Current Scholars
Meet this year’s exceptional scholars who are driving implementation of effective strategies to raise awareness of diagnosis in medicine, support diagnostic excellence, and reduce diagnostic errors at the national level. If you would like to connect with any of them, please contact us.
Aparna Kulkarni, MBBS, MSc
Cohen Children’s Medical Center at Northwell Health
Freddy T. Nguyen, MD, PhD
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Claire O’Hanlon, PhD, MPP
RAND
Lauren M. Shapiro, MD, MS
University of California, San Francisco
R. Andrew Taylor, MD, MHS
University of Virginia School of Medicine
*Supported by The John A. Hartford Foundation to advance diagnostic excellence for older adults
Emily Abdoler, MD, MAEd
University of Michigan Medical School/Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System
Dr. Abdoler is a clinical associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases (ID) at the University of Michigan and a staff physician at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. She holds educational roles across the learner continuum at the University of Michigan, including assistant director of the preclinical curriculum at the medical school, associate program director of the ID Fellowship, and co-chair of the Academy of Medical Educators, a community of practice for educationally-interested faculty. Nationally, Dr. Abdoler has served on multiple educational committees for the Infectious Diseases Society of America and is a former recipient of the Association of American Medical College’s (AAMC) M. Brownell Anderson Award for Early-Career Medical Educators within the Central region.
Dr. Abdoler’s research interests lie in the areas of clinical reasoning and reflective practice, and she is engaged in qualitative and mixed-methods research projects at the intersection of these areas and education. As an extension of her research, she has developed curricular tools for clinical reasoning in ID, as well as management reasoning teaching tools. Her current work is focused on creating a longitudinal reflective practice curriculum for graduate medical education trainees, with the goal of improving their diagnostic acumen and clinical reasoning.
Dr. Abdoler earned her B.A. in molecular biology and bioethics from William Jewell College. She then completed a predoctoral fellowship in bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. She earned her M.D. from the University of Michigan Medical School and completed her internal medicine residency and infectious diseases fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. While in training, she also obtained her M.A.Ed. through the University of California, Berkeley, and completed a VA Health Professions Education Evaluation and Research Fellowship at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.
Proposal: REFLECT: Reflective Exercises for Learning diagnosis while Engaged in Clinical Training
Bubu A. Banini, MD, PhD
Yale School of Medicine/Yale New Haven Health System
Dr. Banini is an assistant professor of medicine in digestive diseases at Yale School of Medicine, Translational Research Director of the Metabolic Health and Weight Loss Program, and Associate Director of the Clinical and Translational Core of the Yale Liver Center. Dr. Banini has also served on several national committees, including as an ad hoc reviewer on Study Sections of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, mentorship and research committees for the American Association for the Study of Liver diseases, the American Gastroenterology Association, and the American College of Gastroenterology, and on the National Medical Visionary Advisory Board for the American Liver Foundation.
Dr. Banini specializes in digestive diseases, treating various liver conditions, especially steatotic liver diseases including metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD; previously known as NAFLD or fatty liver disease) and alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD). She recently co-chaired the Connecticut State Working Group on steatotic liver diseases, established by the Connecticut State General Assembly to provide recommendations to the state on how to address the rising prevalence of MASLD. Alongside her clinical work, her research in steatotic liver diseases addresses pathophysiology of disease and application to therapeutic interventions, sex differences in liver disease, screening and diagnosis, population health, among other areas. Dr. Banini’s proposal for the Diagnostic Excellence program seeks to advance diagnostic excellence through leveraging electronic health record data for early identification and clinical decision support for individuals with steatotic liver diseases.
Dr. Banini received her B.A. in chemistry and biology at Swarthmore College, during which she spent time at Oxford University on an Honors Study Abroad program. She then received her combined M.D./Ph.D. degrees from Sidney Kimmel Medical College and the Jefferson College of Graduate Studies at Thomas Jefferson University. Subsequently, she completed her internship, residency, and chief residency in internal medicine at Montefiore Medical Center and Montefiore New Rochelle Hospital. Thereafter, she completed an NIH-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota where she studied mechanisms of steatohepatitis, fibrosis and hepatocellular cancer. Subsequently supported by an NIH T32 training grant, Dr. Banini completed Research and Clinical Fellowships in Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). Dr. Banini is board certified in gastroenterology, transplant hepatology, and obesity medicine.
Proposal: Improving Diagnosis of Steatotic Liver Diseases through an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Based Practical and Scalable Approach
Andrea Bradford, PhD
Baylor College of Medicine
Dr. Bradford is a licensed psychologist and an associate professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. In her clinical practice at Baylor Medicine, she provides psychological assessment and intervention services for patients with serious and chronic medical conditions, with a special focus on digestive disease populations. In addition to her faculty role, Dr. Bradford serves as the Editor of the Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings.
Dr. Bradford’s research focuses on translating the emerging science of diagnostic safety into practical tools for healthcare organizations and clinicians. With support from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Dr. Bradford led the development and field testing of two AHRQ resources, Measure Dx and Calibrate Dx. She is currently the Principal Investigator of an AHRQ-funded project to further evaluate Calibrate Dx in two hospital settings. Her research interests also include improving diagnosis of mental disorders and translating diagnostic safety measurement and learning concepts to mental health care settings.
Dr. Bradford received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. She completed her clinical internship and postdoctoral research fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine.
Proposal: Implementing Strategies for Achieving Diagnostic Excellence in Mental Health
Nina Gold, MD, MS
Massachusetts General Hospital
Dr. Gold is a clinician-researcher focused on expanding genomic screening for treatable genetic conditions, particularly in newborns and children. She currently serves as a practicing medical geneticist and biochemical geneticist at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she serves as Associate Director of Research for the Mass General Brigham Biobank and Director of Prenatal Medical Genetics.
Dr. Gold’s research blends implementation science and bioinformatics to improve screening approaches for rare genetic disorders across all ages. She is also a co-investigator on BabySeq II, a randomized trial of whole genome sequencing in newborns. She is committed to advancing genomic screening through methods that are clinically useful, equitable, and scalable to develop tools to support front-line clinicians in providing timely and optimal care for individuals with rare genetic disorders.
Dr. Gold received her B.A. in psychology from Colby College and her M.D. and M.S. in medical bioinformatics from Harvard Medical School. She completed a combined residency in pediatrics and medical genetics at Boston Children’s Hospital and a fellowship in medical biochemical genetics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Proposal: Identification of Undiagnosed Adults at Risk for Treatable Genetic Disorders
Katherine E. Goodman, JD, PhD
University of Maryland School of Medicine
Dr. Goodman is an assistant professor of epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, an Investigator with the University of Maryland Center for Innovation in Diagnosis, and an Investigator and the Director of the Generative AI Lab at the University of Maryland Institute for Health Computing. Prior to becoming an epidemiologist, Dr. Goodman was a practicing attorney in the area of food and drug administration (FDA) law.
Dr. Goodman’s research focuses on two closely related research domains: (1) the application of novel informatics and machine learning/artificial intelligence (AI) methods, including natural language processing and large language models, to large electronic health record data, particularly clinical notes; and (2) the regulation and legal oversight of clinical algorithms and emerging AI technologies. Dr. Goodman’s research spans multiple clinical domains, from infectious diseases to oncology to maternal-fetal medicine, with a particular passion for improving the screening and diagnosis of antimicrobial resistance gut carriage and early-onset colorectal cancer (CRC). For the Diagnostic Excellence program, Dr. Goodman’s proposal seeks to harness the power of generative AI to extract patient symptoms from notes at scale, paired with the power of machine learning and predictive AI to estimate disease probabilities and uncover relational data patterns, to improve timely diagnosis of early-onset CRC.
Dr. Goodman received her B.A. from Dartmouth College, her J.D. from Columbia Law School, and her Ph.D. in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where she was an AHRQ R36-funded doctoral fellow.
Proposal: ‘Unlocking’ Patient Symptoms with Generative AI to Promote Diagnostic Excellence
Snigdha Jain, MD, MHS*
Yale School of Medicine
Dr. Jain is a physician-scientist who currently serves as an assistant professor of medicine at the Yale School of Medicine in the Section of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine. She is an advocate for promoting gender equity and serves as the Chair of the Mentorship Sub-Committee of the American Thoracic Society (ATS) Women in Critical Care Committee and past President and current board member of the Board of Directors for the Phyllis Bodel Childcare Center at Yale University.
Dr. Jain’s research, funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the Francis Family Foundation, the Yale Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center, and the Yale Office of Physician Scientist Development, focuses on improving long-term outcomes of older adults who survive hospitalization with a stay in the intensive care unit (ICU). She serves as Principal Investigator of multiple research projects targeted towards improving recovery after critical illness and reducing overtreatments in the ICU that predispose older adults to long-term functional and cognitive impairments. Her expertise in long-term outcomes research after critical illness is internationally recognized as evident by her leadership as Vice-Chair of the Joint ATS/European Respiratory Society Guideline for Rehabilitation and Mobilization in the ICU and the Society of Critical Care Medicine Guideline for Caring for Critically Ill Older Adults. Dr. Jain’s proposal for the Diagnostic Excellence program aims to leverage the electronic health record system to support ICU clinicians in achieving diagnostic excellence for critically ill older adults.
Dr. Jain completed medical school at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and residency in internal medicine at the University of Iowa before starting her fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She joined Yale School of Medicine to pursue a post-doctoral research fellowship in the NIA-funded T32 Geriatric Clinical Epidemiology and Aging-Related Research program.
Proposal: Improving Diagnostic Decision-Making for Weaning Sedation and Ventilator Support in Critically Ill Older Adults: An Electronic-Health Record Based Approach
*Supported by The John A. Hartford Foundation to advance diagnostic excellence for older adults
Aparna Kulkarni, MBBS, MSc
Cohen Children’s Medical Center at Northwell Health
Dr. Kulkarni is the Director of Quality Improvement and Outcomes at the Heart Center, Cohen Children’s Medical Center, part of Northwell Health in New York. She serves as an associate professor of pediatrics at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine. A recognized leader in her field, Dr. Kulkarni was selected for the 2024–2026 Sandra J. Lewis Mid-Career Leadership Program by the American College of Cardiology (ACC). She also holds committee appointments with both the ACC and the European Society of Cardiology.
Dr. Kulkarni’s clinical expertise spans fetal, non-invasive cardiovascular imaging and general pediatric cardiology. Her research centers on advancing diagnostic excellence in fetal echocardiography, particularly for the assessment of congenital heart disease. Her work emphasizes coordinated care approaches tailored to patients’ social needs to improve health outcomes and patient engagement. Dr. Kulkarni’s investigations also explore non-invasive imaging, congenital heart disease outcomes, and health equity. She has a particular focus on the intergenerational transmission of disease in children born to mothers with diabetes and obesity, as well as on the intersection of cardiovascular outcomes and health policy. Dr. Kulkarni’s proposal for the Diagnostic Excellence program reflects this multidisciplinary commitment to equity, evidence-based care, and patient-centered judicious resource use.
Dr. Kulkarni received her medical degree from Seth G.S. Medical College, Mumbai University, and completed her pediatrics residency at Weill Cornell Medical Center, followed by fellowship training in pediatric cardiology at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan. She also holds an M.Sc. in health economics, policy, outcomes and management in cardiovascular sciences from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Proposal: Comprehensive Needs Identification and Enhanced Care Coordination to Support Access and Achieve Diagnostic Excellence in Echocardiogram Assessments of Fetuses with Congenital Heart Disease
Freddy T. Nguyen, MD, PhD
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Nguyen is a physician-scientist, educator, entrepreneur, and translational leader working at the intersection of diagnostics, innovation, and clinical medicine. He currently serves as Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Catalyst Scholars Program, where he leads a hands-on training initiative for undergraduate students, nursing residents, and early-career researchers to guide the participants through clinical problem identification, needs validation, and early-stage innovation. Dr. Nguyen is also the CEO and Co-Founder of Nine Diagnostics, a biotechnology company advancing functional precision medicine through low-cost nanosensor diagnostics and AI-guided interpretation. Its core platform leverages carbon nanotube sensors to detect disease-specific molecular patterns in blood serum, combined with contextual clinical information such as demographics, comorbidities, social and environmental factors.
Dr. Nguyen’s academic work focuses on diagnostic technologies that provide timely, clinically actionable insights across diverse care environments. He has led the development of optical and nanosensor-based platforms—including Raman spectroscopy, optical coherence tomography, and nanotechnology—that support early detection and informed clinical decision-making. His research emphasizes design strategies that account for physiological variation, clinical setting, and infrastructure constraints, ensuring that these tools can be effectively deployed. In parallel, he studies how diagnostic innovations move from concept to application, and how physician-scientists contribute across research, development, and implementation.
Dr. Nguyen earned his undergraduate degrees in chemistry and mathematics from Rice University. He completed an MD-PhD program in physical chemistry at the University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign, where he was a Department of Defense Predoctoral Fellow. He served as an Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital—an award honoring Dr. Beckman’s legacy of translating breakthrough science into impactful instrumentation. Dr. Nguyen completed clinical training in pathology at Mount Sinai Hospital and transfusion medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. A long-time community builder, Dr. Nguyen is the Founding President of the American Physician Scientists Association and co-founder of the MIT COVID-19 Challenge and MIT Hacking Racism in Healthcare.
Proposal: Developing a Patient-Centered Framework to Guide Medical Diagnostic Technology Development
Claire O’Hanlon, PhD, MPP
RAND
Dr. O’Hanlon is a policy researcher at RAND and professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy. She also holds an appointment as a Research Scientist at the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and a Visiting Scientist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Dr. O’Hanlon is a health services and policy researcher experienced in applied qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. Her research focuses on quality measurement and quality improvement for patients with serious and chronic conditions. With collaborators at Cedars-Sinai Health System, she has been leading the development of patient experience measures for timeliness of cancer diagnosis. Along with a team at RAND, she is also working on a national implementation and evaluation of Measure Dx, an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality-funded resource to help healthcare organizations to identify, analyze, and learn from diagnostic safety events.
Dr. O’Hanlon received her Ph.D. in policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School (now the RAND School of Public Policy). She also holds a B.S. in engineering from Harvey Mudd College, M.P.P. from the University of Chicago Harris School, and a certificate in health administration and policy from the University of Chicago. Dr. O’Hanlon completed her postdoctoral work at the Veterans Affairs Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, where she was an AcademyHealth Delivery Systems Science Fellow.
Proposal: Understanding Patient Delays in Cancer Diagnosis
Lauren M. Shapiro, MD, MS
University of California, San Francisco
Dr. Shapiro is an associate professor of orthopaedic surgery at the University of California, San Francsico (UCSF), and affiliate faculty member at the UCSF Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies. She founded and directs sALLud - the Socioeconomic, Acculturation, Language Lab for the study of under-represented patients and healthcare Disparities.
Dr. Shapiro’s research program focuses on the intersections of quality and value, patient preferences and shared decision making, and health equity with the goal of making high-quality, patient-centered healthcare available to all patients, regardless of language, culture, or socioeconomic status. She serves as the Principal Investigator of a National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases K23 award focusing on improving outcomes for Spanish-speaking patients with fractures.
Dr. Shapiro completed her undergraduate degree and residency in Orthopaedic Surgery at Stanford University. She then completed a fellowship in hand, upper extremity, and microvascular surgery at Duke University, at which she also completed an M.S. in health analytics from the Duke Fuqua School of Business.
Proposal: Minimizing Diagnostic and Treatment Delays in Wrist Fracture Care: A Multicenter Mixed-Methods Approach
R. Andrew Taylor, MD, MHS
University of Virginia School of Medicine
Dr. Taylor is a physician-scientist and national leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven healthcare innovation. As Professor and Vice Chair of Research and Innovation in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Virginia, he brings over a decade of experience in clinical informatics, diagnostic safety, and implementation science. Previously, Dr. Taylor served as Director of AI for the Department of Emergency Medicine at Yale University and led the interdisciplinary Yale AI in Medicine Lab (Y-IAIML), uniting cognitive scientists, ethicists, designers, and engineers to build trustworthy diagnostic AI systems. He has also been deeply involved in education, directing AI and informatics courses at Yale College and the School of Public Health, and mentoring a diverse cohort of over 30 trainees, many of whom have gone on to prestigious academic and industry positions. In addition to his academic work, he has served in elected local government roles.
Dr. Taylor’s work focuses on creating scalable, human-centered AI systems that improve diagnostic accuracy, reduce harm, and empower frontline clinicians. His grant portfolio includes principal and co-investigator roles on numerous diagnostic and clinical decision support initiatives, such as an NIH-supported AI decision aid for urinary tract infection diagnosis (PredUTI), a real-time surveillance framework for opioid use disorder, and multiple projects developing LLM-based tools to improve diagnostic safety and equity in emergency care. Most recently, he co-led the development of a novel large language model-powered e-trigger system for identifying diagnostic errors in high-risk emergency settings. As an NAM Scholar in Diagnostic Excellence, Dr. Taylor seeks to advance the national scaling of AI-based diagnostic surveillance systems that are robust, explainable, and embedded within learning health systems. His long-term vision is to transform diagnostic quality through interdisciplinary innovation—ensuring that every missed diagnosis becomes a learning opportunity, not a silent harm.
Proposal: Bringing Diagnostic Quality Evaluation in the Emergency Department to Scale Through Artificial Intelligence