Medical Student Scholars

Tiffany Xie graduated from Indiana University in 2020 with degrees in English and Biology. Following graduation, she taught English in Changhua, Taiwan on a Fulbright fellowship. She is a writer and a member of the Soupbone Collective, a digital humanities collaborative. As a medical student, Tiffany co-leads the book club and the barbell club. Under the mentorship of Dr. Elizabeth Tung, Tiffany is currently developing an epidemiological research project on housing and health, studying the geographic distribution of affordable housing and health resources.

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.

Diana Li graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2017 with BAs in Biophysics and Writing Seminars. They also received an MFA in Poetry from Rutgers University-Newark in 2019, where they taught English Composition.

At Pritzker, Diana served as co-president for OUTPatient (LGBTQ+ People in Medicine), as well as the Community Outreach Director for both the Bridgeport Free Clinic and the Asian Pacific American Medical Students Association. They currently serve as a class representative for Pritzker’s Identity & Inclusion (i2i) committee. As a second-year medical student, Diana has also coordinated lesson plans and served as a guest facilitator for two modules of the first-year “Health Care Disparities and Advocacy” course: 1) allyship training and 2) LGBTQ+ intersectionality.

Under the mentorship of Dr. Marshall Chin and Dr. Scott Cook, Diana is conducting community health research on improving the healthcare experiences of transgender people of color as part of the Your Voice! Your Health! project.

Romy graduated from the University of Chicago in 2020 with a B.A. in Biological Sciences. Before medical school she conducted translational gastroenterology research with Dr. Vivian Lee and Dr. Micah Prochaska at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she focused on the etiology of inflammatory bowel disease. After starting medical school, she began working with Dr. Tanya Zakrison and her team to develop a curriculum for trauma surgery trainees that addresses the structural racism and inequities that their patients face and teaches them how to be active anti-racism advocates. Romy is the Co-Interpreter Coordinator of Community Health Clinic, a free clinic at Pritzker. This year, she has worked to develop a standardized interpreter curriculum for the students and interpreters at the clinic. She also co-leads the Vascular Surgery Interest Group and is the Co-Mentorship Chair for the Pritzker chapter of LMSA. Romy will be working with Bucksbaum Faculty Scholar, Dr. Anna Volerman this summer. She will focus on evaluating a pilot program that embeds community health workers into elementary schools with the purpose to improve asthma management and outcomes for children.

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.

Maria completed her undergraduate studies Washington University in St. Louis, receiving a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Biology. In college, she developed her passion for working with Latinx communities through her work at Casa de Salud and at Nurses for Newborns. After graduation, María spent a year in Guatemala working with an NGO that promotes health and educational equity for individuals with disabilities. She then embarked her Global Health Corps fellowship at Community Pediatric Programs of Montefiore in the South Bronx, where she worked to facilitate access to medical care and legal services for children and immigrants.

In medical school, Maria was the Chair of the Dean’s Council, serving a liaison between school leadership and the student body. She also served as co-president of the Latinx Medical Student Association. In this role, she supported various COVID-19 relief efforts for Spanish speaking communities in Chicago, and launched an anti-racism reading program for incoming first year medical students. Under the mentorship of Dr. Julie Chor, she is conducting an interview study to understand the experiences of LGBTQ individuals with the first pelvic exam. To honor her service, María was selected as the 2020 Valerie Bowman Jarrett Scholar in Medical Education.

Camron Shirkhodaie graduated with honors from Vanderbilt University in 2019 with a B.S. in Biological Sciences and Medicine, Health and Society and a minor in Chemistry.

At Prtizker, Camron was the co-director of Maria Shelter Free Clinic, where he, along with the rest of free clinic leadership, were able to implement telemedicine to continue seeing patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, Camron was also a part of Reach Out and Read, Students for a National Health Program, and Middle Eastern and North African Student Association.

Under the mentorship of Dr. John Blair, Camron conducted research on outcomes of and risk factors associated with patients with concomitant deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism who receive catheter-directed therapy.

Frazer Tessema graduated from Yale University in 2017 with a BA in History as a premedical student. In college, Frazer researched behavioral psychology at the Yale Decision Neuroscience Lab and translational medicine at the Yale Cardiovascular Research Center.

From 2017-2020, Frazer worked as a research assistant at the Harvard Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL) at Brigham & Women’s Hospital publishing peer-reviewed papers focused on finding solutions to lower prescription drug prices, improving access to pharmaceuticals, and reforming regulatory practice to better patients’ lives. He co-authored 13 papers, including a law review article on the causes of high generic drug prices. From 2017-2020, Frazer also served as a hospice volunteer in the Boston metro-area, playing requested piano music for end-of-life patients. At UChicago, Frazer researches the pathophysiology of microvascular dysfunction in heart failure and health policy initiatives related to sickle cell anemia. Frazer also continues ongoing research with PORTAL.

Nikhil Umesh graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2015 with a B.S. in Environmental Health Science and a minor in Chemistry. Prior to joining Pritzker, Nikhil worked as a violence prevention educator and community health researcher, instructing courses in political economy, race, and the history of social movements. In his free time, he enjoys deepening his interest in cooking, gardening, and propagating fruit trees.

Nikhil serves as a Co-Director of the Maria Shelter Clinic, which serves women and children experiencing homelessness on the South Side. He is also a Student Representative on the Pre-Clinical Review Committee, Community Grand Rounds Student Liaison, and a Student Leader of Students for a National Health Program and Chicago Homelessness Health Response Group for Equity.

Under the mentorship of Dr. Elizabeth Tung and Dr. Monica Peek, Nikhil is conducting research on the urban geography of plasma donation centers and their association with race, place, and poverty. He hopes his work will bring greater public awareness to the global supply chain of plasma, where poor, racialized communities have become a central link.

Daniel Ahn graduated from the University of Chicago in 2018 with a B.S. in biology and a minor in human rights. In 2017, Daniel was a recipient of a summer internship award from the University of Chicago Pozen Family Center for Human Rights. He worked as a researcher at the Hastings Center in Garrison, New York, on access to dialysis among undocumented immigrants with end-stage renal disease.

As a 2019-20 Schweitzer Fellow, Daniel is running a year-long program on gender justice and immigrant youth empowerment for young men of color at the HANA Center. At Pritzker, Daniel serves as president of the Asian Pacific American Medical Students Association and helped organize the University of Chicago’s inaugural Asians in Medicine conference in May 2018, which brought more than 70 medical students and faculty from Chicago. He also served as a mentor for HPREP and participated in the JOURNEES trips to Mississippi and South Dakota.

Under the mentorship of Dr. Milda Saunders, Daniel has conducted research on factors associated with the quality and frequency end-of-life care planning among African American hemodialysis patients.