Junior Faculty Scholars

Nita Karnik Lee, MD, is a board certified gynecologic oncologist specializing in the treatment of women with gynecologic malignancies including ovarian, uterine, cervical, vulvar or vaginal cancers. Her focus is on providing women with these cancers comprehensive and compassionate care including surgical and chemotherapy management. She has an expertise in minimally invasive surgery including robotic surgery for the treatment and staging of gynecologic cancers including endometrial and cervical cancers. She has a special interest in optimizing cancer care for obese women with minimally invasive surgical approaches.

Dr. Lee’s research and clinical interests include a focus on patient education and survivorship issues of obesity and lifestyle interventions for uterine cancers. She is a member of the Gynecologic Oncology Group clinical trials organization and participates in development and implementation of clinical trials and new therapies for ovarian, uterine and cervical cancers.

2013 Pilot Grant Project: Predictors of satisfaction with surgical decision-making in elderly women undergoing gynecologic surgery

2012 Pilot Grant Project: Endometrial Cancer Survivorship in African-American Women

Dr. Yoon is an academic hospitalist and medical educator with research interests in the field of virtue ethics, moral psychology, and the moral and professional formation in medical education. He is currently co-investigator on the Project on the Good Physician, a longitudinal study of medical students funded by the New Science of Virtues Project at the University of Chicago. After completing a Clinical Ethics and Hospitalist Scholars research fellowship at the University of Chicago in 2010, he also completed the MERITS Fellowship in Medical Education devoted to the study of professionalism and moral formation in medical education.

He has recently received grants from the Center of Health Administration Studies at the University of Chicago as well as from the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD) to support his work. Dr. Yoon also has an interest in global health and recently returned from a trip to Pyongyang, DPRK to promote academic collaboration in the areas of international medical education and public health.

Dr. Yoon is now a Bucksbaum Senior Faculty Scholar.

2012 Pilot Grant Project: Operationalizing the Virtues for Good Doctor-Patient Relationships

Alex Langerman is an Assistant Professor of Surgery in the Section of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery and is a specialist in the treatment of head and neck cancer and other diseases of the skull base, throat, and larynx as well as reconstruction of the head and neck.

Alex attended medical school at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine during which time he also served as a fellow of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received his MD with Honors in 2005 and continued at the University of Chicago for his Otolaryngology residency training. He subsequently completed fellowship training in Head and Neck Surgery, Skull Base Surgery, and Microvascular Reconstruction at Vanderbilt University before returning to the University of Chicago as faculty in 2011.

Alex’s research centers on improving the care of head and neck cancer patients. He conducts comparative effectiveness, social science, and translational research on topics including patient decision-making, perioperative management, human tissue specimen workflow, and education in the operating room. As a Bucksbaum Scholar Alex is studying methods to augment the Primary Care Physician-patient relationship in the setting of multidisciplinary referral care for complex diseases. In addition to a busy clinical practice at the University of Chicago Medicine, Alex also participates in yearly humanitarian missions to the Dominican Republic as part of Medical Aid for Children of Latin America and he was recently appointed to the Humanitarian Efforts Committee of the American Academy of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery.

2013 Pilot Grant Project: Dynamic Operational Mapping – Annotation for Patient and Family Education

Dr. Langerman joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.