ThinkResearch Podcast

Isaiah A. Cochran, MD, is a resident physician in family medicine at Halifax Health and immediate past national president and chair of the board of trustees for the American Medical Student Association. Cochran went to undergrad at Waynesburg University in Pennsylvania, and attended medical school at the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine, where he graduated in 2019. Cochran’s interests lie in the politics of medicine. He hopes to use his developing knowledge as a family medicine physician to fight for equity, equality, and justice for individuals in and outside of healthcare, and perhaps one day seek public office.

Alexander P. Lin, PhD, is director of the Center for Clinical Spectroscopy in the department of radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and assistant professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School. He is also an investigator at the Psychiatric Neuroimaging Laboratory at BWH, visiting research associate at the Center of MR Research at the University of Illinois Chicago, and is affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital. His research focuses on translating magnetic resonance spectroscopy to the clinic, with an emphasis on traumatic brain injury.

Osama Rahma, MD, is a principal investigator at the Center for Immuno-Oncology and Gastroenterology (GI) Cancer Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. His research focus is on drug development of combinational immune therapeutics, with the goal of moving immunotherapy to GI cancers and understanding the resistance mechanism to immunotherapy in GI cancers. Rahma received his medical degree from University of Damascus, completed his residency in internal medicine at East Carolina University, and a geriatrics fellowship at University of Hawaii.

Emily Balskus, PhD, is a professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. She is an associate member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, faculty associate of the Microbial Sciences Initiative at Harvard, and member at both the Harvard Digestive Diseases Center, and MIT Center for Microbiome Informatics and Therapeutics. Balskus’ research works to discover, understand, and manipulate microbial metabolism. She received her undergraduate degree from Williams College and her PhD from Harvard University.

Sara Bleich, PhD, is a professor of public health policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the Department of Health Policy and Management. Her research provides evidence to support policy alternatives for obesity prevention and control, particularly among populations at higher risk for obesity. A signature theme throughout her work is an interest in asking simple, meaningful questions about the complex problem of obesity which can fill important gaps in the literature. Bleich is the past recipient of an award for “most outstanding abstract” at the International Conference on Obesity in Sydney, Australia, an award for “best research manuscript” in the journal Obesity, and an award for excellence in public interest communication from the Frank Conference. Bleich was recently appointed as a White House Fellow (2015-2016) where she was a Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the First Lady’s Let’s Move initiative. She holds degrees from Columbia (BA, Psychology) and Harvard (PhD, Health Policy).

Caroline Mitchell, MD, MPH, is a faculty member in the Vincent Center for Reproductive Biology and director of the Vulvovaginal Disorders Program at Massachusetts General Hospital. Funded by NIH and foundation grants, her work focuses on the relationship between the vaginal microbiota, mucosal immune responses, and reproductive health.

Mitchell received her undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University, and her MPH degree and OB/Gyn residency training at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Georg Gerber, MD, PhD, is co-director of the Massachusetts Host-Microbiome Center, assistant professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and associate pathologist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) Center for Advanced Molecular Diagnostics. His research interests involve building novel computational models and high-throughput experimental systems to understand the role of the microbiota in human diseases, and applying these findings to develop new diagnostic tests and therapeutic interventions to improve patient care. He has founded several companies focused on developing and applying 3D graphics technologies to create feature and IMAX® films. Gerber completed a fellowship in infectious disease pathology and molecular microbiology, and a residency in clinical pathology at BWH. He received his MD from HMS, master’s and PhD in computer science from MIT, and a master’s in infectious diseases and BA in pure mathematics from UC Berkeley.

Yonatan Grad, MD, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH), and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). Using a combination of genomics, microbiology, mathematical modeling, and epidemiological tools, his lab investigates how pathogens evolve and spread. In collaboration with hospitals and public health institutions, his projects include studying outbreaks, as well as the biology and epidemiology that underlies the emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance. He earned his MD and PhD at Harvard Medical School, trained in internal medicine at BWH, and in infectious diseases at BWH and Massachusetts General Hospital. He completed his research fellowship at the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at HSPH with Marc Lipsitch.