The Medscape Journal of Medicine

Ben Ferguson, MSIII, BS, is a medical and graduate student at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, currently completing a PhD in cancer biology and studying the role of receptor tyrosine kinases in lung cancer. He is a native of the Chicago suburbs, and graduated from the University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champaign, with a degree in molecular and integrative physiology and a minor in chemistry. He is an avid singer and has what is probably the coolest dog on the planet.

Bishoy Faltas, MB, BCh (Hon), obtained his bachelor of medicine and bachelor of surgery in 2005 from the Faculty of Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt, and is currently an Internal Medicine Resident at Rochester General Hospital, Rochester, New York. He is an avid supporter of biomedical journals that publish work by students and residents, and has been actively involved as a student advisor for the StudentBMJ in the United Kingdom and an external editor for the McGill Journal of Medicine in Canada.

His interests include neoplasms and blood disorders; hematopoietic stem cells; and medical ethics, history of medicine (especially Ancient Egyptian medicine), and medical informatics. He believes very strongly in health issues of developing countries. He hopes to join an academic hematology-oncology fellowship after his residency.

Steven Gelber, MD, MPH, is a Resident in the UC Davis Primary Care Internal Medicine program. He graduated from the University of California, San Francisco, in 2008, with an area of concentration in community health and social advocacy. He also took a year off from medical school to obtain a master of public health degree at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on nutrition and international health. He graduated from Stanford University, Stanford, California, with a degree in human biology and a minor in creative writing. He spent 2 years as a teaching assistant in the human biology department as well as conducting anthropologic research. He would love to find a career that would allow him to combine writing and medicine.

Lisa Rosenbaum, MD, is a Resident in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. She graduated from the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. She obtained a bachelor of arts degree in human biology from Stanford University, Stanford, California, with a minor in creative writing. She spent a year pursuing a master of fine arts degree in fiction writing at Columbia University's School of the Arts, New York, NY, before deciding to pursue medicine instead. Her editorial experiences include serving as a student editor for Student JAMA as well as spending a semester as a fiction intern at The New Yorker. Her ideal career aspirations are to combine a life of medicine and writing. She also enjoys marathon running and reading fiction.

Kayvon Modjarrad, MD, PhD, is completing his residency in internal medicine and fellowship in infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee. Originally from the New York City metropolitan area, Dr. Modjarrad graduated magna cum laude from Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, with a bachelor in science in biology, a minor in chemistry, and a concentration in neuroscience. He then matriculated in the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded combined degree Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where he completed his MD, doctorate, and master of science in public health degree. During his graduate tenure, Dr. Modjarrad spent a year in Zambia conducting his dissertation research on the impact of parasitic coinfections on HIV progression and immunopathogenesis. He also served as a clinical research consultant to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), creating and teaching courses in immunology, virology, and scientific writing in Mali, Uganda, and India. Upon graduation, Dr. Modjarrad moved to Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, where he completed an internship in internal medicine before transferring to Vanderbilt to complete his postgraduate clinical training. He is a former student editor of JAMA, an Associate Faculty member of Faculty of 1000 Medicine, and a primary or contributing author of 13 peer-reviewed publications and 3 federal grants. In his free time, Dr. Modjarrad enjoys rock skipping, interpretive juggling, Kyrgyz philately, and wallpaper games.

Emmanuel C. Gorospe, MD, MPH, is currently in his second year of internal medicine residency at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Baltimore, Maryland. He received both his undergraduate degree in public health with honors and a medical degree from the University of the Philippines, with clinical clerkships at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. He additionally holds a master of public health and graduate bioethics training from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Rush University, Chicago, Illinois, respectively.

Dr. Gorospe is a prolific researcher and has been published in several peer-reviewed journals. He was part of the pioneering team of investigators who identified the threat of childhood lead poisoning from imported candies in Nevada. He has also worked in the fields of aging research, bioethics, and end-of-life care. At age 28, Dr. Gorospe is one of the youngest biomedical researchers to be listed in the Marquis Who's Who in Science and Engineering. He is a member of several academic honor societies and professional organizations.

Bruce Armon is a partner in the business department of Saul Ewing LLP. He concentrates his practice in corporate healthcare law. Mr. Armon has assisted physicians and other providers and participants in the healthcare delivery system in a host of matters, including drafting, editing and negotiating contracts, establishing medical practices, statutory and regulatory compliance matters (including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act [HIPAA] implementation), fraud and abuse statutes, and payment and reimbursement issues. Mr. Armon regularly lectures to physician audiences on healthcare-related legal issues, including presentations to many residency and fellowship programs. Mr. Armon is a contributing editor and author for Unique Opportunities: The Physicians Resource. He has coauthored 3 handbooks for the healthcare publisher HCPro relating to matters affecting the pharmaceutical industry and provider interactions. He authored several chapters and was assistant editor of Bringing Your Medical Device to Market, published by the Food and Drug Law Institute (FDLI). Prior to joining Saul Ewing LLP, Mr. Armon worked for a large health insurer and prior to that for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

Alessio Bridda, MD, was born in Belluno, Italy, in November 1979. He graduated from medical school at the University of Padua, Padua, Italy, in October 2004 with the thesis "Integrated Prognostic Parameters in the Treatment of Hepatocellular Carcinoma," earning a graduation score of 110/110 cum laude. During medical school, from 2000 to 2004, he worked as an "internal student" in the I General Surgery Department-Liver Transplant Unit, directed by Professor Davide F. D'Amico, at the University of Padua. During this period, he experienced all branches of general surgery (gastrointestinal, vascular, endocrine, and thoracic), and enjoys them all. However, his interests have been focused on transplant, vascular, and trauma surgery. Currently, he is a fourth-year resident in general surgery at the IV General Surgery Service in Treviso, Italy, specifically doing his rotation in emergency surgery.

Karen Dente, MD, MA, obtained her medical degree from the University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany, after studying medicine at the University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany; Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany; and the University of Hamburg. Her interest in writing convinced her to pursue journalism after completion of the formal didactic medical curriculum. She moved to New York in 1999 and received a master's degree in journalism from New York University, while writing for Reuters Health and working as an editor for Viral Immunology. Because she had not experienced working in medicine in the United States, she decided to apply to hospitals for a series of rotations that counted toward her German internship. This took her on a fabulous, year-long adventure through the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, New Jersey; Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY; Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts; and Yale-New Haven Hospital, New Haven, Connecticut. Although she passed the US medical boards, she decided that her passion for journalism won over her desire to practice medicine.

She has been writing about medicine and science ever since. Her bylines appear frequently in leading German newspapers and magazines, including Die Welt, Deutsches Aerzteblatt, Pharmazeutische Zeitung, as well as in American magazines, such as Drug Discovery & Development, and the Web site of the New York Academy of Sciences. Besides being bilingual in German and English, she is also fluent in French and Spanish. She has lived in Germany, Austria, and Spain.

Rajesh Gupta, MPH, is an MD candidate at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, California. He received a bachelor of science in cellular biology and a bachelor of arts in psychology from Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana. He also has a master of public health from the Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, Connecticut. He has severed as a researcher with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Uganda Virus Research Institute. He has worked for the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, as both a scientist for the tuberculosis department and a policy advisor in the Office of the Director General. He is a visiting lecturer at the Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.

He has published in leading scientific journals, such as The Lancet and Science, and serves as a regular reviewer for several scientific journals. He is also the recipient of a 2005 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans.

Clark D. Hinderleider, MD, PhD, graduated from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, with an MD and a doctorate in the Department of Physiology with research experience in cardiac physiology. He trained in cardiothoracic surgery at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY, and was appointed as Instructor in Surgery. He continued his research work on the physiology of heart assist devices. In California he studied cardiac ischemia with a private group, as a staff member of University of California, San Francisco. He has served as a study manager/senior leader in various drug and device trials, their management, and reporting. He now primarily consults and writes.

In 2002 he became interested in stem cell research and began following a company that plans to supply cells for use in cardiac repair. As an advocate for such research and in support of scientific integrity, he remains a member of the speakers' list of Americans for Cures and assisted in the efforts that passed Proposition 71. In March 2005, he testified before the California Senate Health Committee on Medical and Ethical Standards for Research as applied to the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, where he continues as a member of a working group on medical and ethical standards. He continues to write and to lobby on stem cell policy. He was a member of the Steering Committee (2007) of, and is a contributing editor for, the Science Advisory Board in the section "Science, Politics, Ethics."

As a member of Physicians for a National Health Program, he speaks in various venues and writes on healthcare policy, and served in the recent state political campaign as an advisor on such. As a member of the Health Council of Marin County, California, an advisory body to the County Board of Supervisors, he serves as the chair of the Health Care Legislation Task Force.

Vitor Pordeus, MD, was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and received his MD from the Medical School of the Federal Fluminense University, Rio de Janeiro. He currently works in the research centre of the Pro-Cardiaco Hospital in Rio de Janeiro, the leading Brazilian center for stem cell research in cardiology. Also, he works a few months per year in the Center for Autoimmune Diseases at the Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel, with Professor Yehuda Shoenfeld. Besides that, he has started the PhD course at Sýo Paulo University. He hopes to develop clinical trials regarding immunology, because he finds that current diagnosis and therapies for immunologic diseases (allergies, immunodeficiencies, and autoimmune diseases) have not reached their potential. His work and thinking are deeply influenced by the Brazilian immunologist Professor Nelson Vaz and the Israeli Professor Yehuda Shoenfeld. He hopes that a forum, such as The Learning Curve, will aid in the development of new ways of thinking and thus contribute to an urgent paradigm shift in medicine.

Sonal Singh, MD, is a Board-Certified General Internist and an Assistant Professor in Internal Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He is also the Cofounder and Associate Director of the Center for International Health and Human Rights in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Conflict & Health. He grew up in Nepal and received his medical degree from the Prince of Wales Medical College in Patna, India, in 1999. He then worked as a researcher conducting phase 1 and 2 clinical trials at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. His subsequent training was in Internal Medicine at Unity Health System, University of Rochester, New York (2002-2005). He is currently finishing a master of public health degree at The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, with a focus on health and human rights (since 2005). He has published and peer-reviewed extensively in the fields of international health and human rights, HIV, the relationship between conflict and health, and refugee health in several leading medical journals, such as JAMA, The Lancet, BMJ, CMAJ, and PLoS Medicine.

Celina M. Yong, MD, MBA, MSc, is a Resident in Internal Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She is a graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California. Prior to medical school, she completed a master of business administration degree from the University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, and a master of science in health policy, planning, and financing from the London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom, on a Marshall Scholarship. She completed her bachelor of science degree from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was honored as a Truman Scholar and a Soros Fellow. Her interests have led her to work in a variety of health policy and development capacities, ranging from analyzing the efficacy of health programs in Senegal for the US Agency for International Development to designing programs through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, & Malaria. She has served as Co-Director of the Roosevelt Institution, Stanford Center for Health and Human Services; Co-President of the Stanford American Medical Student Association (AMSA); and Editor-in-Chief of Issues: Berkeley Medical Journal. Her current research, in collaboration with The World Bank, is focused on analyzing barriers to healthcare access among the rural poor in Uttar Pradesh, India.