Caroline Erickson, MBA, MD (2025-2026)
Mentors:
Elizabeth Wick, MD
Logan Pierce, MD
Dr. Erickson is a general surgery resident, current CRISP fellow, and a Master of Science in Clinical Research student. She completed a joint MD, MBA program at Vanderbilt University before coming to UCSF for residency. She is interested in surgical quality improvement and eliminating disparities in surgical outcomes for underserved populations. She is currently funded through the UCSF Partnerships for Research in Implementation Science for Equity (PRISE) Post-doctoral fellowship.
Axel Gomez Casarez, MD (2025-2026)
Mentors:
Elaine Tseng, MD, FACS, FAHA
Marko Boskovski. MD, MPH
Dr. Axel Gomez is a general surgery resident at UCSF and a current CRISP fellow. He completed medical school and surgical residency training at UCSF. His research focuses on computational methods and statistical modeling in the study of ascending thoracic aortic aneurysms, with the goal of advancing surgical risk assessment and improving patient outcomes.
Anh Vo, MD, MPH (2025-2026)
Mentor:
Seth Blumberg, MD, PhD
Dr. Vo is a Pediatric Infectious Diseases fellow, Learning Health System E-STAR scholar at UCSF and CRISP fellow with interests in antibiotic stewardship, clinical informatics, and health systems research. She received her MD from the University of Tennessee and MPH from Yale. She completed pediatric residency at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland. Her CRISP project involves developing predictive models for antibiogram optimization with the goal of ultimately improving patient outcomes while reducing selective pressure for antimicrobial resistance development.
Jean Digitale, PhD, MPH, RN (2024-2025)
Mentor:
Mark Pletcher, MD, MPH
Jean Digitale was a UCSF National Clinician Scholar and CRISP Fellow. She recently completed her PhD in Epidemiology at UCSF. Jean has a decade of experience working at the bedside as a pediatric nurse, primarily in critical care. Her doctoral dissertation combined her clinical background and expertise in research methodology to enhance decision-making processes surrounding extubation in pediatric intensive care units. Her research interests include improving quality and safety in pediatric hospital care using electronic health record data, clinical informatics, and advanced analytics.
Tiana Nguyen, PhD, OTD (2024-2026)
Mentors:
Matthew Miller, PT, PhD
Natalie Chan, MD
Hannah Glass, MD, MAS
Dr. Nguyen is an occupational therapist in the intensive care nursery and CRISP fellow. She received her OTD at the University of Southern California and practiced as an occupational therapist for several years before completing her PhD in health-related sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research interests include using electronic health data to inform healthcare utilization and timing and development of rehabilitative interventions to improve feeding and neurodevelopmental outcomes for premature and at-risk infants.
Roberto (Rob) Valdovinos, MD (2024-2025)
Mentors:
Emily von Scheven, MD, MAS
Jinoos Yazdany, MD, MPH
Dr. Valdovinos was a pediatric rheumatology fellow at UCSF, current CRISP fellow, and Master of Advanced Sciences student in Clinical Research. He completed medical school from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and residency in general pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. His research interests include vasculitis, the ways in which health disparities and social determinants of health impact clinical outcomes in marginalized communities, and recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce in rheumatology. His prior work has focused on Adverse Childhood Experiences in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, complications in hospitalized pediatric patients with ANCA-associated vasculitis, and qualitative analyses on the experiences of underrepresented in medicine physicians in rheumatology. Dr. Valdovinos’s current goal is to utilize public health insurance claims data to study the differential outcomes of chronic kidney in pediatric patients with SLE.
Cecilia Dalle Ore, MD (2023-2024)
Mentor:
Shawn Hervey-Jumper, MD
Dr. Dalle Ore was a UCSF neurosurgery resident and CRISP fellow. She completed medical school at UC San Diego before coming to UCSF for neurosurgery residency. In addition to her CRISP fellowship and neurosurgery residency, she pursued a Master of Advanced Sciences degree in Clinical Research. Her research interests include neuro-oncology and health disparities and access to care in neurosurgery.
Lauren Harasymiw, MPH, PhD, MD (2023-2024)
Mentors:
Patrick McQuillen, MD
Shabnam Peyvandi, MD, MS
Dr. Harasymiw was a UCSF Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine fellow and current CRISP fellow. She received her MPH from the University of Wisconsin and completed her MD and PhD in the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Minnesota. She completed her pediatrics residency on the Integrated Research Pathway of the Pediatric Physician Scientist Training Program at the University of Minnesota before coming to UCSF for her clinical fellowship. Her interests lie at the intersection of data science, neuroradiology and neurodevelopment, and stress biology. The goal of her research is to improve the long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes of premature and critically ill infants by unraveling the effects of perinatal and neonatal stress on brain development and developing neuroimaging-based predictive models that can identify infants who will benefit from targeted interventions.
Vadim Shteyler, MD (2023-2025)
Mentor:
Romain Pirracchio, MD, MPH, PhD
Dr. Shteyler was a Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellow interested in applying health data science and AI/machine learning methods to study questions at the intersection of medicine, health systems, and policy. His recent work analyzed the impacts of gender and sex designations on the health of transgender people and people with intersex variations. His current research uses real-world Electronic Health Record data to evaluate clinical treatment strategies, guidelines, and policies affecting the care of critically-ill patients with sepsis.
Mohamed Seedahmed, MD, MPH (2021-23)
Mentors:
Mehrdad Arjomandi, MD
Laura Koth, MD, MA
Dr. Seedahmed completed his clinical fellowship training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). His work focused on utilizing the power of real-world data in clinical research to improve care delivery for patients with sarcoidosis. He is interested in developing innovative, reliable, and reproducible computational phenotyping algorithms for sarcoidosis patients in Electronic Health Records. This approach will allow for efficient and accurate identification of sarcoidosis cases, along with their longitudinal assessment of the disease burden and, through this, determining the trajectory of different clinical phenotypes and their associated morbidities and mortalities. His work will lay the foundation for forthcoming projects focusing on the prospective evaluation of management approaches in sarcoidosis, using comparative effectiveness research and pragmatic clinical trials. Dr. Seedahmed also has strong interests in physician leadership and healthcare equity.
Rachael Stovall, MD (2021-23)
Mentor:
Jinoos Yazdany, MD, MPH
Dr. Stovall was a UCSF rheumatology fellow and current CRISP fellow. She completed medical school at the University of Washington and residency in Internal Medicine at Boston University Medical Center before coming to UCSF for additional training. In addition to completing the rheumatology fellowship, she took coursework towards a Masters of Advanced Sciences degree in Clinical Research. Her research interests include spondyloarthritis and she used the Rheumatology Informatics System for Effectiveness (RISE) registry to examine questions regarding bone health and spondyloarthritis.
Jonathan Witonsky, MD, MAS (2021-23)
Mentors:
Esteban Burchard, MD, MPH
Prescott Woodruff, MD, MPH
Dr. Witonsky is a Pediatric Allergy and Immunology clinical instructor and was a CRISP fellow. He completed medical school at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine before coming to UCSF for residency in Pediatrics and fellowship in Allergy and Immunology. His interests lie at the intersection of genetics, data science, and asthma disparities. He is a member of the UCSF Asthma Collaboratory where his ongoing research involves the examination of race/ethnicity-based clinical algorithms, and whether the use of genetic data—as an alternative to race or ethnicity—improves the precision of these algorithms.