Featured Alumni STAR Awardees

Linda Liau, MD, PhD
Professor & Vice Chair,
UCLA Department of Neurosurgery

Dinesh Rao, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor, Associate Program Director
UCLA Department of Pathology

 
Susanne Nicholas, MD, MPH, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine
Director, Fellowship Training Program
Division of Nephrology
Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Co-Director, AXIS Technology Core
Department of Research
Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science

Joseph C. Wu, MD, PhD
Director, Stanford Cardiovascular Institute
Professor, Department of Medicine/Cardiology & Radiology

Jennifer Malin, MD, PhD
Staff Vice President,
Clinical Strategy Anthem Inc.

Jenny Kim, MD, PhD
Associate Professor,
Clinical Medicine and Dermatology, UCLA

Oliver Dorigo, MD, PhD
Director and Associate Professor,
Division Gynecologic Oncology
Stanford Women's Cancer Center
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Sanaz Memarzadeh, MD, PhD
Director,
G.O. Discovery Laboratory
Associate Professor,
UCLA Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Karen Reckamp, MSCR
Co-Director and Associate Professor of Medicine,
Lung Cancer and Thoracic Oncology Program
City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center

Kathleen Sakamoto, MD
Professor,
Division of Hematology/Oncology Department of Pediatrics
Stanford University School of Medicine

 

Rick Fairhurst, NIH, MD, PhD

Chief, Malaria Pathogenesis and Human Immunity Unit,
Laboratory of Malaria and
Vector Research
Director, NIH MD/PhD Partnership Training Program
NIAID, National Institutes of Health

 

“As the first Infectious Diseases fellow in the UCLA STAR Program, I was strongly encouraged to customize my training to fit my interests and develop my career. To support my future study of malaria and other tropical infectious diseases as soon as possible, the Program’s faculty helped me design the most relevant and accelerated pathway I could envision – one that exposed me to tuberculosis, leprosy and neurocysticercosis patients, and even mosquito and tick abatement programs! By allowing me to train at multiple hospitals and specialty clinics in Southern California, to complete my internship, residency and clinical fellowship within 3 years, and transfer to the NIH to meet malaria in person, the UCLA STAR Program essentially launched my early career. Within 2 months of arriving at the NIH, I was on a plane to Mali to treat my first malaria patient as the principal investigator of a new clinical protocol. My recent successes in deciphering the mechanisms of human resistance to malaria in Africa, and parasite resistance to multiple antimalarial drugs in Southeast Asia, all stem from the Program’s initial challenge to me: find the best place in the world to do malaria research, then go there and become the best malariologist you can be.”
– Dr. Rick Fairhurst