine Seidman, MD and Jonathan Seidman, PhD
Kemar Brown is an advanced heart failure cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS). He received his medical degree from the Stony Brook University School of Medicine and completed his residency training at the Mount Sinai Hospital. He completed his general cardiology fellowship and subspecialty training in advanced heart failure and cardiac transplantation at MGH. Brown’s research focuses on using the human cardiac transcriptome to study differences in gene expression in healthy and diseased hearts. He has a particular interest in the intersection of genetic ancestry and cardiovascular disease risk prediction. He has served on multiple committees for the Association of Black Cardiologists as well as the American College of Cardiology Heart Failure and Transplant Leadership Section. His work has received support through the John S. LaDue Memorial Fellowship at HMS, the American College of Cardiology, the Association of Black Cardiologists, Bristol Myers Squibb, the MGH Center for Diversity Physician-Scientist Development Award, the Harold and Janice Cohen Endowed Scholarship in Cardiology, and the MGH Executive Committee on Community Health.
Rebecca Hale, MD, PhD
Project Title: Integrating glycosylation into characterization of immune function in patients with Evans syndrome
Mentors: Sean Stowell, MD, PhD and Janet Chou, MD
Rebecca Hale is a physician scientist and a allergy and immunology attending physician at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH). Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, she earned a BA in history from Yale University and an MD/PhD (immunology) from Emory University. Hale completed a combined residency in pediatrics/medical genetics at Baylor College of Medicine and a fellowship in allergy and immunology at BCH. Her research is focused on the field of glyco-immunology and the basic and translational research that improves the care of pediatric patients with autoimmunity and immune cytopenias.
Jia Luo, MD
Project Title: Development of rational combination therapies for NUT carcinoma
Mentors: Geoffrey I. Shapiro, MD, PhD and Christopher A. French, MD
Jia Luo is a medical oncologist in the Thoracic Oncology Program at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Her research has focused on oncogene-driven lung cancers and developing tools to understand responses to immunotherapy. She has first and co-authored papers in journals such as Cancer Discovery, Annals of Oncology, Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology, Cell Reports, and Clinical Cancer Research. She has received foundation and NIH grants for her research. Luo grew up in Madison, Wisconsin and received her BS from University of Wisconsin, MD from Stanford University School of Medicine, internal medicine residency, including a chief year, at Oregon Health & Science University, and medical oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Siddharth M. Patel, MD, MPH
Project Title: Risk stratification and factor XI inhibition in atrial fibrillation
Mentors: Marc S. Sabatine, MD, MPH, Christian T. Ruff, MD, MPH, and Andrea Bellavia, PhD
Siddharth Patel is an associate physician in the Cardiovascular Division at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and an investigator in the Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) Study Group. He received his medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, an MPH from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and completed clinical training in internal medicine, cardiovascular disease, and critical care at BWH and HMS. His research centers on antithrombotic therapies in atrial fibrillation, acute and chronic heart failure, and critical care cardiology.
Lisa Simon, MD, DMD
Project Title: Early effects of the new medicare dental benefit on the dentist workforce
Mentors: Michael Barnett MD, MS and Margaret Samuels-Kalow, MD, MPhil, MSHP
Lisa Simon is a physician, dentist, and health services researcher. She has been involved in the implementation of medical-dental integration projects in primary care, dental, and inpatient settings and has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles on oral health policy and equity. A proud safety net clinician, she has practiced both medicine and dentistry in federally qualified health centers in the greater Boston area. She is a faculty member in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Samuel J. Vidal, MD, PhD
Project Title: Characterization of novel tuberculosis vaccine antigens
Mentor: Dan H. Barouch, MD, PhD
Samuel Vidal is an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, an infectious diseases physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), and a staff scientist in the Barouch Laboratory at the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research. He received his BA in biochemistry from Haverford College and both his MD and PhD degrees from the Medical Scientist Training Program at Columbia University. He completed both his internship and residency in internal medicine at the New York Presbyterian Hospital Columbia campus. He later completed subspecialty training in infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and BWH, followed by an NIH T32 postdoctoral research fellowship in the Barouch Laboratory. Vidal attends on the inpatient and outpatient infectious diseases services at BWH. In the Barouch Laboratory, he leads a research team that is developing novel antigen and live-attenuated vaccines for tuberculosis.
Romit Bhattacharya, MD
Project Title: Dietary pattern as a causal risk factor for clonal hematopoiesis and inflammatory atherosclerotic disease
Mentors: Pradeep Natarajan, MD, MMSC and Peter Libby, MD
Romit Bhattacharya is a general and preventive cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, associate director of the Cardiac Lifestyle Program, and medical director of the OurHealth Study for cardiometabolic risk in individuals of South Asian ancestry. He studies genetic and lifestyle risk factors for cardiometabolic risk, with a particular focus on acquired somatic variation known as Clonal Hematopoiesis of Indeterminate Potential (CHIP). His work uses large databases, digital health tools, and genetic sequencing data to perform comprehensive cardiometabolic risk profiling and to shed light on the lifestyle determinants of somatic genetic variation. His training includes degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai internal medicine. He completed his residency and cardiology fellowships at MGH.
Ijeoma Julie Eche-Ugwu, PhD, MPH, FNP-BC
Project Title: Identification and facilitation of psychosocial resources through development of African American Childhood Cancer MultiProng Nurse Intervention (ACCOMPANI)
Mentors: Joanne Wolfe, MD, MPH and Angela Feraco, MD, MMSc
Ijeoma Julie Eche-Ugwu is an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and a nurse scientist in the Phyllis F. Cantor Center for Research in Nursing and Patient Care Services at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Eche-Ugwu earned her BSN from Regis College, MSN from the University of Massachusetts Boston, and MPH with a focus on global health from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She completed her PhD in nursing at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where her dissertation research focused on understanding illness uncertainty among parents of children with cancer during early phase treatment. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in 2022, which was jointly sponsored by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her primary research project during her fellowship focused on examining the impact of concrete material hardship on parent distress in the advanced childhood cancer setting. Eche-Ugwu’s research agenda focuses on reducing disparities in pediatric palliative care and enhancing psychosocial outcomes of historically marginalized families of children with cancer through development and testing of culturally congruent nurse-led interventions to support African-American families contending with pediatric cancer.
Nicolette Juliana Rodriguez, MD, MPH
Project Title: The Racial/Ethnic Equity in GENetic Education, Risk Assessment, and TEsting (REGENERATE) 1.0 Trial
Mentors: Sapna Syngal, MD, MPH and Christopher Lathan, MD, MS, MPH
Nicolette Juliana Rodriguez is a general gastroenterologist and clinical investigator who is focused on advancing healthcare equity in access to cancer genetics and prevention among historically marginalized populations within the Division of Gastroenterology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and the Divisions of Cancer Genetics and Prevention and Population Sciences at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). She is also physician lead of the newly developed Centers for Early Detection and Interception GI Clinic at DFCI where she sees patients who have precursor gastrointestinal lesions. Additionally, she is director of underrepresented in medicine (URiM) fellow initiatives within the Department of Medicine at BWH. Rodriguez received her undergraduate degree in community health and Hispanic language, literature, and culture from Brown University. She received her MPH and MD degrees from Brown University, and completed an internal medicine residency at Yale New Haven Hospital, and a gastroenterology, hepatology, and endoscopy fellowship at BWH. She is passionate about advancing healthcare equity in cancer genetics and prevention as well as diversity and inclusion efforts, which has been a focus of her clinical work, clinical research, and education efforts.
Past Awardees:
Isdin Oke, MD, MPH
Project Title: Access to vision screening and pediatric eye care in the U.S.
Mentor: David G. Hunter, MD, PhD