Current Fellows

Dr. Chao is a Veterans Affairs Research Fellow in Ann Arbor through the National Clinician Scholars Program and a General Surgery resident at Yale. She is originally from Queens, NY where she initially became interested in health disparities and structural violence. She studied at Harvard Medical School and wrote her thesis on the importance of disaggregation of Asian American Pacific Islander data. Prior to medical school, she has worked at The White House on the President's Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. As an undergraduate, she completed an ethnography of African Americans in St. Louis examining issues of distrust of healthcare which won the distinction as one of the top three undergraduate theses. Dr. Chao studied Anthropology through the Medicine and Society Program at Washington University in St. Louis where she was also a University Scholar in Medicine and an inaugural Civic Scholar of The Gephardt Institute for Public Service.
Career Interests: Dr. Chao is pursuing a career in academic surgery and is passionate about addressing issues of racial and socioeconomic status disparities, especially in obesity care. She believes that research is a powerful tool in advocating for patients and communities.
Research Interests: Her areas of interest are in: 1) identifying barriers to healthcare access for vulnerable populations 2) designing evidence-based policies and interventions to combat health inequity 3) improvement of data collection systems in race and social determinants of health. Dr. Chao employs both qualitative and quantitative methods in her research.

Angela Thelen is a first-year research fellow at the Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan and her medical degree at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine. She is currently a general surgery resident at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. Her academic interests revolve around surgical education and improving surgical quality and patient outcomes through education. She is primarily working with the Center for Surgical Training and Research. She is also pursuing a Master’s in Health Professions Education during her time as a research fellow.

Adam Markovitz is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy and an MD/PhD fellow in health policy economics at the University of Michigan. He is originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan and completed his undergraduate degree at Yale College. Long-term, Dr. Markovitz seeks to decrease health care spending and improve population health by identifying new models of paying for health care. His research focuses on the effects of value-based payment reforms and has been published in The BMJ, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA Internal Medicine, and Health Affairs. His PhD dissertation evaluated changes in spending, risk selection, and the response of frontline clinicians in Medicare accountable care organizations. His dissertation was funded by an AHRQ R36 Individual Dissertation Award and was awarded the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy Irving Louis Horowitz Award for Overall Most Outstanding Project of the Year.

Valeria is a General Surgery resident at the University of Michigan. Originally from Colombia, she completed her undergraduate education starting in her local community college, the State College of Florida. She obtained a B.A in Biochemistry from the New College of Florida and her medical degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago where she was an active member and leader of the Latino Medical Student Association. Valeria's research interests include workforce diversity with a focus on medicine and surgery, healthcare disparities, community-based intervention to increase access to safe surgery, and organ donation and transplantation in minority populations. She was selected as part of the 2020-2022 cohort of the National Clinician Scholars Program where she will be completing her Academic Development Time while pursuing a Master's Degree in Health & Healthcare Research. Valeria is the program lead for the LEAGUES Fellowship, a pipeline program designed for medical students interested in the intersection of racial and gender equity and surgery. 

Dr. Taylor is a research fellow with the National Clinician Scholars Program at the University of Michigan and a General Surgery resident at Stanford. She is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio and completed her undergraduate degree at The Ohio State University where she became interested in global health, leading her to work with Helping Babies Breathe in rural Honduras after graduating. She then studied at Harvard Medical School, during which she spent time in Rwanda working on implementation science at a cancer center, surgery education projects, and the National Surgical, Obstetric, and Anesthesia Plan with the Rwandan Ministry of Health. She is currently working towards a Masters in Health and Healthcare Research through the National Clinician Scholars Program and the Rackham Graduate School.

Her research focuses on improving access to quality surgical care for all through examining surgical infrastructure, finance, delivery, and workforce. She is ultimately interested in applying principles of Health Services Research and policy evaluation in low- and middle-income countries and capacity building through mentorship.

Nishant Ganesh Kumar is a first-year research fellow at the University of Michigan Center for Healthcare Outcomes & Policy. He spent the majority of his childhood growing up in Dubai, before completing his undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. He then graduated with his medical degree from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine before pursuing his training in plastic surgery through the integrated residency program at the University of Michigan. 

His research interests are broad and include studying patient-reported and clinical outcomes, survey-based research, medical education, and biomedical device development and design. Currently, Nishant is working on prospectively evaluating outcomes of a novel surgical technique to mitigate postamputation pain. In addition, through a collaboration with the School of Engineering and Coulter Program, he is working on a medical device to aid in wound debridement and irrigation. Nishant is also actively engaged in improving medical student and resident education and wellbeing. Overall, his goal is to form multidisciplinary collaborations to solve challenging medical problems and identify areas of improvement in surgical education and training.