Senior Faculty Scholars

Dr. Donington obtained her bachelor degree from the University of Michigan and her medical degree from Rush University. She completed general surgery training at Georgetown University, cardiothoracic training at the Mayo Clinic, and a surgical oncology fellowship in the Surgical Branch of the NCI. She was on faculty at Stanford and NYU prior to accepting her current position as chief of the section of Thoracic Surgery at the University of Chicago in 2018. Her clinical interest is in the diagnosis and surgical treatment of non-small cell lung cancer. She has unique expertise in the use multimodality therapy for locally advanced lung cancer, clinical trials in lung cancer, and treatment options for medically high-risk patients with lung cancer. She is a past president of the New York Society for Thoracic Surgery and the Women in Thoracic Surgery. She is the surgical chair for the thoracic section of NRG Oncology.

Dr. Hoehn attended medical school at University of Kansas, then completed her pediatric residency at University of California San Francisco, followed by a pediatric critical care medicine fellowship at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She also obtained a Masters in Bioethics from University of Pennsylvania. She has been on faculty at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, St. Christopher’s in Philadelphia, Rush and Comer, plus University of Kansas. She is a national leader in pediatric palliative care, and has started and grown multiple palliative care programs. In addition, she has been a course director and taught a pediatrics ethics course at Kansas City University of Biosciences. She has done research in informed consent, difficult decision making and family support and communication. She serves on the editorial boards of AAP PREP and the journal, Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. She is on the Pediatric Advisory Committee of the FDA, and a national advocate for safe prescribing of opioids. She is an advocate for children, no matter where they are in their journey. Here at the University of Chicago she is director of supportive care, which focuses on pain, palliative and integrative medicine. She is also the co-director of the MacLean Ethics Consultation Service. As a Bucksbaum senior scholar, she is excited to mentor students, residents and fellows on topics of communication, equity and palliative care. In addition, she is working to develop clear connections between ethics and equity. As Amanda Gorman said, ‘just is isn’t always justice.’

Dr. Miller is the inaugural director of the Center for Community Health and Vitality at the University of Chicago. The Center for Community Health and Vitality’s mission is to improve population health outcomes for residents on the South Side of Chicago through community-engaged research, demonstration and service models.

Prior to joining the University of Chicago in 2009, she served as national program director of New Health Partnerships, a demonstration project funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the California Health Care Foundation on collaborative self-management support. Dr. Miller is also a faculty member of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, MA. Dr. Miller worked for 5 years as a program vice-president at The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation where she was responsible for strategic planning and program design in the clinical quality improvement area, using clinical and community-based strategies. Programs developed under her direction include demonstration projects designed to help improve the quality of care for people with chronic health conditions such as asthma, diabetes and depression. Dr. Miller’s work in the area of improving asthma outcomes through school and community interventions was noted by the American Academy of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology with a 2006 Special Recognition Award. Dr. Miller was a member of the 2002 Institute of Medicine committee that produced the report, Guidance for the National Healthcare Disparities Report. In 1993 Dr. Miller was recognized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Community Health Leadership Program for her community-based efforts in improving the health and well-being of grandparents raising their grandchildren through an initiative called, Grandparents Who Care.

A general internist, Dr. Miller cares for patients in the Primary Care Group at the University of Chicago Medicine.

Douglas Nordli, Jr., MD, is a Professor and Chief of the Section of Child Neurology within the department of pediatrics at the University of Chicago.

After earning his medical degree (AOA) from Columbia University, Dr. Nordli completed a pediatrics residency, followed by a child neurology residency and a postdoctoral clinical fellow in EEG and epilepsy at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center.

Dr. Nordli has published more than 100 original, peer-reviewed studies with research focusing on epilepsy classification, epilepsy surgery, infantile epilepsy, febrile seizures and the ketogenic diet.

Dr. Prabhakaran is Professor and Chair of Neurology at University of Chicago. He trained at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Cornell for Neurology Residency and New York Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia for Vascular Neurology Fellowship. He also has a MS in Epidemiology from the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. He is stroke researcher with interests in imaging of intracranial stenosis, stroke systems of care, and stroke epidemiology. He leads numerous research programs including the ongoing MYRIAD study of imaging biomarkers of intracranial atherosclerosis, the E-SPEED study focused on prehospital and inter-hospital barriers to timely stroke treatment in Chicago, and the THESIS study targeting diagnostic error for acute stroke in the emergency department. He is an elected fellow of the American Neurological Association and American Heart Association’s Stroke Council and serves on numerous national guideline committees and working groups to advance stroke care.

Dr. Tanya L. Zakrison is an Associate Professor of Surgery and is a member of the Section of Trauma & Acute Care Surgery at the University of Chicago. She is the Director of Critical Trauma Research, which explores the connection between interpersonal trauma, critical race theory and racial capitalism.

Dr. Zakrison attended medical school at the University of Toronto where she completed her residency in General Surgery. After a fellowship year in Adult Critical Care Medicine at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center, she spent a year at the Ryder Trauma Center, University of Miami for her second fellowship year in Trauma Surgery. After her fellowship years, Dr. Zakrison completed a Master in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with coursework in Baltimore and Barcelona. Dr. Zakrison was faculty at the University of Miami until joining the Department of Surgery at the University of Chicago in 2019.

Since joining the faculty at the University of Chicago, Dr. Zakrison has been awarded the Department of Surgery Excellence in Teaching award in 2019-20. She has mentored numerous medical students, surgical residents, graduate students and junior faculty to research excellence, presenting at national conferences and publishing peer-reviewed manuscripts on topics such as intimate partner homicide, homicides while incarcerated, the ethics of concurrent COVID-19 trials, penetrating brain injury and others. Dr. Zakrison has been awarded a Bucksbaum Institute Pilot Grant to develop a Structural Justice Curriculum for trainees in trauma to improve patient care, reduce moral injury and address the structural causes of intentional, interpersonal trauma.

Nicola Orlov is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics.  She is the Program Director for the Pediatric Residency Training Program and is the Associate Chair of Education for the Department of Pediatrics. She is a graduate of the Pritzker School of Medicine and where she stayed to complete her Residency Training and Chief Resident year. She completed an MPH at Columbia University and graduated from The Medical Education Research Innovation Teaching and Scholarship (MERITS) fellowship at the University of Chicago. She currently serves as the Chapter Advisor at the PSOM for the Gold Humanism Honor Society.

Dr. Orlov is a Pediatric Hospitalist. Her clinical research focused on improving the sleep and health of hospitalized children. Educationally, she has a strong interest in coaching, feedback, and humanism in medicine.   

Dr. Bree Andrews is a neonatologist who specializes in complex care after Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) graduation. She directs a complex care clinic at both the University of Chicago and Larabida Children’s Hospital. She is core-faculty in the Department of Pediatrics and a new student cohort leader in the Bucksbaum Institute Clinical Excellence Scholars Track program for undergraduates at the University of Chicago. She has mentored many medical students, residents, and fellows in their scholarly research projects.

Most recently, she has developed a web-application to use at the NICU bedside to improve parenting engagement via Preeme +You. Bree’s Preeme +You project has received Bucksbaum Pilot Grant funding. She is also the neuro-developmental lead for the MIND (the Microbiome of Infant Neuro-Development) project, a translational approach to how the microbiome impacts premature infants over time. She also studies resuscitation at the border of viability (22-23 weeks gestational age), using data around shared decision making, cost, and outcomes to inform practice. The Bucksbaum Institute is please to welcome Dr. Bree Andrews as a Senior Faculty Scholar.

Dr. Kamala Gullapalli Cotts is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine. She graduated from Northwestern University Medical School and completed her internal medicine residency training at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. She is a general internist with expertise in the primary care of developmentally disabled adults. Dr. Cotts established the Adult Developmental Disabilities Clinic at the University of Chicago in 2002. And in 2017, she received the Distinguished Clinician Junior Award for her work in caring for this patient population. Dr. Cotts’ commitment to patients with disabilities has allowed her to have a leadership role in the Bucksbaum Institute’s University of Delhi collaboration. During the 2018-19 academic year Dr. Cotts conducted workshops and traveled to India for this international disability education project.

Dr. Cotts completed a fellowship in the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics in 2007 and has been serving as Faculty on the Ethics Consult Service since then. She served on the National Society of General Internal Medicine Ethics Committee from 2011-2018. Dr. Cotts received many awards including the Medical Resident Teaching Award in 2018 and in 2019, the 2019 Department of Medicine Diversity Award and the 2019 Society of General Internal Medicine Award for Advocacy and Community Service.

Dr. Andy Davis is a Professor and Associate Vice-Chair for Quality in the Department of Medicine. He is board certified in both internal medicine and in public health, and is a practicing clinician educator with research interests in quality improvement, prevention, and chronic disease. He is a clinician-educator with precepting and direct patient care responsibilities in the Primary Care Group and the University of Chicago Student Health Clinic. He was volunteer Attending of the Year in 2014 for Community Health, and is faculty advisor for the Maria Shelter Free Clinic.

Dr. Davis earned his MD from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, with residency at the University of Iowa, and his Masters in Public Health in occupational and environmental health from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Dr. Davis is a section editor for practice guidelines for JAMA, was a visiting scientist at the CDC, and has led disease management programs for a managed care population of 400,000 individuals. Additional facets of his work include LGBT care, and healthcare disparities, including a national review on cardiovascular health disparities commissioned by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.