Student Updates

March 2022 Faculty Appointments, Promotions Announced

Congratulations to the following faculty on their recent appointment or promotion.

Professor

Xaralabos (Bob) Varelas, PhD, BUSM, Biochemistry, is a cellular and molecular biologist whose research focuses on understanding how polarity and mechanical cues direct cellular behavior to influence the development and homeostasis of tissues and organs, and how defects in such signals contribute to disease. A particular emphasis has been the study of the transcriptional effectors YAP and TAZ (YAP/TAZ), which are key regulators of the Hippo signaling pathway. Varelas’ studies have described essential roles for YAP/TAZ in epithelial cell fate control, immune cell biology, and in the development of cancer and fibrosis. He is co-director of the Cancer Biology research program in the Cancer Center and co-director of the Affinity Research Collaborative (ARC), which studies tissue fibrosis. He also is a member of the Pulmonary Center, Center for Multiscale and Translational Mechanobiology, Center for Network Systems Biology, and an affiliate member of the Center for Regenerative Medicine.

Associate Professor

Marc Larochelle, MD, BUSM, Medicine/GIM, is a clinician investigator with nationally recognized expertise in the use of large secondary data sources to study outcomes of individuals prescribed opioid analgesics for chronic pain and the identification and treatment of individuals with opioid use disorder. He serves as associate editor of Alcohol, Other Drugs and Health: Current Evidence, an online newsletter that summarizes important substance use research findings. He recently was named director of the General Internal Medicine Fellowship at Boston Medical Center (BMC), through which he mentors fellows and moderates works-in-progress sessions. Larochelle teaches medical students during their inpatient and ambulatory medicine clerkships and residents while on the inpatient GIM service at BMC.

Clinical Associate Professor

Mari Bentley, MD, MPH, BUSM, Family Medicine, is a clinician educator with expertise in primary care, comprehensive reproductive health care and palliative care. She teaches medical students, residents and fellows in a variety of settings including Greater Roslindale Medical and Dental Center, the OB/GYN BEACON Clinic and Boston Medical Center’s inpatient Palliative Care service. She has published a chapter on reproductive health equity and innovation during the COVID-19 pandemic and has developed a written educational module on how to perform a pelvic exam in pregnancy, which is required reading in the BUSM OB/GYN third-year clerkship. Bentley is working on a study to measure the impact of this educational intervention on trainee knowledge, confidence in physical examination skills, and ability to estimate gestational age.

Julia Potter, MD, BUSM, Pediatrics, is an adolescent medicine specialist whose clinical work and research focuses on adolescent contraceptive decision-making, parent-adolescent communication and adolescent mental health. She is PI of the ABCD Family Planning Program in the department, which brings Title X federal family planning support to improve access to family planning care, and serves as teaching faculty for the ABCD advanced family planning course. She collaborates with the department of OB/GYN as the adolescent consultant on a state-wide grant to improve provision of contraception at maternity hospitals across Massachusetts. In her role as director of the Adolescent Center, she has worked to improve universal adolescent depression screening and expand uptake and functionality of the confidential adolescent patient portal. In addition to her leadership of the Adolescent Center at Boston Medical Center, she is the medical director of the Boston Public Health Commission school-based health center program and school physician for Boston Public Schools.

Bharati Sinha, MD, BUSM, Pediatrics, is director of Quality and Safety for Newborn Medicine at Boston Medical Center (BMC). She designs clear visual evidence-based algorithms and clinical practice guidelines for newborn care in a more user-friendly and clinically effective format. She used point-of-care ultrasound to improve accuracy of line placement and protect the newborns from X-ray exposures. Her participation on BMC’s Chronic Lung Disease task force has resulted in significant reduction in the disease in premature babies. This health outcome for preterm babies at BMC is one of the best among hospitals in Massachusetts. She serves on the leadership board of Quality Improvement and Research of the international Newborn Brain Society. Sinha’s research focuses on reducing disability from stroke, and newborn brain injury. Her work in newborn neurology was the first to demonstrate a significant reduction in melatonin MT1 receptors in a newborn mouse model of hypoxic-ischemic brain injury and for which she was awarded the William Randolph Hearst award by Harvard University and the Natalie Zucker grant for women scholars by Tufts University.

February 2022 Faculty Appointments, Promotions Announced

Congratulations to the following faculty on their recent appointment or promotion.

Professor

Sondra Crosby, MD, BUSM, Medicine/GIM and SPH, Health Law, Ethics and Human Rights, specializes in human rights, medical ethics, torture and refugee health. She has worked as a medical expert on torture for the Military Commissions Defense Organization (MCDO) and been an expert consultant on torture evaluation in countries around the world and to the U.S. Congress. She is co-founder of the Immigrant and Refugee Health Program in Primary Care at Boston Medical Center (BMC) and co-chair of BMC’s Immigrant Task Force. Crosby has made significant contributions to trauma documentation and providing care to refugees who have suffered human rights violations. Her scholarship has been fundamental to the development of the academic field of refugee health and human rights, and includes articles in the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA on medical ethics and force-feeding, separation of families at the border, and prisoner abuse at Guantanamo and the CIA black sites.

Clinical Professor

Robert Eberhardt, MD, BUSM, Medicine/Cardiovascular Medicine and Surgery, directs the vascular medicine service and non-invasive vascular imaging laboratories at Boston Medical Center (BMC), positioned critically between medical and surgical service lines. He has served key roles on national credentialing and accrediting organizations involved in vascular medicine and vascular laboratory testing. His expertise is recognized in practice guidelines documents and clinical training standards. Eberhardt has mentored 12 fellows in vascular medicine, including many active in academic medicine, and trained numerous physicians in vascular diagnostic imaging. An attending on BMC’s inpatient vascular medicine consult service, cardiac intensive care unit and general cardiology inpatient services, he also supervises both cardiology fellows and internal medicine residents through his outpatient continuity clinics. He has been recognized annually as one of the best cardiovascular clinicians in Boston magazine’s Best Doctors since 2016. In addition, he lectures locally and nationally, and co-authored more than 70 articles and book chapters on vascular related topics.

Associate Professor

Jennifer Beane-Ebel, PhD, BUSM, Medicine/Computational Biomedicine, applies computational methods to characterize molecular alterations associated with smoke exposure and lung disease. She has characterized the molecular and cellular response to chronic smoke exposure and smoking cessation in the airway field of injury and developed a clinicogenomic biomarker for early lung cancer detection. She also studies the molecular alterations associated with development and progression of bronchial premalignant lesions, precursors to lung squamous cell carcinoma and markers of increased lung cancer risk. She uses integrative analyses of genomic, spatial proteomic, and pathology imaging data to identify mechanisms of early immune suppression in premalignant lesions.

Francesca Seta, PhD, BUSM, Medicine/Vascular Biology, focuses on the biology of vascular smooth muscle and its contribution to maladaptive vascular remodeling associated with arterial stiffness and aortic aneurysms/dissections, two vascular conditions with no current therapies. She has identified novel vascular smooth muscle-specific molecular mechanisms, which could be targeted therapeutically to prevent vascular diseases and established methods to assess arterial stiffness in experimental animals. Seta directed the BUMC Metabolic Phenotyping and IVIS Core since 2018 and has mentored undergraduate and graduate students and postdocs. She serves as an advisor for the MSc program in Bioresearch Core Technologies and on the admissions committees for MSc/PhD programs.

Kaku So-Armah, PhD, BUSM, Medicine/GIM, is an epidemiologist with expertise in analyses of cohort studies and use of electronic health record data for research. His lab uses data on health behaviors, risk factors and disease diagnoses coupled with molecular biology to identify and explain novel epidemiological associations and identify novel intervention targets. His research focuses on substance use and chronic infections like human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and tuberculosis (TB) and how these exposures impact the heart, liver and lungs. So-Armah is committed to making his lab, GIM and BU leaders in inclusive excellence, such that all who work in these spaces can be who they are, rather than who they think they need to be to fit in.

Brian Yun, MD, MBA, MPH, BUSM, Emergency Medicine, is a clinical operations leader and expert in process improvements. Yun was recruited from Massachusetts General Hospital, where he developed and studied innovations in Emergency Department and hospital operations to improve throughput and capacity and reduce crowding. He also developed and implemented alternatives to admission programs to lower costs, increase hospital capacity and improve patient experience. These programs include the ED Observation Unit, Home Hospital program, and program to facilitate community hospital transfers.

Clinical Associate Professor

Lisa Caruso, MD, MPH, BUSM, Medicine/Geriatrics, specializes in improving care for older adults and developing innovative geriatrics clinical education models, particularly in dementia and diabetes in older adults. She received a Geriatric Academic Career Award in 2002 to study an older, underserved and frail population with diabetes and cardiovascular disease using evidence-based skills. She co-developed the Chief Resident Immersion Training Program in the Care of Older Adults, which has been disseminated nationally. She directs quality and patient safety for the Department of Medicine, to transform Boston Medical Center into an Age-Friendly Health System using the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s 4M framework. Caruso also leads the Quality Improvement elective for the fourth-year medical students, and co-leads the yearly Quality Improvement and Patient Safety curriculum for internal medicine residents in their PGY1 and PGY2 years.

Frederic Little, MD, BUSM, Medicine/Pulmonary, Allergy, Sleep & Critical Care Medicine, studies airway inflammation in allergic asthma, and translational approaches to diagnostics of allergic disease. He was PI of a clinical study to develop a rapid saliva diagnostics platform to determine the causes of deterioration in asthma control. Little directs the Allergy/Immunology Fellowship Training Program and was medical director of the Pulmonary, Allergy and Sleep Clinics. He has directed several clinical care improvement initiatives including antibiotic stewardship and Boston Medical Center's COPD Readmission Reduction Program and serves as an Allergy/Immunology subject matter expert for the CDC Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment program.