Examples of Projects

Class of 2026
MD: University of Minnesota
Mentors: Drs. Shahin Lockman, Rebecca Zash, Lisa Bebell

Born and raised in Vadnais Heights, Minnesota, Katelyn completed her BS in Genetics, Cell Biology, & Development with minors in Spanish and Public Health at the University of Minnesota. After graduation, she moved to Kampala, Uganda where she worked with the University of Minnesota and Makerere University on HIV-related cryptococcal and tuberculous meningitis clinical trials. While there, Katelyn led her own small mobile health study focused on improving maternal health education. Returning to Minnesota for medical school, Katelyn continued to work on clinical trials related to HIV and COVID-19, developing a particular interest in infectious diseases in pregnancy and the inclusion of pregnant and breastfeeding populations into clinical trials. Her current work with Drs. Shahin Lockman, Rebecca Zash, and Lisa Bebell will focus on the safety of antimicrobial use in pregnancy amongst women living with and without HIV/AIDS in Botswana and Uganda. Her long-term goal is to lead international clinical trials focused on the care, treatment, and prevention of infections in pregnancy.

Class of 2026
MD: University of Pennsylvania
Mentor: Drs. Ingrid Bassett & Kevin Ard

Dan grew up in Massachusetts, then migrated south to Philadelphia to attend the University of Pennsylvania for medical school, then migrated further south to Atlanta to complete internal medicine residency at Emory. In medical school Dan worked with the HIV Prevention Trials Network as they recruited for the groundbreaking Cabotegravir (Apretude) long-acting HIV PrEP clinical trial. Dan loved working with this population and spreading the word about HIV prevention. While at Emory, he caught the ID clinical bug while rotating on the primary HIV service at Grady Memorial Hospital and on transplant ID at Emory. For his fellowship research, he plans to conduct qualitative and quantitative studies in support of a new effort at MGH and BWH to provide inpatients with hepatitis C treatment before discharge from the hospital. After fellowship, he intends to complete two years as a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the MA Department of Health.

Class of 2025
MD: Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
Mentor: Dr. Todd Allen

Sam grew up in Central Jersey (which is distinct from North or South Jersey), but fell in love with Boston when he attended Gordon College in Wenham, MA. He started his research journey in dedicated immunology, working with a mouse model of eosinophilic asthma at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, but was soon won over by the world of infectious diseases when he spent a year culturing and cataloguing the species of Leishmania in the mountain villages of Olancho, Honduras. He returned home to complete the M.D./Ph.D. program at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, where his thesis work investigated the anti-fungal capabilities of Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells (PDCs) and how they are affected or dysregulated by chronic HIV infection. He then completed his internal medicine residency at the University of Virginia. For his fellowship research, he has joined the lab of Dr. Todd Allen at the Ragon Institute, where he will work on T cell responses to HIV, with a focus on CAR T cell immunotherapy and CRISPR gene editing.

Class of 2025
MD: Mayo Medical School
Mentors: Drs. Roby Bhattacharyya and Ruanne Barnabas

Originally from Arizona, Dipesh studied Genetics/Cell Biology at Arizona State University, received his MD at Mayo Medical School, and completed IM residency at University of California, San Diego. His interest in ID started early on as an undergraduate student, working in the lab studying biochemical properties of antimicrobial clay-mineral mixtures. During medical school and residency, he investigated the clinical outcomes of patients with C. difficile infection and the effects of diagnostic stewardship strategies for C. difficile testing. He went on to serve as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the CDC, where his work was primarily international and included healthcare-associated outbreak investigations, implementation of infection prevention and control programs, and research on antibiotic utilization/antimicrobial-resistant Gram-negative bacteria surveillance. Dipesh’s current research with his mentors Dr. Roby Bhattacharyya and Dr. Ruanne Barnabas draws on his prior experiences but confronts an entirely different pathogen: developing a point-of-care, affordable, molecular assay to diagnose high-risk types of HPV and studying how to best implement this diagnostic in low-resource communities at-home and abroad.

Class of 2024
MD: Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Mentor: Dr. Yonatan Grad

Rachel grew up in Springfield, Illinois and received her BA in Biological Sciences from the University of Chicago. As an undergraduate student, she studied the oncogenic properties of human papillomavirus. She received her MD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and then stayed at Johns Hopkins for internal medicine residency and a hospitalist year. As a resident her research focused on the safety of boric acid for treatment of vulvovaginal candidiasis in the setting of pregnancy. Her current research with her mentor Dr. Yonatan Grad is focused on the development of antimicrobial resistance in the setting of doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis, which is increasingly being prescribed to reduce the incidence of bacterial sexually transmitted infections.

Class of 2024
MD: Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Mentor: Dr. Matthew Waldor

Alisse was born in Canada and moved to the US to complete her BS in Biology and Global Health at Georgetown University. After graduating, she worked on several global health projects including improving access to medications in Uganda and researching for a Women and Girls empowerment project at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Alisse received her MD from Mount Sinai where she researched HIV prevention with a focus on understanding the challenges associated with PrEP uptake. Under the mentorship of Sheela Shenoi, she spent a year in South Africa completing a Doris Duke International Clinical Research Fellowship working on expanding access to HIV treatment and prevention. She completed residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania before coming to Boston for her Infectious Disease fellowship. During fellowship Alisse is working to evaluate the immunogenicity of a novel cholera vaccine with Dr. Matthew Waldor. She is also interested in clinical trials and further understanding the effects of antibiotics on the microbiome during periods of neutropenia, and how this affects morbidity and mortality among the hematopoietic stem cell transplant population.

Class of 2024
MD: Harvard Medical School
Mentor: Dr. Suzanne McCluskey

Prior to fellowship, Cameron Nutt studied anthropology and health policy at Dartmouth, received his M.D. from Harvard, and completed medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He previously worked with the nonprofit organization Partners In Health and the Ministries of Health of Rwanda and Liberia under the mentorship of Dr. Paul Farmer and Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, contributing to health care delivery research in Rwanda and supporting Partners In Health’s response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Cameron’s recent research included two trials of the antiviral remdesivir in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and a registry-based analysis of the impact of race-based algorithms for renal function estimation on racial disparities in kidney transplant evaluation. His current work under Dr. Suzanne McCluskey focuses on barriers to antiretroviral therapy adherence in the era of integrase inhibitor-based HIV treatment in Uganda and South Africa, and on evolving patterns of HIV drug resistance in these settings.

Class of 2024
MD/PhD: University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
Mentors: Dr. Michael Gilmore and Dr. Ashlee Earl

Matthew Phillips completed his BS in Marine Science and Biology from the University of Miami where he stayed for graduate training. He joined the Medical Scientist Training Program at the Miller School of Medicine, earning his M.D. and a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology under the mentorship of Dr. Maria Abreu looking at the effects of marine pollutants on the gut and microbiome. Switching coasts, he completed his Internal Medicine residency at University of Southern California/Los Angeles General Medical Center before coming to Boston for Infectious Disease Fellowship at Mass General Brigham. During fellowship he will be working under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Gilmore and Dr. Ashlee Earl characterizing the genetic and phenotypic mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in Enterococci and investigating new environmental reservoirs of these organisms. Broadly speaking, his research interests involve using a one health approach to study antimicrobial resistance and microbiomes.

Class of 2023
MD: University of Pennsylvania
Mentor: Alex Tsai

Kayty Himmelstein is interested primarily in the intersections of racial and economic justice and health. She previously worked as a high school math teacher in New York City and Chicago, and received an M.S.Ed. in Adolescent Mathematics Education from St. John’s University. She received her MD from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and completed Internal Medicine-Primary Care residence at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her prior research has examined disproportionate punishment of LGBTQ youth by schools, police, and courts; the projected impact on women healthcare workers of raising the minimum wage to $15/hour; and financial underinvestment in hospitals serving patient of color. In her fellowship, she is working with Dr. Alex Tsai of psychiatry to examine access to surgical care for people of color living with HIV and HCV. 

Class of 2023
MD: Harvard Medical School
MPH: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Mentor: Louise Ivers, MD MPH DTM&H

Wilfredo was born in the Dominican Republic and grew up in New York where he received his BA in Biology and Romance Languages from New York University. He studied at Harvard Medical School and completed clinical training in the Global Health Equity Residency at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. Since 2012, he has worked extensively in rural Haiti under the mentorship of Dr. Louise Ivers, focusing on cholera vaccine campaign delivery and the epidemiology of diarrheal diseases. His career goal is to work at the interface of epidemic disease epidemiology, implementation science and global health equity. To this end, in fellowship he will continue his research on diarrheal diseases in Haiti, while also focusing on HIV care delivery in the Dominican Republic. Specifically, he will use mixed-methods and cohort designs to study outcomes, barriers and facilitators of HIV care among migrants living with HIV on the island with the goal of developing novel care delivery approaches for migrants with HIV.

Class of 2023
MD: Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Mentor: Steven Grinspoon, MD

Sam Schnittman completed his BA in Art History at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by his MD at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He completed his internal medicine residency at the University of California, San Francisco, where he worked under the research mentorship of Peter Hunt, MD, on the mechanisms underlying and ramifications of persistent immune activation and inflammation in treated HIV. His current research, under the mentorship of Steven Grinspoon, MD, will expand on this prior work, leveraging the ongoing REPRIEVE trial as well as serum biomarkers, flow cytometry, multi-omics platforms, and novel imaging modalities to understand the pathways of immune activation and dysregulation that lead to non-AIDS-related comorbidities in people with treated HIV. With the goal of targeting therapeutic interventions to reduce inflammation-related cardiometabolic outcomes, he will also work with Dr. Grinspoon and the Metabolism Unit to learn how to design and implement clinical trials.