As President of Academic & External Affairs and Chief Scientific Officer, Daniel Simon, MD leads the system’s strategy and performance across the spectrum of research including basic, translational, clinical and health services/outcomes. He also oversees UH’s graduate medical education and has primary responsibility for academic affiliations, including with Case Western Reserve University, Oxford University, NEOMED and Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He is charged with elevating the system’s performance in medical education and discovery to the highest levels and driving strategic philanthropy. Additionally, Dr. Simon oversees the Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals -- part of The Harrington Project for Discovery & Development and has executive leadership responsibility for the Office of Community Impact, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

Daniel Simon, MD, is a practicing cardiologist and continues to play a leading role in national and international clinical trials investigating new devices and anti-thrombotic drugs. A recipient of numerous research awards, Dr. Simon was elected into the American Society for Clinical Investigation, Association of University Cardiologists, and the Association of American Physicians. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed basic science and clinical journals.

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Stephanie Teal, MD, is the Obstetrician/Gynecologist-in-Chief of University Hospitals Health System and Arthur H. Bill Professor and Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Reproductive Biology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She leads an outstanding team of physicians, midwives, nurses and scientists who are dedicated to safe motherhood and care for women across the lifespan. She was previously Professor with Tenure of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics and Clinical Science at University of Colorado School of Medicine, where she served as Division Chief and Fellowship Director of Complex Family Planning, and Principal Investigator of the NICHD Contraceptive Clinical Trials Network. Dr. Teal has led many Phase II and Phase III studies of novel contraceptive delivery technologies, contraceptive steroids, and selective progesterone receptor modulators. She is a graduate of the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, completed her Obstetrics and Gynecology residency at UC San Diego, and completed her Fellowship in Complex Family Planning and Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology at Columbia University.

Sarah Ronis, MD, PhD, MPH, an academic pediatrician and health services researcher devoted to improving systems of care for low-income families and their children. Her work integrates frameworks derived from the fields of public health and clinical translational science, emphasizing the contributions of qualitative and mixed methods approaches to incorporate the perspectives of multiple stakeholders in such research efforts. In particular, she seeks to understand the multi-level influences on health trajectories, attending to how the interplay among health care systems features and family contexts determine the ways families from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds with lower income communicate with their clinicians, and the extent to which they may partner with their clinical teams. She is the Director of the UH Rainbow Center for Child Health & Policy (CCHP), which brings together skilled professionals with expertise in population health, public health, quality improvement and implementation science to facilitate multidisciplinary, collaborative approaches to pursue these efforts in partnership with families and community stakeholders. In addition, she serves as the Advocacy Domain Lead for the Emergency Medical Services for Children Innovation Improvement Center, coordinating the activities of the EMSC Family Advisory Network, and is a member of the Health Equity and Community Engagement Service Core for the Pediatric Pandemic Network. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College, Master of Public Health from the University of Rochester, and her MD as well as PhD in Clinical Translational Science from Case Western Reserve University.

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Fabio Cominelli, MD, PhD, is a highly respected clinician with strong expertise in clinical program development for the diagnosis and treatment of patients with digestive diseases and has more than 30 years of experience and continuous NIH funding in cytokine biology and many seminal discoveries in this field of investigation.

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Mehdi Shishehbor, DO, MPH, PhD, is an internationally known interventional cardiologist with expertise in vascular medicine and minimally invasive procedures to treat coronary, carotid and abdominal aortic aneurysms, peripheral artery disease (PVD) and venous disease. He is an expert in minimally invasive approaches to reconstruct lower extremity arteries in order to treat critical limb ischemia (CLI) and prevent amputation. Dr. Shishehbor’s research interests include clinical outcomes in interventional cardiology, carotid and endovascular interventions. He has a special interest in novel minimally invasive percutaneous approaches to treat cardiac, venous and arterial diseases and has worked with a number of startup companies and early-stage devices.

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Amrou Sarraj, MD, is an internationally recognized vascular neurologist and clinician scientist with primary interests in endovascular thrombectomy and optimal patient selection. Dr. Sarraj is the Global Principal Investigator of SELECT 2, a recently completed, groundbreaking international randomized controlled trial that demonstrated efficacy and safety of endovascular thrombectomy in patients with large core strokes. He is the Principal Investigator of the SELECT trial, recently completed a multicenter United States study for imaging selection prior to endovascular thrombectomy. He has also served as the site PI for multiple other clinical trials.

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Yunmei Wang, PhD, focuses her research on inflammation in vascular injury and repair. She is an expert in various animal models including vascular injury (atherosclerosis, vasculitis, femoral artery wire injury) and thrombosis (carotid artery photochemical injury, tail bleeding time, intravital laser-induced thrombosis of the microvasculature, deep vein thrombosis) models.

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Atul Chopra, MD, PhD, is a physician-scientist and medical geneticist specializing in rare genetic disorders of metabolism and energy balance. An example of his work is the discovery of asprosin, a hormone that controls appetite and glucose levels, that was made possible by clinical examination of patients with mutations in a gene never previously associated with such processes.

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Kayla Klatt is a MD-PhD student at Case Western Reserve University in her first year of the PhD phase. She received her B.S. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Johns Hopkins University. She is conducting her thesis work in the lab of Reshmi Parameswaran, where her research is focused on uncovering the roles of serine proteases 1, 2, and 3 in immune-cell mediated cytotoxicity.

Daniel Spratt, MD, is an international expert in the management of prostate cancer. His research expertise centers on the development and validation of prognostic and predictive biomarkers used to personalize treatment of cancer patients while avoiding over- and under-treatment.

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