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Past Chair
Dr. Rebekah White completed medical school and general surgery residency at Duke University. During residency, she worked for three years in a nucleic acid therapeutics laboratory, which would later become the focus of her research career. After general surgery residency, she completed surgical oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center then returned to Duke as faculty in 2007. While her laboratory research was primarily focused on nucleic acids, she became interested in irreversible electroporation (IRE), both as a clinical therapy for patients with pancreatic cancer but also for its potential to help overcome some of the barriers to delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics to tumors. She was recruited to University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 2016 to continue these research efforts, and her laboratory is studying immune responses to IRE and ways to improve them. Her UCSD time is divided roughly 50/50 between clinical and research activities. Outside of UCSD, she is involved in several surgical organizations, including the Society of University Surgeons (as President-Elect) and the Society of Clinical Surgery (as Treasurer).
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Chair
Dr. Christanne Hoffman Coffey grew up in South Carolina and graduated from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. She completed an Emergency Medicine Residency at UC San Diego, during which time she served as Chief Resident. After residency, she became the inaugural fellow in Wilderness Medicine at UC San Diego. Dr. Coffey is currently an Assistant Professor of Clinical Emergency Medicine. She also serves as the Wilderness Medicine Fellowship Director and co-director of the EMED 275 wilderness medicine elective and EMED 427 "Medicine in the Wild" wilderness medicine clerkship. She is the chair of the Wilderness Medical Society's Diving and Marine Medicine Committee. Her interests include wilderness medicine education, travel medicine, survival at sea, diving medicine and extreme sports. She is the faculty coordinator for Women in Emergency Medicine in the Department of Emergency Medicine and prior Events Coordinator of the Women in Health Sciences Committee.
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Vice Chair
Dr. Rebecca Colman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Sleep Medicine, and Physiology at UC San Diego. She earned her Ph.D. in biological sciences from Northern Arizona University, where she studied molecular genetics, and her BSc in biology and chemistry from Linfield University. Dr. Colman completed postdoctoral training in next-generation sequencing at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), and in tuberculosis diagnostics at UC San Diego. Dr. Colman has also served as a scientific advisor for the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, collaborating with global partners to develop and validate sequencing-based tools for infectious disease surveillance and care. Her research focuses on sequence-based diagnostics and culture-free detection of drug-resistant pathogens directly from clinical samples, and has contributed to WHO-endorsed diagnostic initiatives aimed at improving global health equity through accessible precision diagnostics.
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Secretary
Federica Klaus received her M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Zurich in Switzerland and conducted her residency in psychiatry at the Psychiatric University Hospital of Zurich. After a postdoctoral fellowship funded by the SNSF (Swiss National Science Foundation) at UC San Diego, she became Director of Research in the Center for Empathy and Compassion Training in Medical Education at the Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion at UC San Diego. Her research interests include the relationship between psychological and biological mechanisms, positive psychological traits and transdiagnostic aspects of mental illness with a focus on schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
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Tatiana Kisseleva, M.D., Ph.D.
TreasurerDr. Kisseleva received her MD in Moscow, and continued her graduate studies in biochemistry and immunology at Christian-Albrecht University in Germany. Dr. Kisseleva joined UCSD as a faculty member. Kisseleva’s research focuses on characterizing the gene expression profiles and epigenetic landscapes of mouse and human hepatic myofibroblasts to understand the mechanism behind the development and regression of liver fibrosis. Her primary research interest is the identification of new targets to treat metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) and metabolic dysfunction-associated and alcohol-related liver disease (MetALD) liver fibrosis and cholestatic fibrosis. Dr. Kisseleva is a Professor of Surgery at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, Director of the Sanford Stem Cell Fitness and Space Medicine Center at the University’s Sanford Stem Cell Institute, and the Sanford Stem Cell Institute Endowed Chair.
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Social Media Co-Coordinator
Alessandra Castaldi, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor in the UC San Diego Department of Medicine. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Molecular Biology from University of Naples Federico II (Italy) and earned her PhD in Molecular Medicine at the University of Study of Milan (Italy). Dr. Castaldi completed her postdoctoral training at UC San Diego and then moved to University of Southern California (USC) as Research Associate. Her research interests include the study of progenitor cells in the muscle (skeletal and cardiac) and pulmonary systems, as well as microRNA regulation of gene expression. She is currently investigating the regulation of airway and alveolar epithelial progenitor cell commitment following injury. Dr. Castaldi has been mentoring several undergraduate and graduate students. She is currently Social Media Co-Coordinator of the UCSD Women in Health Sciences Committee.
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Social Media Co-Coordinator
Dr. Francesca Telese is a molecular neuroscientist who is interested in studying the mechanisms of transcriptional regulation in the brain. Her work identified novel epigenetic mechanisms that regulate synaptic plasticity-dependent genes underlying learning and memory. Dr. Telese is an Assistant Professor at UC San Diego in the Department of Psychiatry. Her current research is focused on epigenetic mechanisms implicated in substance use disorders using rodent models. Dr. Telese has received the prestigious Avenir Award (NIDA) for early stage career investigators and is a principal investigator of multiple grants. She is involved in teaching both undergraduate and graduate students in neuroscience and she is currently Social Media Co-Coordinator of the UCSD Women in Health Sciences Committee.
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Peer Mentorship Co-Coordinator
Dr. Laura Case is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at UC San Diego. She received her PhD in Psychology and Cognitive Science from UC San Diego completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the neuroscience of affective touch at the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH). Dr. Case’s research uses brain imaging, pharmacologic manipulation, and sensory testing to test neural and psychological mechanisms involved in pleasant touch and pain perception. Other research interests include mechanisms of manual and mind-body therapies. She is passionate about building scientific culture that is creative, collaborative, and caring.
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Peer Mentorship Co-Coordinator
Emilie Reas, PhD is Assistant Professor in the UC San Diego Department of Neurosciences. She received her bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science from UC Berkeley and her Ph.D. in Neurosciences from UC San Diego. Her research interests comprise two complementary aims: first, to identify the earliest brain changes that precipitate cognitive decline in aging and neurodegenerative disease; and second, to characterize the risk factors for these brain and cognitive changes. Ultimately, her work aims to develop more sensitive tools to accurately detect early pathological brain changes and to identify associated risk factors. In addition, she serves as Imaging Core Leader for the UC San Diego Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and Peer Mentoring Co-Chair for the Women in Health Sciences committee.
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Department Liaison Coordinator
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Event Coordinator
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Administrative Support
Melanie Zakar is a third-year Neurobiology major at the University of California, San Diego, with a minor in International Studies. She conducts research under Dr. Alessandra Castaldi in the Borok Lab at UCSD, investigating the regulation of airway and alveolar epithelial progenitor cell commitment following injury.