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Current Scholars and Fellows
Meghan Brennan, MD
VA Women's Health Fellow
Education: Earned her MD from University of Vermont Medical School. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics and went on to complete an Infectious Disease fellowship at the same institution.
Research: Today, Dr. Brennan's main research interests are in HIV screening as well as outbreak investigation. To aid in these endeavors, she is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Population Health through the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Population Health.
Noor Husain, MD
VA Women's Health Fellow
Education: Earned her degree from Baqai Medical College affiliate of Karachi University. She did her internship at Aga Khan University Hospital and initial training in Neurology at Jinnah Post Graduated Medical Center. In the U.S., she completed her residency from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science (RFUMS). Dr. Husain has completed a Sleep Medicine Fellowship at University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH). She is currently in the process of completing her MPH from Benedictine University.
Research: Interest is in Disaster Management for which she acquired certification. Focus is on sleep-centered research and is presently conducting a comparative study titled "An analysis of In-Home vs. In-lab Sleep Diagnosis and Treatment Models" at the Wisconsin Sleep Center. During her Women's Health Fellowship at the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital she is introducing the "CPAP Compliance Clinic" as a pilot quality improvement project, which lays the ground work for her mixed method design research study to look into the reasons of compliance and non-compliance in the VA patient population.
Christine Kolehmainen, MD
VA Women's Health Fellow
Education: Earned her MD from Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics.
Research: Today, Dr. Kolehmainen's main research interest is the field of graduate medical education and she is pursuing a degree in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at University of Wisconsin.
Bryan Ampey, PhD Candidate
R25 TEAM-Science Scholar
Education: Earned his Master of Science degree in Cell and Molecular Biology at San Francisco State University. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in Endocrinology & Reproductive Physiology.
Research: Bryan never imagined working with the endocrine system until recently. The vast possibilities of the bodies function have captivated his interest. His current research interest includes vascular diseases such as hypertension and pre-eclampsia. Specifically investigating effects of shear stress on connexin 43 expression and phosphorylation for the formation of gap junctions in the endothelium.
Hometown: Ann Arbor, Michigan
Dream Job: A dream job would be anything that he enjoys and makes him happy at the end of the day!
Favorite Hobbies: Music production, playing sports, reading, and watching movies.
Ice Cream: He loves butter pecan ice cream. It's just that good, need he say more?
Belinda Gutierrez, PhD Candidate
R25 TEAM-Science Scholar
Education: Currently working on her PhD in psychology at the University of Wisconsin Madison. She completed her Masters of Education at University of Texas at Austin.
Research: Factors which promote retention of underrepresented individuals in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM). She is particularly interested in the ways that positive mentoring relationships can promote academic self-efficacy and is also interested in interventions which can change the climate of academia to make it more open to underrepresented individuals. Her current research focuses on unconscious bias and how it may serve to prevent women and underrepresented minorities from rising within the ranks of academic departments within STEMM. Currently, she is working on a project which will use a video game to measure (and hopefully decrease) unconscious bias among STEMM faculty. As part of this project, she is studying the use of unobtrusive measures of attitudes and behaviors in video games.
Dream Job: Belinda believes the job she currently has is a dream job. She loves being paid to do research on topics of interest to her. In the future, she hopes to either be a researcher in an academic setting, or possibly work for an indie gaming company. She hopes to be able to integrate psychometrics into video games as a way to measure attitudes and behaviors and then use those very games to shape attitudes and behaviors.
Interests: Current hobbies include playing tennis, cross-country skiing, reading articles from news aggregator websites like reddit, getting new gadgets, and playing games (mainly on ps3 and pc right now). She also hopes to start learning a programming language (maybe python) in the near future.
Ice Cream: Favorite is chocolate because she considers herself a chocolate addict.
Patric Hernandez, PhD Candidate
R25 TEAM-Science Scholar
Education: Currently working on a Ph.D. in Neuroscience. Recently received his MPA in Public Affairs at UW-Madison. He graduated with honors from the University of Texas, San Antonio with a bachelor in Biology.
Research: Neuroimaging incorporating a form of analysis called Voxel-Brain Morphometry (VBM) that allows for comparisons of grey and white matter brain volumes between different groups. His current focus is in comparing the white and grey matter brain volume differences between patients diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and healthy controls. He hopes to link differences in brain volume to behavioral differences between the two groups.
Interests: Enjoys music, cinema, and visiting museums and zoos.
Ice Cream: Maintains that vanilla is his favorite flavor of ice cream because he believes it provides a solid foundation for creating ice cream creations such as brownie fudge sundaes and toffee-banana milkshakes.
Hometown: Grew up in San Antonio.
Dream Job: To become the Vice President of the United States.
Fatou Jallow, PhD Candidate
R25 TEAM-Science Scholar
Education: Earned her Bachelors degree in Biology from Dillard University in New Orleans, LA. and is currently working toward a Ph.D in the Endocrinology & Reproductive Physiology Program.
Research: Fatou's current focus is on Breast Cancer. Most breast tumors in women are estrogen receptor alpha positive (ERalpha+). Even though there are drugs out there that target these receptors, the tumors have somehow managed to gain resistance from them. She want to focus on how these cancer cells acquire resistance by looking at the close linkage between prolactin, and the pathogenesis and therapeutic responsiveness of ERalpha+ breast cancer. Fatou thinks it is very important for us to achieve prevention and cure for breast cancer in our lifetime. This can be accomplished by bringing awareness worldwide and acquiring funding for clinical and translational research.
Hometown: Grew up in New Orleans, LA
Dream Job: She would love to have her own lab where she can lead and mentor young scientists.
Interests: Loves shopping, music, reading and spending time with her family
Ice Cream: Fatou loves Snickers ice cream, Twix ice cream...pretty much any ice cream that has lots of caramel and nuts.
Anna Kaatz, PhD Candidate
R25 TEAM- Science Scholar
Education: Anna is working toward a Ph.D. in clinical investigation, specifically Women's Health Research: Language & Systems Change. She also completed her M.P.H. and a Masters degree in Comparative Literature and French at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Research: She currently leads a study at the UW-Center for Women's Health Research examining linguistic differences in grant reviews for male and female applicants to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for R01 awards. In order to advance in a career in academic biomedical research it is critical to succeed in obtaining an R01 Grant from NIH. Though recent reports have found that women are significantly less likely than men to succeed in obtaining that award type, no study has yet investigated reasons for women's lower rates of success. To examine whether women may face disadvantage during peer-review for R01 Grants, this study uses the technique of linguistic analysis to identify overarching gender differences in the words and descriptors used by reviewers in their written critiques of applications.
Anna has been a women's health activist since she was a teenager, and her initial work focused on broadening the access of health resources and information to women at the grassroots/community level. In college she recalls being relatively conflicted about whether she should work to improve the health of women by becoming a physician, or if she should focus entirely on improving health policy. Anna opted to study health policy in graduate school, and currently her research is focused broadly on identifying and mitigating barriers to the advancement of women's health research and to women in medical careers.
Hometown: Dillon, Colorado
Dream Job: Loves what she is doing right now.
Favorite Hobbies: Anna is happiest when able to balance academic work with a lot of physical activity. She practices yoga and likes to play ice hockey, downhill ski, hike, swim, run and has recently taken up road biking. She also enjoys gardening cooking, making pottery, drawing with oil pastels and spending time with loved ones and friends.
Ice Cream: Due to terrible food allergies, Anna can't even remember the last time she ate ice cream. However, when she was a kid, she did always like mint chocolate chip and cookies and cream.
Jasmin Kristianto, PhD Candidate
R25 TEAM- Science Scholar
Education: Holds a bachelors degree in Biochemistry and also has earned a masters of science degree in Chemistry.
Research: Currently interested in the pleiotropy effect on bone and vascular phenotype in recombinant congenic mice. She spends her time looking at the biomechanical loading and tissue properties of bone and vessel systems including placenta vascular system to improve understanding of the effect of genes and loading on bone and vessels modeling
Hometown: Grew up in San Francisco, California
Dream Job: Jasmin would consider two jobs to be her dream jobs. The first would be to become an "awesome" scientist and her second would be to become a fashion stylist
Interests: She likes to listen to music (genre depends on the day, mainly jazz and hip hop)
Ice Cream: Jasmin is not actually a big fan of ice cream, but would take chocolate if she had to choose.
Wairimu Magua, PhD Candidate
R25 TEAM- Science Scholar
Education: Currently working toward her Ph.D. in Industrial Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin Madison and holds both a masters and a bachelor degree in the same field. Wairimu has also earned a bachelor degree in Business Administration in Finance and Operations Management from Isenberg School of Management in MA.
Research: Involves studying predictors of re-hospitalization for patients who developed nosocomial infections during index admission. Wairimu plans to study how these predictors can be used to develop transitional care knowledge to support continuity of care for patients post-discharge.
Hometown: Considers both Nairobi, Kenya and Madison, WI to be her hometowns
Interests: She enjoys traveling and running.
Dream Job: She loves teaching and developing ideas through research, so her dream job would be to become a professor and inspire her students to participate in their own intellectual development.
Ice Cream: Favorite flavor is butter pecan because she considers it to have an earthy and comforting flavor.
Dennis Paiz-Ramirez
R25 TEAM-Science Scholar
Education: Presently working on his PhD in Curriculum & Instruction Program. Dennis completed a Master's Degree in Education emphasizing in Learning Design and Technology in 2009 at Stanford University in California.
Research: Dennis studies videogames and learning. Specifically, he looks at what commercial videogames do well and tries to find out why they do it well. Almost every videogame must teach its player how to play the game, must keep the player interested in the game, and must present challenges in such a way the player will get better. Successful games do all of the above, and they do it well. Currently, he is looking at the way failure is presented in videogames. Why does a failing "grade" seem like a challenge to a player, but a death sentence to a student? Most games require you to die multiple times before you get better (Super Meat Boy, Limbo, Mario) why don't people get frustrated when this happens?
What led Dennis toward this research: After doing a bit of research at the University of New Mexico with artificial intelligence, Dennis realized that there are a lot of technologies that, for some reason or another, aren't being incorporated in schools. Because of this, he decided to see what schools were focusing on the integration of technology and school. While completing his Masters in Learning Design and Technology at Stanford, he was inspired to continue working with new technologies in the classroom, particularly using videogames as teaching tools. This was an excellent fit given his Computer Science background and his love of videogames.
Hometown: Albuquerque, New Mexico
Dream Job: Design and create things that people will enjoy using. In the future, Dennis sees himself creating videogames that present subject matter in fun and accessible ways. He would also like to design experiences and interactive displays for museums that represent information in ways never been presented before (by using augmented reality, for example).
Hobbies: He likes to play guitar and draw.
Ice Cream: If they have it, he really enjoys pistachio ice cream. Though, not many places carry it.
Ricardo Pizarro, PhD Candidate
R25 TEAM-Science Scholar
Education: Currently working towards his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering with a subspecialty in Neuroimaging. Ricardo holds bachelors degrees in both Electrical Engineering and Physics and also has a masters degree in Electrical Engineering with the subspecialty of Electrophysics.
Research: Involves implementing an EEG-fMRI simultaneous acquisition for epileptic and stroke patients and finding novel ways to analyze the data acquired using multivariate approaches.
Hometown: It could be Santiago, Chile, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Washington, DC and maybe now Madison. This is the hardest question for Ricardo to answer because, although he was born in Sao Paulo (Brazil), his entire family is from Santiago (Chile). He lived in Washington, DC for the past 17 years and is currently living in Madison.
Dream Job: Would be to work in a company like GE where he can learn what goes into manufacture of such neuroimaging machines. In the future he would like to have his own startup or maybe go back into the research world and become a professor and start his own lab.
Ice Cream: His favorite is pineapple ice cream in champagne, because it reminds him of spending New Years in Chile with his family.
Interests: Include soccer, tennis, guitar, music, biking, and eating.