Associate Junior Faculty Scholars

Paramita Das, MD, MS is a neurosurgeon who specializes in skull base and trauma neurosurgery. She completed her residency at the University of Minnesota and her skull base training at Cleveland Clinic. As the Director of Surgical Neurotrauma she is an integral part of the team caring for traumatic brain injury patients at the University of Chicago. Her academic work is related to outcomes after traumatic brain injury. She has an interest in biomarkers in traumatic brain injury. She is also involved in resident and medical student education serving as faculty advisor for the medical student interest group.

Dr. Issa is an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology, specializing in adult epilepsy. He received his doctoral degrees at the University of Texas – Southwestern, completing a research fellowship at UCSF and his neurology residency and clinical neurophysiology fellowship at the University of Chicago.

His teaching focus is on preclinical neurology education, including neuroanatomy and neural systems, and he directs the medical neurobiology course in the Pritzker School of Medicine. With a background in neuroimaging and cortical physiology, his research centers around developing non-invasive techniques for the early diagnosis of central nervous system disorders like temporal lobe epilepsy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Dr. Shilpa Iyer is an Assistant Professor of Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery (Urogynecology) in the department of Obstetrics & Gynecology. She first completed a joint degree in medicine and public health with a focus on epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She then completed her residency in Obstetrics & Gynecology at the combined program at Massachusetts General Hospital/ Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. She then returned to Chicago to complete a fellowship in FPMRS at the University of Chicago before joining the faculty in July 2017. Her clinical focus is pelvic organ prolapse, overactive bladder, stress incontinence, bladder pain, fistulas, and other complex pelvic floor disorders. She often has medical students, residents, and fellows in her clinic and operating room and enjoys clinical and surgical teaching. Her research interests include the pathophysiology and treatment of overactive bladder and bladder pain as well as long term clinical outcome measures. She has presented at national and international meetings, published in urogynecology journals, and is most proud of mentoring trainees in their research endeavors.

Dr. Nicole Leong is an Assistant Professor in the Section of General Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Chicago. After attending Stanford University for her undergraduate degree, Dr. Leong completed medical school at Northwestern University and residency in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Chicago. Immediately after residency, she joined the faculty at the University of Chicago where she cares for women through all stages of their reproductive health from adolescence to menopause. She has a special interest in female pelvic pain and is currently developing a comprehensive program of clinical care for women with this common but undertreated condition.

In addition, Dr. Leong is also dedicated to resident education, serving as director of the obstetrics and gynecology intern seminar series. In this role, she plans the curriculum, provides learning opportunities, and serves as a mentor for first-year residents in obstetrics and gynecology. She was awarded the Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Resident Teaching in 2015 and again in 2018.

Elizabeth A Murphy, MD, SFHM, completed her medical school and residency at the University of Michigan and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Section of Hospital Medicine at the University of Chicago. She serves as Director of Clinical Service Development for the section and her main responsibility is to develop and mentor multiple clinical service leaders. She broadly champions professional and leadership development, job satisfaction and retention within the section. She collaborates closely with the QI Director to embed QI priorities into clinical services and service leader responsibilities. Elizabeth is Director of Hiring for the section and partners with section leadership to recruit, hire, orient and onboard new hospitalists. Elizabeth co-created and runs the Passport to Clinical Teaching with the section’s Medical Education Director—a program designed to develop excellent clinical teachers and support developing clinician educators. She is a member of the SHM Academic Hospitalist Committee, the SGIM Academic Hospitalist Commission and the SGIM Women and Medicine Commission.

Michele Nassin, MD, MS, is an Assistant Professor in Pediatrics in the Section of Pediatric Hematology Oncology and the Clinical Director of the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant Program. Her academic and clinical work focuses on curative strategies in treatment of sickle cell disease and understanding immune reconstitution post stem cell transplant. She has worked closely with mentors to develop a novel haploidentical stem cell transplant approach for patients with sickle cell disease and that investigator initiated study is currently underway. A dedicated educator, Dr. Nassin also serves as the associate program director for the pediatric hematology/oncology fellowship. Today, Dr. Nassin is an attending physician at The University of Utah Health.

Dr. Rochelle Naylor is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics with a secondary appointment in Medicine, Section of Adult and Pediatric Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism. Dr. Naylor completed medical school training at Mayo Clinic in 2005. She has been at the University of Chicago since that time, completing pediatrics residency training, a chief resident year and pediatric endocrine fellowship prior to joining the faculty at the University of Chicago in 2012.

Dr. Naylor is a co-Investigator of the US National Monogenic Diabetes Registry housed at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on maturity-onset diabetes of the young (MODY) – addressing delays in accurate genetic diagnosis and appropriate management of various subtypes, and racial and ethnic inequities in who benefits from diabetes precision medicine. She has an interest in other forms of atypical diabetes, and is an investigator in the Rare and Atypical Diabetes Network (RADIANT). She has mentored all levels of trainees, from undergraduate to post-graduate, in diabetes research.

Dr. Naylor also serves as an Associate Program Director for the Pediatrics Residency Program. She is actively involved in resident and fellow education and training. She additionally serves as an advisor to medical students, resident and fellows.

Sonia Oyola, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and currently serves as the Medical Education Director, Clerkship Director and co-director of the Culinary Medicine Programs for the University of Chicago’s Department of Family Medicine. Dr. Oyola earned her MD from the University of Illinois, College of Medicine at Chicago in 1997 before pursuing her residency in Family Medicine at John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County. She is an Andrew Weil Integrative Medicine Fellow and has Homeopathy Certification through the Center for Education and Development of Homeopathy. Her clinical practice is at Heartland Health Centers where she provides Primary Integrative Family Medicine and Integrative Medicine Consults. For her work to promote, trauma-informed care, social justice and challenge inequities in health and health care, Dr. Oyola was recently selected as an awardee from the Health & Medicine Policy Research Group, and has been identified by Pritzker students to receive the Arnold P. Gold Foundation’s Leonard Tow Award, a nomination for the AAMC Humanism in Medicine Award and most recently, been inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha (AΩA) Honor Medical Society AΩA Society. Additionally, Dr. Oyola is the Founder and President of the Chicago domestic violence non-profit, Be Alright, since 2009.

Dr. Patel is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Associate Program Director of the Pulmonary/Critical Care Fellowship Program. As an academic clinical trialist, she specializes in complex multidisciplinary interventions aimed at improving outcomes in patients with respiratory failure. Her overall hypothesis is that many ICU complications are perpetuated by current standard care practices and that choosing mobility over immobility, mental animation over sedation, and spontaneous versus controlled respiration will improve outcomes. Her research career is built on this “less is more” approach to inform investigational trials that rely on collaborative team building, innovation, and program development. This approach has inspired her investigations of early mobilization in mechanically ventilated patients and helmet ventilation in ARDS, which was recognized as among the top three clinical research achievements of 2016 by the Clinical Research Forum and referenced internationally to guide COVID-19 pandemic response. Her efforts and commitment to medical education has also been recognized in teaching awards from the University of Chicago Internal Medicine Residency.

Tiffany Patton, MD is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Pediatrics, Section of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition. She completed her training in Pediatrics at John H. Stroger, Jr Hospital of Cook County, where she also served as chief resident. Dr. Patton completed her fellowship in Pediatric Gastroenterology at the University of Chicago before joining as faculty.

Her clinical interests include eosinophilic gastrointestinal disease, non-IgE food allergies, abdominal pain, inflammatory bowel disease, constipation, nutritional deficiencies, and fecal microbiota transplantation. Dr. Patton is committed to medical education, serving as the Pediatric Gastroenterology clerkship director for medical students, faculty mentor for pediatric residents, and a member of the scholarship oversight committee for Pediatric Gastroenterology fellows.

Her research interests include eosinophilic gastrointestinal disease, intestinal microbiome, and fecal microbiota transplantation. Specifically, she is focused on early life risk factors contributing to alterations of gut bacterial populations and how this effects development of gastrointestinal diseases. Dr. Patton serves on several national committees focused on promoting patient knowledge and scientific advancement in these fields. She is the author of several book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles.