Center for Clinical and Translational Science

On July 1, 2011, eight new Clinical Scholars joined the Rockefeller University Clinical Scholars Program. They are: Drs. Ana Emiliano, Thalia Farazi, Daniel Gareau, Sharon Karmon, Florian Klein, Ana Pereira, Jeremy Segal, and Ana Tuyama. Additionally, with support from the CCTS, Rachel Shively joined the Year-Off Training Program for Graduate or Medical Students in Clinical and Translational Science. Ms. Shively is spending her research year in the laboratory of Dr. Vincent Fischetti. Below are brief biographies and research interests of the new Scholars and medical student. Please join us in welcoming them.

Ana Emiliano, MD
aemiliano@rockefeller.edu
Mentor: Dr. Jeffrey Friedman

Dr. Ana Emiliano received her MD from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She completed her Internal Medicine and Psychiatry Residency at the University of Rochester, and her Endocrinology Fellowship at johns Hopkins University. As a Clinical Scholar in Dr. Friedman’s lab, Dr. Emiliano will be studying the mechanisms leading to the development of leptin resistance and how to circumvent this problem in order to effectively treat obesity.

Thalia Farazi, MD, PhD
tfarazi@rockefeller.edu
Mentor: Dr. Thomas Tuschl

Dr. Thalia Farazi received her MD and PhD from Washington University School of Medicine. She completed her Pediatrics Residency at Boston Children's, and her pediatric hematology/oncology and neuro-oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. As a Clinical Scholar in Dr. Tuschl’s lab, Dr. Farazi will study the role of post-transcriptional gene regulation in breast cancer. She is focusing on understanding the role of miRNAs and RNA binding proteins in tumorigenesis to identify diagnostic and prognostic markers, as well as define their regulated pathways

Daniel Gareau, PhD
dgareau@rockefeller.edu
Mentor: Dr. Jim Krueger

Dr. Dan Gareau received his PhD from Oregon Health Science University. He completed his post doc in Cancer Imaging at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Oregon Health Science University. As a Clinical Scholar in Dr. Krueger’s lab, Dr. Gareau will study biophotonics with an emphasis on novel spectroscopic and morphometric techniques for screening and characterizing skin cancer. Devices under development include a rapid confocal line-scanner for noninvasive, 3D, whole-lesion imaging with cellular resolution and a low-cost hyperspectral camera for enhanced dermoscopy. He is also developing software to automatically render quantitative pathometrics from the images.

Sharon Karmon, MD
skarmon@adarc.org
Mentor: Dr. Martin Markowitz

Dr. Sharon Karmon received her MD from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed her Infectious Disease fellowship at New York University School of Medicine. As a Clinical Scholar in Dr. Markowitz’s lab, Dr. Karmon will study transmitted HIV-1 drug resistance mutations and the role of ibalizumab, an anti-CD4 monoclonal antibody, in the treatment and prevention of HIV.

Florian Klein, MD
fklein@mail.rockefeller.edu
Mentor: Dr. Michel Nussenzweig

Dr. Florian Klein received his MD from the University of Cologne in Germany. He joined Dr. Michel Nussenzweig’s Laboratory of Molecular Immunology after completing his residency in Internal Medicine at The University of Cologne. As a Clinical Scholar in Dr. Nussenzweig’s lab., Dr. Klein will investigate the function of B lymphocytes and the development of antibodies in HIV-infected patients, in particular antibodies with broad neutralizing activity against HIV.

Ana Pereira, MD
apereira@rockefeller.edu
Mentor: Dr. Bruce McEwen

Dr. Ana Pereira received her MD from the Universidade Federal de São Paulo in Brazil, trained in neurology at Harvard Medical School, and did her post doctoral training in the Taub Institute for Alzheimer’s Disease at Columbia University Medical Center. As a Clinical Scholar in Dr. McEwen’s lab, Dr. Pereira will study the glutamatergic excitotoxic events that occur in the brains of patients in the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease with the use of advanced brain imaging techniques. She will also test potential therapeutic interventions that can retard the progression of the disease. In addition, Dr. Pereira will study the mechanisms of normal cognitive aging in rats and humans and the risk factors for pathological brain aging.

Jeremy Segal, MD, PhD
jsegal01@rockefeller.edu
Mentor: Dr. Elaine Fuchs

Dr. Jeremy Segal received his MD from Weill Cornell Medical Center and PhD from The Rockefeller University. He completed his Anatomic Pathology residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital and Molecular Genetic Fellowship at Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. As a Clinical Scholar in Dr. Fuchs’s lab, Dr. Segal will study the effect of aging on the skin from a stem cell perspective. Stem cells are the reservoir from which new mature cells originate when required for normal tissue homeostasis or the response to injury, and so it is important to determine how stem cells change with age and how these changes might underly the aged phenotype.

Ana C. Tuyama, MD
atuyama@rockefeller.edu
Mentors: Drs. Jan Breslow and Edward

Dr. Ana Tuyama received her MD from the School of Medicine at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, in Brazil. She completed her Internship, Internal Medicine Residency and Fellowship in Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York. As a Clinical Scholar in the labs of Drs. Breslow and Fisher, Dr. Tuyama's research focuses on nutrition and metabolic diseases, including lipoprotein metabolism, obesity, and fatty liver disease. More specifically, she currently studies how the process of autophagy regulates VLDL metabolism.

Rachel Shively
rachel.shively@mssm.edu
Mentor: Dr. Vincent Fischetti

Ms. Rachel Shively is currently a fourth year medical student at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in the 2011 CCTS Year-Off Medical Student Training Program in the lab of Dr. Fischetti. Ms. Shively is spending a year helping to develop a vaccine against the Group A Streptococcus. The vaccine is a conjugate vaccine composed of the M protein conserved region and the Group A carbohydrate.