Chief Editors
Erica Mark
Erica Mark is a third-year medical student with a passion for student-driven scholarship and the promotion of scientific truth and social justice. She founded the University of Virginia Medical Student Review to address the need for students to have a medium for self-expression and publication of rigorous research. She believes that healthcare professionals and students are living through historic moments: a global pandemic, calls for social justice, and changes in curricular reform and healthcare delivery. Students in particular are unique in experiencing these events from the perspective of a fresh pair of eyes and a great personal stake in the future of healthcare. Moreover, healthcare students have a large reservoir of diverse opinions and experiences as well as unrecognized talent in the arts and humanities outside the medical field. Erica took care to ensure that the leadership board for the journal had representation from healthcare students in medicine, nursing and public health. In all, she hopes that this journal will serve as an avenue to develop and display these passions and share new discoveries.
Sarah Swinehart
Sarah Swinehart is a current third year medical student originally from Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated from the University of Georgia in 2017 with a major in biological sciences. She is interested in expanding research opportunities for students and providing them resources to collaborate on, learn from, and discuss their research with their peers. She founded the UVAMSR in the hopes that it would serve this purpose and provide an inclusive platform for healthcare students to share their diverse research interests and unique voices. She recognizes the incredible talent of her peers and is eager to begin accepting submissions to the journal.
Arts Directors
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Leela Ekambarapu
Leela is an M2 originally from Northern Virginia. She graduated in 2020 from the University of Pittsburgh with a double degree in Neuroscience and Economics. Her academic interests include pediatrics, surgery, OB/GYN, and healthcare economics and policy. After completing residency, she also hopes to be involved in academic medicine. Outside of medicine, she enjoys reading, photography, and trying out new restaurants.
Madisyn Primas
Madisyn is a current M3 originally from New York City. She graduated from Cornell in 2018 after majoring in biological sciences. Her interests include Global Health, surgery, women's health, and combating healthcare & educational disparities within underserved communities. She is currently the President of the Latinx Graudate Student Alliance, board member of Latinx Medical Student Association and co-founder of the AHS Achievers Program. She is eager to help medical students express themselves both professionally and passionately as an UVAMSR Arts Director. Her other interests include painting, photography, baking, and yoga.
Nancy Shen
Nancy is an M2 from Virginia Beach, VA with a degree in computational biology from Cornell. A lover of the outdoors, books, and all things chocolate! At UVA, she's involved in AMA/MSV, CALM, and the Ragged Mountain Running Club. She is interested in the intersection between Eastern and Western medicine and believes in integrating multiple modalities into her approach to wellness and healthy living.
Katy Hall
Katy was an orthopedic nurse when she discovered her passion for teaching. After attaining her master’s degree in nursing education, Katy transitioned into academia. Her scholarship and research have included health professions education, civility, and resilience work. Katy recently moved from Morgantown, West Virginia to focus on research fulltime and pursue her PhD at the UVA School of Nursing. Katy is a 2021 UVA Center for Global Health Equity scholar whose current research projects include cervical cancer screening for women in Nicaragua and burnout among health care providers in the U.S. Katy is a proud mom of one, an avid reader, musician, and artist who loves the mountains.
Aamir Javaid
Aamir Javaid is a fourth year medical student at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Growing up between Palo Alto, Chicago, and Northern Virginia, he graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University majoring in Biology of Global Health. He aspires to become a cardiologist and clinician-scientist with research interests in prolonging life and preventing vascular aging using the most powerful tools of the 21st century, including artificial intelligence, advanced imaging, epidemiology, and digital health technology innovation. In his leisure time, he enjoys practicing gymnastics and playing saxophone with the UVA Jazz Ensemble.
Jenna Moody
Jenna Moody is a Charlottesville native who is dedicated to the health and well-being of her community. Over the past year, she has partnered with non-profits to address COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, joined UVA’s infectious disease unit as a contact tracer, and is a research assistant for UVA’s Public Health department. Jenna graduated from the University of Virginia in 2020 with a B.A. in Biology and is currently pursuing a Masters in Public Health with a concentration in Health Policy, Law, and Ethics. In the future, Jenna hopes to address racial, gender, and socioeconomic health disparities through policy.
Janet Yan
Janet is an M2 with interests in surgical oncology, GI, geriatrics, and biostatistics. She is originally from North Carolina and went to UNC-Chapel Hill for college. In her free time, she enjoys pilates, baking, and reading.
Managing Directors
Associate Editors
Justin Coley
Justin is an M4 applying to psychiatry residency this year. His research interests include mood and thought disorders, novel therapies for mental illness, technology in mental health, socioeconomic factors, and neuromodulation. He plans on entering academia after completing residency. He is also Co-Leader of the Peer Mentoring Program, a senior student clinician with iSERVE, and an editor on the SOM's literature and arts journal Veritas. Outside of school and research he enjoys reading voraciously, learning new languages, and discovering new recipes in the kitchen.
Emma Craige
Emma Craige is an MS3 at UVA's Inova Campus in Northern Virginia. A Virginia native, she attended undergrad at the College of William & Mary. Between college and medical school, she spent some time in the corporate world followed by 2 years in New York working in clinical research for Northwell Health. She was especially involved in research around optimizing resource utilization and clinical outcomes for patients using the ED setting for routine care of chronic illnesses. When she's not on UWorld, she enjoys DC restaurants, live music, and buying houseplants. Her research interests include healthcare affordability, policy, social determinants of health, and substance use disorders. She's looking forward to all the student-led research to come to UVAMSR!
Omar Elghawy
Omar Elghawy is a third year medical student from Philadelphia. For undergrad, he went to a small liberal arts college called Ursinus in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. He is interested in both clinical and basic science research and is hoping to pursue a career in Hematology and Oncology in the future. He wants to serve as an editor in this journal in order to facilitate the publication of high quality manuscripts to the UVASOM. He is excited to work with you!
Brian Florenzo
Brian is originally from Columbia, MD. He graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2020 and is currently a second-year medical student here at UVA. As one of the associate editors of the UVAMSR, he is very excited to review the work of his colleagues and help build UVA's research profile. Currently, he is interested in work related to dermatology, pediatrics, infectious disease, as well as healthcare disparities relating to the Hispanic community.
Courtney Heron
Courtney Heron is a current fourth-year medical student applying to residency in dermatology. Research is one of her passions; she spent a year during medical school working at Wake Forest Baptist Health as a dermatology research fellow and currently serves as an IRB board member at UVA. She is very excited to be one of the associate editors of UVAMSR, and she looks forward to working closely with fellow students to help make their voices and ideas heard.
Anthony Ignozzi
Anthony Ignozzi is a third year medical student from Dayton, OH. He completed his undergraduate degree at Ohio State during which he was a research assistant in a lab that utilized explanted human hearts to study electrophysiology, specifically sinoatrial node dysfunction and atrial fibrillation. Now at the UVA School of Medicine, he has focused his research within the field of orthopaedic surgery. His experiences have been diverse and include prospective basic research, retrospective chart review, systematic reviews, book chapters, and surgical technique videos. His particular interests include ligamentous knee reconstruction, meniscal repair, trochleoplasty, and surgical technique outcome studies. He also enjoys the arts, specifically acrylic painting and poetry.
Evan Lamb
Evan is an MD-PhD student who has recently started the graduate school portion of his training. His interests broadly include Infectious Disease, Immunology, and Epidemiology. Originally from Iowa, Evan is proud to be at UVA and eager to support The UVAMSR in its mission.
Yi-Ting Liu
Yi-Ting is a current 3rd year in the medical school. She is interested in research in psychiatry and neurology. She has experience in bench work studying Parkinson's disease with fruit flies during her undergraduate education here at UVA and with mouse models at NIH. She is currently involved in research on gender affirming surgeries. She enjoys learning about different fields through talking to her peers and looks forward to reading the submissions for UVAMSR!
Christian Renwick
Christian has experience with both clinical and laboratory-based research and so has a desire to ensure that opportunities for such scholarship are open to all individuals in the community. Throughout his undergraduate education, Christian was involved in forensic science wet-lab research, including a funded fellowship. Then, after graduation, Christian collaborated with a score of physicians while working as a scribe to complete another several presentations and even a book chapter. Now in medical school, he continues his love of research through projects assessing post-operative physical activity metrics and a multidisciplinary breast cancer detection modality through the UVA MSSRP. Christian firmly believes that UVA is a remarkable place with remarkable stories to tell, experiences to share, and knowledge worth spreading and wants to do his part to help share these stories.
Shambhavi Singh
Shambhavi is a 4th/8th year MD-PhD student at UVA, getting ready to apply for residency programs in internal medicine! During her PhD, she studied intra-tumor heterogeneity in breast and lung cancers, and also developed a love for scientific communication. As an international student from New Delhi, she is also passionate about mentorship and inclusivity in science and medicine. She really excited to channel her enthusiasm for medicine and advocacy for diversity and inclusion through UVAMSR and help disseminate the spectrum of great science done at UVA!
Eric Taleghani
Eric Taleghani is a 3rd year student at UVASOM. He earned his BS in Biomedical Engineering from UVA in 2019, and has leveraged this background to pursue research experiences that involve the intersection of technical science and clinical medicine. His research interests include medical device development, surgical techniques/outcomes, and healthcare policy.
Cassidy Thomas
Cassidy is an M3 from Fredericksburg, Virginia and she graduated from Virginia Tech in 2018 (Go Hokies!). When she is not in the hospital you can find her hiking, trying local breweries, or browsing the farmer's market. She has been involved in research since undergrad and she is so excited to be an editor for UVAMSR!