Faculty Affairs

October 2025 Faculty Promotions

Congratulations to the following Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine faculty on their recent appointment or promotion.

Clinical Professor

Charles Tifft, MD’73, Medicine/GIM, specializes in the prevention and treatment of hypertension and cardiovascular disease. The clinician-educator has been a member of the BU/Boston Medical Center (BMC) community since he was a medical student and he joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 1978. He was promoted to associate professor in 1985. His research contributed to landmark studies on the treatment of hypertensive emergencies with angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors. Since 1991, Dr. Tifft has run a busy clinical general medicine practice affiliated with BMC and continued his academic pursuits with regular participation in grand rounds and occasional publication reviews and commentaries on hypertension.

Associate Professor

Stacy Andersen, PhD, Medicine/Geriatrics, studies cognition, particularly cognitive resilience, in cohorts with exceptional longevity. She is the co-director of the New England Centenarian Study and multiple PI of two National Institute on Aging-funded U19 grants, the Resilience/Resistance to Alzheimer’s Disease in Centenarians and their Offspring study and the Long Life Family Study. She is a core faculty member of the behavioral neuroscience doctoral program and has served on its admissions committee since 2018. She also is an ad hoc reviewer for 17 journals related to aging, cognition and Alzheimer’s disease; and has served on six NIH study sections reviewing career development awards (K awards), research project grants (R awards), and cooperative agreements (U19s), as well as study sections for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and a private foundation.

Heather Hsu, MD, MPH, Pediatrics, is a clinician-scientist who conducts policy-relevant health services research focused on advancing the quality, efficiency and equity of healthcare delivery across the lifespan. Her work leverages data locally and nationally to inform health policy, healthcare delivery and resource allocation decision-making. Dr. Hsu is the PI of an NIH K01 grant on improving healthcare delivery for opioid use disorder and a co-I on an AHRQ/PCORI P30 grant developing infrastructure and expertise to support a community-engaged learning health system that improves care delivery within the safety net. She also led the development of a national approach to pediatric sepsis surveillance, which was adopted by the CDC. Dr. Hsu is the recipient of the 2025 Excellence in Faculty Mentorship: Early Career Award. Her teaching and mentoring excellence has been recognized for five straight years on the Teaching Honor Roll, and she received the inaugural Leadership in Equity & Advocacy (LEAP) award from the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2023.

Charlene Ong, MD, MPHS, Neurology, is a physician-scientist in neurologic critical care whose research develops data-driven tools to detect neurological deterioration and support real-time decision making in acute brain injury. Her work integrates physiologic monitoring, particularly quantitative pupillometry and noninvasive intracranial compliance, with real-world clinical data to enable earlier recognition of decline and treatment response. She led foundational studies demonstrating pupillometry as an early marker of deterioration and developed one of the first externally validated pipelines to quantify eye movements from electrooculography and neurological examination elements from clinical documentation. Dr. Ong is the PI on an NINDS K23 grant and an American Heart Association Career Development Award, with additional support from Neuroptics, the Gertler Foundation, Brain4care and the Reddy Foundation, and serves as co-investigator on a multi-site NINDS R61 grant. She received the institution’s Excellence in Research Mentorship Award for 2025 and has mentored more than 40 trainees across clinical and data science projects.

Clinical Associate Professor

Rivka Ayalon, MD, Medicine/Nephrology, is a clinician-educator specializing in nephrology and hypertension. Dr. Ayalon founded the multidisciplinary hypertension clinic and collaborates with colleagues across multiple disciplines to advance the care of patients with complex and resistant hypertension. The clinic provides education for providers at all levels and has received national recognition as a specialized center for the evaluation and management of primary aldosteronism. It also offers advanced diagnostic and management tools, including antihypertensive drug testing to assess medication adherence. In addition, Dr. Ayalon implemented the use of unattended automated oscillometric blood pressure measurement across multiple clinics to improve accuracy and standardized assessment. Dr. Ayalon attends on the inpatient nephrology service and provides ongoing care for patients with end-stage kidney disease at DaVita Boston. She teaches residents on the renal medicine service and fellows on the nephrology consult service.

Neely Hines, MD, Radiology, returns to BU/BMC as a member of the breast imaging faculty. She joined our community in March 2013 as an attending breast radiologist and served as the section chief of breast imaging and director of the Breast Imaging Fellowship in the department of radiology. Dr. Hines streamlined clinical worklflow in the Belkin Breast Imaging Center, which led to more timely access to breast screening at the hospital. In 2016 she moved on to Beth Israel Deaconess/Harvard Medical School and then to Atrius Health, where she rose to associate chief of radiology. In that capacity, she developed outreach campaigns to improve screening mammography compliance in their patient population and implemented a peer mentoring program to support radiologists joining the practice. She also created a peer learning program to improve the quality of imaging care and helped to streamline integration of Atrius Health, Reliant Medical Group and Optum Health.

Aram Kaligian, MD, Family Medicine, is a clinician-educator with a special interest in medical education, global health and health system strengthening. For the past 20 years, Dr. Kaligian has served continuously as a continuity clinic residency preceptor of family medicine (FM) residents at South Boston Community Health Center (SBCHC), inpatient adult medicine attending teaching and supervisor of residents and medical students during hospital rotations, and as a medical student preceptor teaching third-year family medicine clerkship students assigned to SBCHC as their community-based site. In 2022, he was named director of the Boston University–Armenia Medical Partnership (BU-AMP), which strives to help improve the healthcare system of this country by establishing key relationships between BU departments and partners in Armenia. Working with the Ministry of Health and other institutions there, BU-AMP launched the “Health for Armenia” initiative, which is supplementing training of primary care physicians in the rural regions of Armenia and is building competency-based curriculum in medical professional education programs.

Lilani Perera, MD, Medicine/Gastroenterology, specializes in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Dr. Perera earned her MD with honors from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and completed fellowships in gastroenterology at the Medical College of Wisconsin and an IBD immunology research fellowship at Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York. She brings extensive experience directing multidisciplinary IBD programs in both academic and clinical settings, including as director of the IBD Program at the Medical College of Wisconsin (2010-2014), a leadership role in the IBD Program at Aurora Health System (2014-2023), and director of the IBD Center at Tufts Medical Center (2023-2025). In these positions, she developed programs providing care to thousands of patients and established dedicated IBD rotations for GI fellows. Dr. Perera is a fellow of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) and Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation, serves on the National Scientific Advisory Committee of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation, and chairs the Women’s Committee for the AGA. She also represents the Massachusetts Medical Society as a delegate to the American Medical Association House of Delegates. She joins BU/BMC as director of the Crohn’s and Colitis program.

Xinxin Sun, MD, PhD, Anatomy & Neurobiology, is a clinician-educator who focuses on medical anatomy and histology instruction. She joins BU from Tufts University School of Medicine where she served as curriculum co-director of the basic science program. Her expertise in medical education ranges across anatomy, histology, neuroscience, endocrinology and human pathology. She is an integrator of complex biological concepts with clinical applications for her students. Dr. Sun received her MBBS and MSc in genetics from Shandong University School of Medicine in China and PhD in genetics from Tufts University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

Elisabeth Woodhams, MD, MSc, Obstetrics and Gynecology/Complex Family Planning, focuses on mitigating disparities in access to comprehensive reproductive health care, specifically for complex abortion care. She serves currently as the ambulatory medical director for OBGYN, as well as the director of the division of family planning and the program director for the Fellowship in Complex Family Planning. Her clinical focus, research and scholarship aim to dismantle barriers to reproductive healthcare and build in their place patient-centered, sustainable structures and models of care across spaces caring for pregnancy capable patients. She works toward this through interdepartmental initiatives like the integration of anesthesia into the ambulatory procedure space for abortion care, inter-professional reproductive healthcare education, and research focused on provision of equitable and patient-centered reproductive healthcare for racialized communities and other groups that have been economically or socially marginalized.

Sally S. Vanerian, MD, Medicine/GIM, is a clinician-educator who has provided care to medically complex and diverse patients for more than 25 years at the VA Boston Healthcare System. The recipient of many teaching awards, throughout her career she has been an attending resident preceptor, working with residents in their continuity clinics, and has taught medical students. Since 2021, she has also precepted residents during their ambulatory rotations in the Ambulatory Diagnostic and Treatment Center. Most recently, Dr. Vanerian was appointed the VA site director for the advanced ambulatory care rotation for fourth-year Chobanian & Avedisian SOM students. She is a career-long member of the Armenian American Medical Association (AAMA). Since 2022, Dr. Vanerian has volunteered in the mentorship program of the American University of Armenia Turpanjian College of Health Sciences, in collaboration with the AAMA, meeting virtually with physicians in rural Armenia, providing guidance on challenging clinical cases in their practices, and giving lectures on the management of various medical conditions.