Alumni Scholars

Nzuekoh Nchinda graduated from Harvard University in 2014 with an AB in Chemistry and a secondary field in Global Health and Health Policy. During college, Nzuekoh served as the National Region II Vice-President of HOSA-Future Health Professionals. Prior to medical school, Nzuekoh performed translational HIV immunology research at the Ragon Institute and served as a medical scribe at Cambridge Health Alliance. She was also a Crisis Services volunteer for Samaritans, Inc.

As a medical student, Nzuekoh is a co-director of Maria Shelter Free Clinic. She is a co-founder and co-leader of Docs and Debates, which hosts documentary viewings and peer-to-peer dialogue on important social issues. She taught third-grade students through South Side Science Scholars and participated in the JOURNEES service-learning trips to rural Mississippi and South Dakota. Under the mentorship of Dr. Jennifer Moriatis Wolf, Nzuekoh is conducting research on tendinopathy risk factors and treatment decision-making in orthopedic care.

Dr. Nchinda is a Surgery Resident at the University of Washington.

Robert Nolan graduated from the United States Naval Academy with a BS in Chemistry. As a medical student, Bobby has served as a curriculum coordinator for the South Side Science Scholars program, where he helped foster interest in the basic sciences within the Chicago Public School system.

Bobby also served as a co-coordinator of the Washington Park Free clinic, where he was able to incorporate developmental screenings and a program with Reach Out and Read into clinic flow. A Bucksbaum grant helped to support his research this summer, which assessed communication and empathy techniques with patients during conscious procedures.

With the honor and opportunity that this scholarship entails, he hopes to continue to pursue this research while also delving into topics of pre-operative transparency. He also hopes to continue to strengthen Washington Park’s outreach and education programs, as well as to extend support to programs treating PTS within the south side of Chicago.

Dr. Zeytinoglu’s clinical practice emphasizes management and prevention of endocrine disorders, including diabetes, osteoporosis, and obesity, in older adults.

Individuals’ risk of acquiring these conditions rises substantially with aging, and older adults represent the largest demographic with these diseases. Unlike many younger adults, as individuals age and acquire different medical conditions, their health status often begins to look very different from that of their age-matched peers.

Despite this, there is limited evidence to guide health-care providers and patients in how to optimize care for metabolic diseases in geriatric patients with heterogeneous health conditions — a group which has frequently been excluded from randomized clinical trials. Dr. Zeytinoglu’s research interests are focused on helping to improve this gap and studying methods and treatments for optimizing management of chronic metabolic conditions such as diabetes and osteoporosis in older adults. Dr. Zeytinoglu is now the Executive Medical Director at Eli Lilly and Company.

Dr. Alisa McQueen received her MD from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and completed her residency at the Boston Combined Residency in Pediatrics and fellowship in Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. In 2008, Dr. McQueen joined the UofC faculty and is currently an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and an Attending physician in Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Comer Children’s Hospital. As the Program Director for the newly established fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine, she focuses on graduate medical education and is particularly interested in the use of simulation to help train residents and fellows in pediatric resuscitation, difficult conversations in the emergency department, and facilitating family presence during pediatric procedures and resuscitation. Dr. McQueen is a Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians. Dr. McQueen is currently on the faculty at Cook County Hospital.

Dr. Agnieszka Ardelt is trained in Neurology with sub-specializations in Vascular Neurology and Neurocritical Care. She cares for critically ill patients with brain and spinal cord injuries and participates in clinical trials involving this patient population. In May 2014, Dr. Ardelt became the Director of the Neurosciences Intensive Care Unit and Co-Director of the Comprehensive Stroke Center at the University of Chicago. Her work and research recognize the need to develop comprehensive multidisciplinary and longitudinal approaches to the care of patients. Dr. Ardelt is currently enrolled in a health care MBA program. Dr. Ardelt is committed to educating patient care-providers and is interested in real-time problem solving and communication in order to improve patient outcomes. She hopes to develop a system-wide, high-quality, longitudinal (pre-hospital to post-acute care) multidisciplinary delivery of care to patients with acute catastrophic neurologic conditions.

Dr. Ardelt is now a physician at MetroHealth in Cleveland, OH.

Dr. Melanie Brown is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics with a focus on Critical Care, Palliative Care, Integrative Medicine and Clinical Medical Ethics. She is the medial director of the Comer Pediatric Comfort Team that has a primary mission of improving the quality of life of children with complex medical conditions. Dr. Brown’s research interests include a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute funded project, which examines ways to improve communication in the PICU for patients facing life-changing decisions. Dr. Brown is active in medical education and has leadership roles in the Pediatric Residency Program, the medical school, and the South Side community. She is a former Associate Program Director for the pediatric residency program, and currently is Chair of the parallel admissions committee at the Pritzker School of Medicine as well as Chair of the BSD Office of Diversity and Inclusion’s Trainee Committee. Dr. Brown is helping to develop and evaluate novel international curricula in Integrative Medicine.

Dr. Brown is now a physician at Children’s Hospital of Minneapolis in Minneapolis, MN.

Dr. Neethi Pinto received her Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy from Stanford University. She completed the Jane Addams fellowship in Philanthropy and directed an enrichment program for at risk youth before returning to Stanford for medical school. In 2001, she came to The University of Chicago where she completed a pediatric residency, chief residency, critical care fellowship and a Masters of Science in Health Studies and then joined the faculty. Dr. Pinto cares for patients in the pediatric ICU and on the Pediatric Sedation Service. She serves as a resident faculty advisor and directs a monthly journal club. She has established an evidence based medicine curriculum for pediatrics. She leads a cohort of undergraduate students in the Bucksbaum Institute Clinical Excellence Scholars track. Dr. Pinto’s research interests focus on the long-term outcomes of children who survive critical illness.

Dr. Pinto was appointed as a Senior Faculty Scholar in 2018.

In 2019, Dr. Pinto joined the faculty at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania.

Dr. Susan Ksiazek is a comprehensive ophthalmologist who interests are broad-based. A graduate of Rush Medical College in Chicago, she completed first a neurology residency at the University of Michigan, followed by a neuro-ophthalmology fellowship at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia. She then went onto her ophthalmology residency at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. She is currently board certified in Neurology as well as Ophthalmology. She has experience with a running the Veteran’s Eye Clinic in Indianapolis before coming to Chicago. She continues seeing patients with a wide variety of problems including cataracts, glaucoma, eyelid problems, as well as neuro-ophthalmic disease. Her interests include education and in particular surgical education, specifically wetlab curriculum development. She is a devote educator and care giver. She won an award, Make a Difference in delivery of surgical care in 2015.

Mark Chee graduated from Duke University with a B.S. in Chemistry and minors in Biology and Global Health. Mark is the Patient Satisfaction and Quality Improvement Co-Chair at the Bridgeport Free Clinic, a student-run clinic that serves an Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community on the South Side of Chicago. He also served as the Asian Pacific American Medical Student Association’s National Conference Co-Chair, helping to plan the 2016. Mark has worked on health policy and medical education issues as Pritzker’s representative in both the Illinois State Medical Society and Chicago Medical Society Medical Student Sections as well as the Association of American Medical Colleges Organization of Student Representatives.

Under the mentorship of Dr. Vineet Arora, Mark is conducting research about the barriers and facilitators of generic prescribing among providers and how effective messaging about generics can promote generic prescribing.

Dr. Chee is an Internal Medicine Resident at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA.

Laura Glick graduated from Tufts University with a B.A. in Psychology and Community Health. At Tufts, Laura was honored with the prestigious Presidential Award for Citizenship and Public Service. Laura conducted clinical and translational research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Under the mentorship of Dr. David Rubin, a Bucksbaum Institute Master Clinician, Laura has conducted research on Crohn’s disease, earning the Joseph B. Kirsner Research Award for Excellence in the Pritzker Summer Research Forum. Additionally, she is working with Dr. Vineet Arora to improve verbal handoffs in the hospital setting. As a medical student, Laura serves as the co-director of the Washington Park Pediatric Free Clinic, an executive board member of the Health Professions Recruitment and Exposure Program, a leadership council member of Peer Health Exchange, and as a member of the Adolescent Substance Abuse Program.

Dr. Glick is a Hospital Resident at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, CT.