Fellowship

Our Alumni: 2013-2014

Payal Adhikari, MD, obtained a bachelor's in Psychology from Northwestern University in 2005 and became an analyst at Huron Consulting Group.  She graduated from the Chicago Medical School in 2010 and completed her residency in Pediatrics at Rush University Medical Center.  She is currently a pediatrician at Child and Adolescent Health Associates in downtown Chicago.

LaTonya Anderson, RN, BSN is currently a pediatric operating room nurse at Comer Children’s Hospital. She received her BSN from Chamberlain School of Nursing. The fellowship has broadened her interest in ethical issues that affect nurses in the operating room. In the fall, she will pursue her master’s degree in Nursing at Purdue University Calumet with a goal of becoming a Family Nurse Practitioner. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Nursing at Purdue University Calumet with a goal of becoming a Family Nurse Practitioner.

David J. Banayan, MD, MSc, graduated from McMaster medical school, located in Ontario, Canada, in 2008 and began training in psychiatry. In 2013 he completed a five-year residency in general psychiatry at the University of Toronto. His areas of special interest within psychiatry include consultation-liaison psychiatry, perinatal mental health, brief dynamic therapy, and psychological trauma. David is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Rush Medical School and works on psychosomatic medicine service at an academic center here in Chicago, as he tries to integrate ethics education into the training of psychiatry residents.

Brian Callender, MD, arrived at the University of Chicago campus in the fall of 1993 and has never left, having completed undergraduate (1997), graduate (1998), and medical school (2004) training in addition to completing his internal medicine residency in 2007.  Brian teaches two courses in global health, is co-director of the medical school’s Global Health Scholars Track and serves on the Education Committee of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health.  Brian plans to use his ethics training to incorporate more ethics into the global health curricula.  He is also active as a clinical hospitalist.

Julie Chor, MD, completed her M.D. at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine after receiving her B.A. in History and Biology.  She then pursued her residency training in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Illinois at Chicago and stayed on at UIC for a two-year Fellowship in Family Planning. Upon graduating from fellowship, she spent two years an attending at the John H. Stroger, Jr., Hospital of Cook County.  She returned to the University of Chicago in November 2012 where she is now an Assistant Professor in the Section of Family Planning and Contraceptive Research in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and on the faculty of the MacLean Center.

Amélie DuPont-Thibodeau, MD, is a neonatologist and an executive member of the Montreal University’s Clinical Ethics Department. Dr. DuPont-Thibodeau has served as a member of the Sainte-Justine Hospital Clinical Ethics Unit at the University of Montreal. Dr. DuPont-Thibodeau completed her MD, as well as her pediatrics and neonatology training, at the University of Montreal. She is currently completing a PhD in Ethics examining the moral status and the best interest of newborn infants.

Edward J. (Ed) Dunn, MD, practiced Cardiothoracic Surgery for 20 years in Cincinnati and Milwaukee. After working on Capitol Hill as an RWJ Health Policy Fellow, he was director of policy and clinical affairs for the VA National Center for Patient Safety in Ann Arbor, MI for six years. Since 2009, he has been responsible for patient safety, quality, risk management, systems redesign and the integrated ethics programs at the Lexington VA Medical Center and adjunct professor of health policy and management at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health in Lexington, KY. His research interests include teamwork coordination in healthcare organizations, transparency in the doctor-patient relationship and the disclosure of adverse events to patients and family members. He holds a doctor of science degree in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Libby Erickson, D.O, is originally from the Kansas City area and went to the University of Kansas for her undergraduate degree. She attended medical school at Des Moines University and just finished her psychiatry residency at University of Chicago.

Maria Gove, MD, is a primary care internist at the Dallas VA and UT Southwestern Medical Center where she supervises and teaches the internal medicine residents in the outpatient primary care clinic. She is a team leader and ethics consultant on the Ethics Committee at the Dallas VA.  Her interest in medical ethics started as an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame where she studied philosophy and theology with an emphasis on medical ethics. She joined the MacLean Center Ethics Fellowship as part of the University of Chicago’s partnership with the VA.  Maria is currently developing the Clinical Ethics Consultation service at the Dallas VA and growing the ethics program for the regional VA network in north Texas as well.

Lauren Kirby, MSW, LCSW received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Denver and her Masters in Social Work from the University of Southern California.  She was a social worker at the University Of Chicago Medicine for over 8 years, where she worked closely with the oncology program, specifically the Stem Cell Transplant patients and family members.  Currently, Lauren works as a Parkinson’s Disease Patient Advocate with Abbvie, an offshoot of Abbott Laboratories, that specializes in research-based pharmaceuticals.

Irini Kolaitis, MD, grew up in northern California and attended the University of California, San Diego for undergrad where she received a B.S in Biochemistry and Cell Biology.  She then moved east for medical school at Georgetown University.  After 4 great years in Washington, DC, she moved to Chicago to start pediatric residency at Children's Memorial/Lurie Children's Hospital. Irini completed her residency in June 2013 and is currently working as a pediatric hospitalist at Lurie Children's Hospital.

Emily Landon, MD, is Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago in the sections of Infectious Diseases & Global Health as well as the committee for clinical pharmacology and pharmacogenomics.  She is the Hospital Epidemiologist and serves as the medical director for the Infection Control Program and the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program. She completed her medicine residency, chief residency, and fellowship in infectious diseases at the University of Chicago Medical Center.  Her research is focused on improving care, specifically reducing the risk of healthcare-associated infection and optimizing antimicrobial utilization. Dr. Landon is investigating the use of an automated system for monitoring of individual healthcare worker hand hygiene behavior. Additionally, she is on the faculty of the MacLean Center.

Alex Langerman, MD, is an Otolaryngologist trained in head and neck surgical oncology and microvascular reconstruction and is also one of the Junior Faculty Scholars of the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence. His ethics-related research surrounds decision making for head and neck cancer and surgeon communication with patients, families, and colleagues. He is a longtime member of the University of Chicago community having trained here for medical school and residency and has been involved with the MacLean Center's programs on multiple occasions. He is currently on the MacLean Center Faculty.

Andrea Mann, DO, MPhil, did her undergraduate work in biochemistry at UC San Diego, which led to opportunities in biomedical research, examining potential treatments for leukemia and HCV. She transitioned to clinical, population-based research while at University of Cambridge in England, where she completed a master’s degree in epidemiology. Her medical school training was completed at Western University of Health Sciences. After attending medical school at Western University of Health Sciences, she trained in adult psychiatry at University of Chicago.  Andrea plans to complete a child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at Stanford University in 2016. Her research interests include clinical decision-making in use of psychotropic medication in vulnerable populations, the impact of Assisted Reproductive Technology on family structure and self-identity, and use of electronic communication in the doctor-patient relationship.

Ross Milner, MD, graduated from medical school at the University of Pennsylvania and then completed his residency training in General Surgery as well as fellowship training in Vascular Surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. At the end of his fellowship, Ross was awarded the Marco Polo Fellowship from the Society for Vascular Surgery. As the Marco Polo Fellow, he worked at the University Medical Center, Utrecht, The Netherlands, studying aortic aneurysmal disease and endovascular therapy. Following the fellowship, he joined the faculty at Emory University first as Assistant Professor and later as Associate Professor and Program Director of the Vascular Surgery fellowship. He moved to Chicago in 2009 after accepting the position of Chief of Vascular Surgery at Loyola University Medical Center. In January 2012, he was recruited to the University of Chicago Medicine as Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Aortic Diseases. He is passionate about the care of vascular patients with a specific clinical and research focus on aortic aneurysm disease. He is currently on the faculty for the MacLean Center.

Monica Peek, MD, is an Assistant Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago where she provides clinical care, teaches and does health services research in the area of health disparities. She received her medical degree and master’s degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins University, and completed her residency training at Stanford University Hospital. She then worked for the National Health Service Corps for two years at a community health center for the medically underserved in Ohio before relocating to Chicago.  Dr. Peek is an inaugural faculty fellow of the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence at the University of Chicago, where she studies shared decision-making among racial/ethnic minorities, and the Associate Director of the Chicago Center for Diabetes Translation Research.  Dr. Peek is currently the Principal Investigator of grants from the Merck Company Foundation and NIH/NIDDK to improve diabetes care and outcomes among residents on the South Side of Chicago, a predominantly African-American working class community with significant racial/ethnic disparities in diabetes health outcomes.

Heather Straub, MD, grew up in Southern California and Colorado and graduated from the University of the South (Sewanee) with a BS in Biology and Russian. Pursuit of a MD brought her back to Colorado where she graduated from the University of Colorado Health-Sciences center in 2007. The desire to train at an academically affiliated program in a county hospital (and learn medical Spanish) took her back down south where she completed a residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Texas-Houston LBJ program.  Finally, she completed a Maternal-Fetal Medicine Fellowship at the University of Chicago/NorthShore University HealthSystem in 2014. Currently, Heather works for MultiCare HealthSystem in Tacoma, Washington.

Sean C. Wightman, MD, FACS received his BA from Taylor University and then earned his MD from Rush University in Chicago, IL. He completed his general surgery residency at the University of Chicago. While there, he researched oligometatases patterns and completed his medical ethics fellowship here at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. Dr. Wightman went on to Stanford University, where he completed his cardiothoracic surgery training. He joined The Division of Thoracic Surgery in 2019. Dr. Wightman has a deep commitment to his patients and is a strong patient advocate. He chose a career in cancer surgery, specifically thoracic surgery, to care for patients during a time in their lives when they need support the most. He helps his patients navigate complex choices and the surgical process wirg clear communication and close attention to each patient's unique needs.