Hometown: Chevy Chase, MD
Undergraduate: Cornell University
Medical School: University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine
Hobbies: Running, biking (both the road and mountain varieties), skiing (downhill, cross country, working on my backcountry skills), climbing, boating, hiking, camping etc. I also enjoy playing around with guitar and piano, reading, and exploring coffee shops, restaurants and places to see live music in the city.
Best Book I've ever read: Hmmm, I had a Spanish literature minor in college and am still obsessed with One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In terms of non-fiction, Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman is really interesting and made me re-evaluate what I thought I knew about how humans think.
Favorite Seattle Hangouts: So many things! Parks: Madison Park Arboretum, Volunteer Park, Gas Works Park, Magnuson Park, Golden Gardens, Discovery Park (my fave: runs in Discovery Park where you have views of Mount Rainier and you can pick blackberries along the trail). Food and drink: Breweries in Fremont and Ballard, Chuck's Hop Shop, Molly Moon's ice cream, Monsoon vietnamese restaurant in Capitol Hill. Hanging out by Lake Union near the Museum of History and Industry where you can watch the sea planes land and watch the Tuesday evening Duck Dodge sailboat races.
Coolest place I've traveled: I think two trips stand out in my memory: one was a 4-day trek to the Everest base camp in Tibet. The other was a three-week bike touring trip from Bucharest to Vienna (including segments biking in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Austria and Slovakia). Ask me if you ever want help planning a bike touring trip -- I have all kinds of recs from planning that journey!
If I weren't a doctor I would be: I'd like to think I'd be doing something creative like architecture, although my lack of drawing/artistic skills might put a damper on that...
Weirdest Job: Barn manager/horse trainer for a horse farm.
Research Interests: My research interests have largely focused on global and public health issues. I like thinking about how to solve big problems in an interdisciplinary way, for example how to bridge the arenas of knowledge derived from basic science research with larger-scale public policy initiatives or organizational models to enact meaningful change. I think the Emergency Medicine is a great platform for supporting these interests because you're on the front lines seeing the issues that are affecting your community, and you also interface with all different aspects of the health care system as well as other social services.
Why UW? I loved the combination of working at a public hospital with a strong social mission, Harborview's unique role as the only Level I trauma center in the WAMI region, exposure to very medically complex patients at UW, getting to work with great faculty both in the EM department and on off-service rotations, and innumerable opportunities throughout the University of Washington to get involved in research and other initiatives.
