Alumni Scholars

Dr. C. Maxwell Medert is an ophthalmologist, who will serve as a Glaucoma specialist in the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Science at the University of Chicago as an Assistant Professor. He completed his medical degree at Emory University School of Medicine before completing his residency in Ophthalmology at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, Florida. He has dedicated himself to a fellowship in Glaucoma and Advanced Anterior Segment Surgery at Washington University in St. Louis. He is interested in creating educational tools for patients with Glaucoma to help them understand their disease, their care, and the surgical options available to them. He also has an interest in education and hopes to develop the first Glaucoma fellowship at the University of Chicago.

Dr. Jennifer Tseng is a board-certified surgical oncologist and Assistant Professor of Surgery with the University of Chicago Medicine. She earned her medical degree from the University of California, Davis and completed her general surgery residency at Oregon Health and Science University. She received fellowship training in clinical immunotherapy at the National Cancer Institute and complex general surgical oncology at the University of Chicago Medicine. She is a senior fellow with the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics and previously was a theme issue editor for the American Medical Association’s Journal of Ethics. Her research interests include ethical considerations in clinical trials, the use of surrogate decision makers and prophylactic surgery.

Dr. Tseng integrates the latest research in clinical trials in caring for patients with breast cancer, melanoma and sarcoma. She is a prior national resident representative for the Surgery Residency Review Committee of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and is an Associate Program Director for the general surgery residency and complex general surgical oncology fellowship. She is an Education Scholar with the American Society of Clinical Oncology and is pursuing a Masters in Health Professions Education with the University of Illinois at Chicago.

As of 2022, Dr. Tseng is a surgeon with City of Hope Cancer Treatment and Research Center in California.

Dr. Rossi-Foulkes is an experienced general internist and pediatrician with expertise in transition care and medical education. She has extensive experience with student and resident curricular development and evaluation, inter-professional education and collaboration, practice management and quality improvement in primary care training. Since 2006, Dr. Rossi-Foulkes has been the Program Director of the University of Chicago Med-Peds Residency program. Her excellence in quality improvement was recognized in 2007 with the Department of Medicine Excellence Award in Clinical Care and Education. She was inducted into the UCM Academy of Distinguished Medical Educators in 2009. In 2017 Dr. Rossi-Foulkes was awarded the UCM inaugural Program Director of the Year award from the Graduate Medical Education Committee. She was an advisor to the Illinois Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics in developing their training courses for the Illinois Healthcare Transition Project and has also been on the Illinois Department of Public Health Immunization Advisory Committee since 2005. Nationally, Dr. Rossi-Foulkes is on the Transition Care Committee for the Med-Peds Program Director’s Association, and she was elected to serve four years as the national Secretary-Treasurer for that organization. Dr. Rossi-Foulkes has conducted workshops and been invited to lecture on medical education, quality improvement, and transition care for local, regional and national conferences.

As of November 2022, Dr. Rossi-Foulkes is Director of the Primary Care Track at Cedars-Sinai Health System in Los Angeles, CA.

Dr. Hightower is the Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Technology Officer (CDTO) of the University of Chicago Medicine, and the CEO and co-Founder of Equality AI. She is the former Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) and Sr. Director of Health Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the University of Utah Health and former CMIO and Chief Population Health Officer (CPHO) at University of Iowa Healthcare. Her executive leadership experience spans healthcare digital transformation strategy and operations, population health, and diversity, equity, and inclusion, with academic medical centers, clinically integrated networks, and accountable care organizations, and early-stage investor financed healthcare tech.

Dr. Hightower is an expert and a nationally sought speaker in Responsible AI and the intersection of digital technology with health equity, diversity, and inclusion. She strives to ensure that the value from digital transformation of healthcare is equitable across all stakeholders, including our most vulnerable.

In addition to leading digital strategy and operations at UChicago Medicine, she leads Equality AI, an early-stage investor backed healthcare tech startup. Equality AI is on a mission to end algorithmic bias in healthcare. Data scientists are the newest members of the care team. Equality AI empowers digitally enabled care teams to achieve health equity goals through responsible AI and tools to develop algorithms that address bias, fairness, and performance.
Dr. Hightower is a champion for health equity, diversity, and inclusion awareness and initiatives. She developed the Healthcare IT Equity Maturity Model (HITEM) to dismantle structural bias hardwired in healthcare IT and develop an inclusive and equity minded healthcare IT culture. Dr. Hightower was recently recognized by Health Data Management as one of the “Most Powerful Women in Healthcare IT” and “25 leading CMIOs at healthcare organizations.” She was recognized by Becker’s Hospital Review as one of “50 hospital and health system CMIOs to know”.

Dr. Hightower received her Medical Degree, as well as a Master of Public Health, from the University of Rochester School of Medicine, followed by residencies in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego. She also holds an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Dr. Hightower has moved full-time in the CEO role for Equality AI.

Karen Kim is the Sara and Harold Lincoln Thompson Professor of Medicine, Associate Director of the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Director of the Center for Asian Health Equity.

As Vice Provost for Research, Kim works with faculty and deans to support and enhance research funding and manage large-scale research infrastructure such as University Research Administration (URA) and the University of Chicago Consortium for Advanced Science and Engineering (CASE), the Office of Research Safety, Research Computing Center, and Research Development Support.

Dr. Kim previously served as Dean for Faculty Affairs for the Division of the Biological Sciences and is the Associate Director of the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is the founder and director of the University of Chicago Center for Asian Health Equity, the only research center dedicated to the study of Asian health disparities in the Midwest, and a national leader on policies for inclusion of Asian-Americans in research.

With extensive expertise in community-based participatory research (CBPR), dissemination and implementation science, intervention and minority health research, Kim has focused on the rigorous development and evaluation of multi-level strategies to advance health equity supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Cancer Institute Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot Initiative, and the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Minority Health and the National Institutes of Health. Kim’s research has a specific focus on the content domain of colorectal cancer prevention and on the methodological domain of implementation science. Recently, Kim’s research has focused on developing innovative technology-based solutions to address gaps in health care services among federally qualified community health centers.

In addition to her research, Kim is deeply committed to civic engagement and has dedicated significant time to advancing health through service to numerous nonprofit organizations and national boards. Kim has been nationally recognized for her advocacy and policy work and received the International Women’s Leadership Award, the Chicago Foundation for Women Impact Award and the Cancer Prevention Laurel for Increasing Health Equity.

She is a member of the American College of Physicians, American Gastroenterological Association, and the American Medical Association, American Association for Cancer Research and the American Public Health Association. As of 2023, Dr. Kim is the Dean of Penn State College of Medicine.

Dr. Amanda Adeleye is a reproductive endocrinologist and an Assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the section of reproductive endocrinology and infertility. She completed her medical degree at Columbia University. Dr. Adeleye completed a residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia’s New York Presbyterian Hospital. She pursued a fellowship in reproductive endocrinology and infertility at the University of California San Francisco. She is interested in health care disparities in fertility care as well as the reproductive considerations for transgender and non-binary people. Dr. Adeleye also has an interest in patient education and is on the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, Patient Education committee and Society for Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Medical Student and Resident education committee. As of 2024, Dr. Adeleye, joined CCRM Fertility as the Medical Director of the Chicago center.

Vincent A DiMaggio, MS, MD, is a physician who practices in both the inpatient and outpatient settings at the University of Chicago. After completing graduate and medical education at Georgetown Univeristy, he went on to residency at the University of Chicago. Dr. DiMaggio is trained in both internal medicine and pediatrics, sometimes referred to as “Med-Peds.” This practice includes care for patients from newborns to the elderly. His specific clinical interest involves the Transition from pediatric to adult general care of adolescents and young adults with chronic medical conditions of childhood. Academically, Dr. DiMaggio is a dedicated medical educator with ambitions to focus on the doctor-patient relationship. Notably, he completed a Fellowship in Clinical Medical Ethics at the MacLean Center of the University of Chicago in his last year of residency and completed a Chief Residency in Pediatrics in the following year. During residency, he was admitted to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honors Society as a resident educator by the Pritzker School of Medicine. Currently, he remains at the University of Chicago as Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics in the Comprehensive Care Program providing longitudinal care for high risk patients in both primary care and hospital medicine settings.

As of 2022, Dr. DiMaggio had joined the faculty of Brown MED-PEDS.

Ahmeneh Ghavam, MD, MA, attended medical school at the American University of the Caribbean, followed by pediatric residency at the University of Arizona. Following residency, she completed fellowship in pediatric critical care at the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin/Medical College of Wisconsin. Dr. Ghavam subsequently joined the faculty at the University of Chicago where she is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the section of Critical Care Medicine. While in fellowship she developed an academic interest in pediatric bioethics and has completed a Master’s Degree in Bioethics from the Medical College of Wisconsin. Within bioethics, her area of academic focus lies at the intersection of organ donation and death determination, with a special interest in pediatric donation after circulatory death. In addition to her academic work, clinical time spent in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and Pediatric Sedation suite, Dr. Ghavam was also actively involved in medical education serving as the associate program director for the Pediatric Critical Care fellowship program. Dr. Ghavam is now a faculty member at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Kristen Chalmers graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 2017 with a B.A. in Anthropology and a minor in Neuroscience. Following graduation, she spent three years conducting qualitative research on emergency department design at Build Health International and adolescent diabetes care at Seattle Children’s Hospital. She also began volunteering as a rape hotline crisis counselor with the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, where she now works as a staff counselor and shift supervisor.

At Pritzker, Kristen is the co-chair of Physician Advocates for Survivors of Sexual Assault and the Emergency Medicine Interest Group. She is also collaborating with fellow medical students on a project to identify disparities and improve care for survivors of sexual assault in Chicago-area emergency departments with Drs. Keme Cater, Sonia Oyola, and Jeanne Farnan. Under Dr. Julie Chor, she is also working on a qualitative research project aiming to develop trauma-informed abortion care principles for survivors of sexual assault, interpersonal violence, and adverse childhood experiences.

Reem Hamoda graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2016 with a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology and Community Health Assessment; she continued her studies at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, where she received a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology in 2018. Reem is passionate about improving access to and reducing racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in healthcare for chronic disease patients. Her previous volunteering work includes management of a free clinic social services program in Pittsburgh and designing and implementing a quality improvement initiative aimed to improve interpreter services at an Atlanta refugee clinic. As a graduate student and junior epidemiologist, Reem contributed to numerous research and quality improvement projects related to improving access to transplantation for end-stage renal disease patients.

At Pritzker, Reem served as the referrals coordinator for Washington Park Free Clinic, admissions liaison for the Student National Medical Association (SNMA), and mentor for the HPREP program. Under the mentorship of Dr. Milda Saunders, Reem currently conducts epidemiological research elucidating racial/ethnic and gender-specific disparities in placement on the deceased donor waiting list for renal transplantation.