Our current ProSTAR/PSTP community hosts a vibrant mix of trainees at all levels, and a continuum of graduates who are currently STAR fellows. Our graduates continue subspecialty training in all medicine subspecialties, and continue in a successful and validated pipeline known to produce successful physician investigators in the areas of basic, translational, and clinical/health services research.
Resident Profiles
Rui Li, MD, PhD
Dr. Li graduated from Zhejiang University School of Medicine and came to UCLA for his PhD study in Molecular and Medical Pharmacology. His research focused on the interactions between tumor microenvironment and progression. He developed a new combination therapywhich can effectively stimulate anti-tumor T cell responses in otherwise immunoresistant non-small cell lung cancer.
Giuliana Repetti, MD
Dr. Giuliana Repetti began her research career in the lab of Dr. Lee Rubin at Harvard University studying the molecular and cellular basis of neurodegenerative diseases. As a University of Arizona medical student, she worked with Dr. Steven Goldman exploring the mechanisms behind a cardiac patch to treat heart failure.
Sohn Kim, MD, PhD
Dr. Sohn Kim received his MD and PhD from the Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan Kettering Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program. His thesis work identified a mechanism of colonization resistance exerted by the intestinal microbiota against a common nosocomial pathogen, vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus, mediated by the narrow spectrum of activity of a novel microbiota-derived lantibiotic peptide.
Eileen Shiuan, MD, PhD
Dr. Shiuan grew up in the Bay Area and went to undergrad at the University of Chicago, where she discovered her passion for oncology and cancer research and what real winters feel like. She subsequently fled south to Nashville, where she completed her MD and PhD in Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt University.
Michael Raddatz, MD, PhD
Dr. Raddatz completed his MD and PhD at Vanderbilt University where he studied inflammatory mechanisms of calcific aortic valve disease under the mentorship of Dr. David Merryman. His recent work with Dr. Alexander Bick leverages computational genomics to understand the pathophysiology of cardiovascular disease in patients with clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP).
Philip Nussenzweig, MD, PhD
Dr. Philip M Nussenzweig completed his MD and PhD from the Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan Kettering Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program. His thesis work with Luciano Marraffini focused on how CRISPR-Cas9 systems naturally function in bacteria to defend against infection by viruses known as bacteriophages (phages). His work identified a novel phase of the CRISPR response known as Cas9 priming that enhances anti-viral immunity.
Jessica Hong, MD
Dr. Jessica Hong completed her MD at the University of California San Francisco where she studied genetic factors implicated in congenital heart disease with Dr. Deepak Srivastava at the Gladstone Institutes. Concurrently, she spent four years with a machine learning team at Google developing methods for high-throughput protein sequencing.
Jiajia Zhang, MD, MPH
Dr. Jiajia Zhang received her MD from Peking Union Medical University and MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Under the mentorship of Drs. Drew Pardoll and Kellie Smith at Hopkins, her research focuses on immunogenomic determinants of T cells in immunotherapy responsiveness. Her work provides important insights for overcoming resistance to PD-1 blockade and resulted in a co-inventor patent on novel targets for combination neoadjuvant immunotherapy.