People

J. Scott VanEpps, MD, PhD

President-Elect

University of Michigan

Bryn E. Mumma, MD, MAS

SAEM Grants Committee Chair

University of California, Davis

Lindsay Beamon Scott

Ideen Zeinali

Cassandra Clay

Janet Baker

Director of Management Operations

UTHealth

David W. Calder, MBA

Administrative Director

Loma Linda University Health Emergency Medicine

Becky L. McGowan, MBA

Vice Chair, Finance and Administration

University of Colorado School of Medicine

Louis E. Burton Sr., MHSM

Director, Finance & Administration

UT Health of San Antonio

Brendan Russell, MBA

Vice President of Enterprise Emergency Medicine

Mass General Brigham

Whitney Brown, MD

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Winner - AEUS Innovation Award

Dr. Brown is a third-year resident in the Johns Hopkins Emergency Medicine residency program. During her fourth year of residency, she looks forward to completing a mini-fellowship in emergency ultrasound, and is enthusiastic about creating content to support POCUS educators and learners. Upon the completion of her residency training in 2024, Whitney hopes to translate the skill and expertise acquired in point-of-care ultrasound into a leadership role in her future practice setting. Outside of her academic pursuits, Whitney enjoys traveling with her husband and taking her Goldendoodle to the park.

Michael Del Valle, MD

Denver Health

Winner - AEUS Innovation Award

Dr. Del Valle is currently an emergency medicine ultrasound fellow with education and experience in biomedical engineering. He is strongly focused on the development of innovative applications of ultrasonography. Current interests range from AR/VR ultrasound and global health to space medicine and AI-enhanced ultrasound.

Tiffany Fong, MD

Director, Division of Emergency Ultrasound

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Winner - AEUS Innovation Award

Tiffany Fong, MD is the Director of the Division of Emergency Ultrasound at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.  She is a Californian turned 14-year Baltimorean who is enthusiastic about innovation in the POCUS education space and creating resources to make us all better and less overworked educators.  Her scholarly interests also include interspecialty POCUS collaborations, trainee assessment for US procedural guidance, and POCUS modeling to identify and assess trajectory of infectious diseases. She ran her first and second marathons this fall (Marine Corps and Philadelphia) and continues to ambulate on two legs.

Anita Chary, MD, PhD

Baylor College of Medicine

"Identifying Implementation Strategies for Emergency Department Delirium Screening in Older Adults"

Dr. Chary is an emergency physician and health services researcher at Baylor College of Medicine. She attended Washington University School of Medicine and served as chief resident at the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency. Dr. Chary is an anthropologist whose research focuses on health disparities and healthcare delivery for vulnerable populations. Her international work includes development of child nutrition, women’s health, and specialty care referral programs in rural areas, and her domestic work centers on geriatric emergency medicine. She also focuses on improving health care delivery for vulnerable populations in the emergency department (ED); prior work includes a program to create prepackaged to-go medications for homeless patients and initiatives to provide COVID-19 vaccination from the ED.

Dr. Chary’s current research focuses on improving emergency care for older adults, both generally and specifically for those with cognitive impairment. As the recipient of a National Institute of Aging GEMSSTAR Award and SAEM Foundation GEMSSTAR Supplement, she is investigating the feasibility of implementing geriatric screenings in the ED and is pursuing mentored training in geriatrics and implementation science.

Colin J. O'Shea, MD, MPH

Vanderbilt University Medical Center

"Implementation of A Video-based ECG Curriculum for Medical Students"

Dr. O'Shea is an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and currently serves as the assistant director for clinical electives in the emergency department. Originally from Maryland, he received a medical degree from Emory University School of Medicine, where he was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. While in medical school, he completed a Master’s in Public Health, with a focus on health policy, at Rollins School of Public Health. During his residency and chief residency at Vanderbilt, Dr. O’Shea won several teaching awards, including the House Staff Clinical Teaching Award. His primary area of interest is undergraduate medical education. 

Efrat R. Kean, MD

Thomas Jefferson University

"Assessment of a Novel Model of Remote Diagnosis and Treatment of Highly Contagious Infectious Diseases"

Dr. Kean is a clinical assistant professor and director of clinical trials in the emergency department at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She completed her medical school training at the University of Virginia and her emergency medicine residency at Temple University. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Kean has been engaged in numerous projects related to pandemic response, including spearheading the development of surge plans in the emergency department, building partnerships with Philadelphia’s public schools to increase children’s access to COVID-19 vaccines, and providing support for long-term care facilities experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks as head of Rapid Response Teams for Jefferson’s RRHCP team. She has also served as principal investigator and co-investigator on several COVID-19 related research grants.

Giselle Appel, BA

Thomas Jefferson University

"Optimizing the EM Clerkship through Trauma-Informed Medical Education"

Giselle Appel is a medical student at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Prior to medical school, she conducted research at the intersection of emergency medicine and psychiatry. Her current research focuses on utilizing psychodynamic theory to inform better care that patients receive in both acute and inpatient hospital settings, as well as for the physicians who treat them.

Giselle has received prior research awards and funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, or German Academic Exchange Service) Study and Internship Program (SIP) via Columbia University, Infectious Disease Society of America, Clinical and Translational Science Center at Weill Cornell Medical College, and the Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts.

Upon entering medical school, she continued her work in medical education initiatives, while still maintaining close association with her interests in psychotherapeutic models of care and object relations theory. Giselle believes in the power of the therapeutic alliance and holding environment — consisting of empathy, patience, and active listening —- to best guide patients toward an understanding of their symptoms, medical care, and healing.

Hirotaka Ata, MD, PhD

Duke University

"CRISPR-based, Rapid Bedside Bacteremia Detection for ED Sepsis Management"

Dr. Ata is a second year emergency medicine resident at Duke University. Prior to joining Duke, he completed MD and PhD training at Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine, with a focus on improving predictability and reliability of genome editing outcomes in vertebrates using tools such as CRISPR-Cas9. His work has led to a better understanding of local triggers for robustly activating an understudied DNA repair pathway, MMEJ (microhomology-mediated end joining), resulting in targeted induction of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) sequence changes, precise down to the single nucleotide level. As an emergency medicine resident, Dr. Ata is interested in developing molecular diagnostic tools for emergency department-relevant pathologies, starting with bedside detection of bacteremia using CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) to better inform antibiotic stewardship.

Connor M. Bunch, MD

Henry Ford Hospital

"Resuscitation of Severely Bleeding Patients Guided by Resonant Acoustic Rheometry"

Dr. Bunch is resident physician in the combined emergency medicine/internal medicine at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. His research interests include the resuscitation of the undifferentiated critically ill patient in the emergency room and the care thereafter in the intensive care unit. More specifically, Dr. Bunch’s research applies point-of-care viscoelastic hemostatic assays (e.g., thromboelastography [TEG], resonant acoustic rheometry [RAR]) to guide individualized blood component ratios and hemostatic adjuncts for severely hemorrhaging and/or coagulopathic patients. This interest sparked in medical school under the guidance of the legendary Dr. Mark Walsh wherein, early in the pandemic when clinicians were bereft of evidence, he was applying TEG to guide anticoagulant therapy and prevent bleeding/thromboses for inpatients with COVID-associated coagulopathy.

Since, then Dr. Bunch’s  interests have expanded to goal-directed massive transfusion, tertiary hemostasis, shock-induced endotheliopathy, trauma-induced coagulopathy, sepsis-induced coagulopathy, post-cardiac arrest syndrome-associated coagulopathy, and anticoagulant reversal —  areas where the early diagnosis and reversal of deranged blood viscosity, clot formation and termination, and endotheliopathy may enable optimization of macro- and microvascular blood flow to prevent further organ dysfunction/failure for the patient in shock. 

Reuben W. Horace, DO, MPH, MBA

Duke University

"Patient Perspective on Reducing Bias During ED Intake of ED Psychiatric Patients"

Dr. Horace is first-year resident at Duke University Medical Center with a research interest in emergency department disparities in underserved populations as well as pain outcomes. His recent scholarly work includes presenting pain research at national annual conferences, mentoring medical students, and being actively involved in community outreach.