T32 Scholars

T32 and R38 scholars with Drs. Matt Nayor, Program Director
and Vanessa Xanthakis, Principal Investigator

Current T32 Scholars

Saran Lotfollahzadeh, MD
Postdoctoral Associate NRSA
Research Mentor: Vipul C. Chitalia, MD, Ph.D.
Career Mentor: Nathanael Fillmore, PhD
Dr. Saran Lotfollahzadeh completed her integrated five-year general and vascular surgery residency program, followed by a clinical fellowship in Pediatric Surgery at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. She started her translational research work in vascular biology in the lab of Dr. Vipul Chitalia with the main focus of cardiovascular complications in patients with uremia. She was granted an American Heart Association Cardio-Oncology Fellowship to continue her work on cardiovascular complications in minoritized patient populations with cancer. She is currently pursuing a master’s in clinical research. Her current research focus includes cardiovascular complications at the intersection of cardio-metabolic risk factors in diverse patient populations. Other interests include cardiovascular access optimization in patients with uremia and cancer.

Kuldeep Singh, PhD
Postdoctoral Associate NRSA
Research Mentor: Rajeev Malhotra, MD
Career Mentor: Paul Yu, MD, PhD
Dr. Kuldeep Singh earned his PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, in 2015, where he specialized in cell and molecular biology. In 2016, he joined Prof. Kathleen Morgan’s lab as a postdoctoral associate, focusing on therapeutic targets for aging-induced aortic stiffness. Currently, Dr. Singh works as a research fellow in Rajeev Malhotra’s lab at Massachusetts General Hospital, where his research aims to unravel the molecular mechanisms of atherosclerosis, vascular calcification, and aortic stiffness, with the primary objective of identifying and validating new genetic targets for vascular calcification.

Frank Qian, MD, MPH
Postdoctoral Associate NRSA
Research Mentor: Matt Nayor, MD, MPH
Dr. Frank Qian is a current Cardiovascular Medicine Fellow at Boston Medical Center and Clinical Instructor in Medicine at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. He completed internal medicine residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School and received an MPH from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His research has focused on identifying determinants and prevention strategies for cardiometabolic diseases with a focus on biomarkers, metabolomics, proteomics, and genetic risk scores leveraging large-scale epidemiologic studies and randomized controlled trials. Additionally, he is interested in understanding the determinants of cardiovascular disease in Asian populations and in the application of multi-modality cardiovascular imaging techniques to evaluate cardiovascular disease phenotypes. He has received research awards and scholarships from the American Heart Association, National Lipid Association, Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society, and Chinese American Medical Society. Currently, he is working in Dr. Matthew Nayor’s lab and using -omics approaches to better understand precise cardiometabolic phenotypes and determinants of intra-individual variations to stress responses, such as a mixed-meal challenge.