People

Dina Wallin, MD

University of California, San Francisco

Dr. Dina Wallin is an associate clinical professor of emergency medicine and pediatric emergency medicine at UCSF-San Francisco General Hospital, where she is the Director of Didactics for the EM residency. Her interest in bioethics began during her undergraduate studies at Stanford University, and she continued to participate in the field throughout residency and fellowship. Currently, she sits on the UCSF Medical Ethics Committee, the Benioff Children's Hospital Pediatric Bioethics interest group, and the SAEM and ACEP Ethics Committees.

Nancy S. Onisko, DO

UT Southwestern

Nancy Onisko, D.O., FACEP, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at UT Southwestern. She is also the co-director of the Perinatal Intervention Program at Parkland Hospital and Health System. Her areas of interest include addiction medicine, general toxicology, toxinology (the study of venomous animals and poisonous plants), new drugs of abuse as well as DEI and Social Emergency Medicine.

Dr. Onisko earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from Michigan State University. After college, she spent five years working as a Clinical Research Associate at the University of California at San Diego before pursuing her dream of becoming a physician. She graduated from Midwestern University, Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine in Phoenix, Ariz., in 2003. She then completed her internship at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton, Calif., in 2004 and her residency in Emergency Medicine at Wayne State University and Detroit Receiving Hospital in Detroit, Mich., in 2007.

Dr. Onisko is board certified in Emergency Medicine and Addiction Medicine and spent five years practicing community-based emergency medicine in California before returning to academia to pursue a fellowship in toxicology. She enjoyed the cerebral atmosphere of academia so much that she then completed a second fellowship in Global Health and Disaster Medicine and stayed on as an attending physician and Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine at UTSW. Her passions outside of medicine include international travel, tennis, music, photography, social justice issues, and animal rescue.

Edgardo Ordonez, MD, MPH

Baylor College of Medicine

Dr. Ordoñez is an Associate Professor of Emergency and Internal Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM). He received his medical and public health degrees from Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School and School of Public Health. He completed a combined emergency and internal medicine residency at Christiana Care in Newark, Delaware. Dr. Ordoñez has been an Inclusion and Equity Ambassador at BCM since 2016. His advanced training includes being a Center of Excellence in Health Equity, Research, and Training Junior Faculty Scholar from 2019-2020 and a fellow in the inaugural Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) DEI Leadership Fellowship in 2022. He was also a participant in the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Leadership for Health Equity Program. He is the Director of Health Equity and Community Engagement for the Henry JN Taub Department of Emergency Medicine and the Health Equity Curriculum Thread Director for BCM’s School of Medicine. Nationally, he serves as Immediate Past President of the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine’s (SAEM) Academy for Diversity and Inclusion in Emergency Medicine, the SAEM Equity & Inclusion Committee, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, and the Council of Residency Director’s in Emergency Medicine (CORD) Diversity and Inclusion Committee. His interests include workforce diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace, healthcare delivery, health equity, social determinants of health, and mentorship.

Marc A. Probst, MD, MS

New York–Presbyterian Columbia University Medical Center

Dr. Probst is the Director of General Emergency Medicine Research at Columbia University Medical Center. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree and medical degree (MD) from McGill University in Montreal, Canada before moving to Los Angeles to pursue residency training at LA-County USC Medical Center. He then went on to complete a research fellowship at the UCLA Medical Center obtaining a Master of Science degree in Health Policy and Management from the UCLA School of Public Health. Dr. Probst joined the Columbia faculty in 2021 and is currently funded through an R01 grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to study syncope risk-stratification. His research focuses on shared decision-making and syncope in the Emergency Department.

Amber K. Sabbatini, MD, MPH

University of Washington

Dr. Sabbatini is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Health Systems and Population Health at the University of Washington. She is a federally-funded health services researcher who studies how the delivery of hospital care affects patient outcomes, resource utilization, and quality. Her work has been funded by the NIA, NIMH, AHRQ, Washington Department of Health, and several foundations. Her current research revolves around evaluating the impact of payment policies and delivery system reforms on health outcomes and costs, especially as it pertains to mental heath delivery and outcomes for Medicaid enrollees.

Eva Tovar Hirashima, MD, MPH

University of California, Riverside

Dr. Eva Tovar Hirashima is an Assistant Clinical Professor at University of California Riverside and the Ultrasound Fellowship Director in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Riverside Community Hospital. Dr Tovar was born and raised in Mexico City. She went to medical school at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and did an internal medicine residency before her journey up north. In Boston, she completed an emergency medicine residency at Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency, and did an ultrasound fellowship at University of Maryland. In 2017, she moved to Southern California. Since then, Dr. Tovar has participated-in and spear-headed cross-border medical education initiatives in areas such as street medicine, prehospital care and POCUS. She currently serves as the EMS director of the Mexican Red Cross in Tijuana, and is a visiting professor at the Autonomous University of Baja California School of Medicine where she organizes monthly POCUS workshops for residents from different specialties, EMTs, medical students and midwives. She is also the co-founder of UPAndo Latinoamerica, a FOAMed POCUS resource in Spanish created and curated by a collective of female EM physicians working in Mexico.

Sara Crager, MD

University of California Los Angeles

Dr. Sara Crager received her medical degree from the Yale School of Medicine. She did her Emergency Medicine residency training at UCLA, and went on to complete a Critical Care fellowship at Stanford. Dr. Crager is currently an Assistant Professor at the UCLA-David Geffen School of Medicine with a joint appointment in the Departments of Anesthesia and Emergency Medicine. She works clinically in the Cardiothoracic and Surgical ICUs at UCLA, as well as the Medical ICU at Antelope Valley Medical Center. She is the creator of the EM:RAP ICU Fundamentals series, as well as the emergency critical care FOAMed website ICUedu.org and the ICUedu podcast. Dr. Crager also works with the NGO EM:RAP Global Outreach on improving access to medical education, and is core faculty with the EM:RAP Access+Innovation in Medical Education (AIME) fellowship. She has won multiple teaching awards and lectures nationally and internationally.

Ryan McKillip, MD

Advocate Health Care/Advocate Christ Medical Center, University of Illinois Chicago

Dr. McKillip is clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine at University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago, and the co-director of research and publication for the department of emergency medicine at Advocate Christ Medical Center. Dr. McKillip’s work focuses on the integration of technology and artificial intelligence with medical education and practice. Dr. McKillip received a BS from Pepperdine University and an MD from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. He completed residency in Emergency Medicine at Advocate Christ Medical Center.

Rebekah J. Richards, MD, MPH

The Ohio State University

Rebekah J. Richards MD MPH is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at The Ohio State University. Her academic focus is translational science with an emphasis on system-based interventions to support clinical decision making and improve health care quality.

Jessica Pelletier, DO

Washington University in St. Louis

Jessica Pelletier, DO, is an Emergency Medicine Education Fellow and Adjunct Residency APD at Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine. Dr. Pelletier attended medical school at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine and residency at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. She serves as the African Medical Advisor with Techies Without Borders, a global nonprofit that delivers continuing medical education to resource-constrained regions. Her research interests involve procedural and simulation education, and the human factors of the high-acuity applications of this teaching. Dr. Pelletier's interests include simulation-based undergraduate and graduate medical education, cognitive load theory, the use of osteopathic manipulative therapy (OMT) in the emergency department, and expanding emergency medicine to regions where it is not fully developed as a specialty.

Aalap Shah, MD

Medical University of South Carolina

Aalap Shah, MD is currently an Assistant Professor at Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston, SC. He curently serves as the Director of the Emergency Ultrasound Fellowship and as Core Faculty for the Emergency Medicine Residency. He also serves on the SAEM-AEUS digital/social media committee, as well as SAEM Education and Virtual Presence committees. He is editor-in-chief of the ultrasound education website HolyCitySono.com and has been a regular contributor to FOAMed previously via ACEP, and various other independent websites. He previously completed his Emergency Ultrasound fellowship at MUSC, his Emergency Medicine residency at the University of Cincinnati, and completed Medical School at SUNY-Downstate.

James H. Paxton, MD MBA

Wayne State University School of Medicine (Detroit, MI)

James H. Paxton MD MBA is an Associate Professor and the Director of Clinical Research for Detroit Receiving Hospital / Wayne State University (WSU) Department of Emergency Medicine, in Detroit, Michigan. He currently serves as Chairman of the SAEM Research Committee (2021-2024). He received both his MD and MBA degrees from the University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, OH), and completed EM residency training at Henry Ford Hospital (Detroit, MI). Dr. Paxton has served as core academic faculty for the EM residencies at both Sinai-Grace Hospital and Detroit Receiving Hospital since 2011, and is a past Chair of the WSU institutional review board. He is an active clinical researcher and has served as PI for numerous industry- and publically-funded trials.

Ali Raja, MD, MBA, MPH, FACHE

Massachusetts General Hospital

Ali S. Raja, MD, DBA, MPH, FACHE is the Deputy Chair and the Mooney-Reed Endowed Chair in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, as well as a Professor of Emergency Medicine and Radiology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Raja received his MPH from Harvard, MD and MBA degrees from Duke, and DBA from Case Western. After training in emergency medicine at the University of Cincinnati, he completed a research fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is board-certified in both emergency medicine and clinical informatics.

A practicing emergency physician and author of over 250 publications, his research focuses on improving the appropriateness of resource utilization in emergency medicine. He serves as President-Elect of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, President of the Massachusetts Chapter of the American College of Healthcare Executives, and also sits on the boards of both Boston MedFlight and the Spaulding Rehabilitation Network.

Dr. Raja is also an expert on the management of critically ill patients in the emergency department and prehospital arenas. He has served as a critical care air transport team commander for the US Air Force, a civilian flight physician, a tactical physician for a number of local, state, and federal agencies, and a physician with MA-1 DMAT.

Dan Mayer, MD, FACEP, FAAEM

Albany Medical College

Dan Mayer, MD has been an Emergency Medicine physician for the past 46 years. He has been teaching for the past 32 years and practicing Emergency Medicine for the past 37 years in a variety of hospital settings including academic urban emergency departments and rural community hospital emergency departments. He was an attending Emergency Medicine physician at Albany Medical Center Hospital from 1987 until his retirement in 2014. He also taught evidence-based medicine, medical decision-making and Emergency Medicine at Albany Medical College. He has taught medical students, other health science students, residents and attending physicians. He has been board certified in Emergency Medicine since 1984. He is currently retired from active clinical practice and is active in publishing medical research in Emergency Medicine and teaching EBM to dental residents. He is an Associate Editor for the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine and JACEP Open. He has been an outstanding peer-reviewer for Academic Medicine, JACEP Open, Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, Academic Emergency Medicine, and Annals of Emergency Medicine.

Jennifer Koehl, PharmD, BCEMP

Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr. Jenny Koehl, PharmD, BCEMP serves as the Residency Director for the PGY-2 Emergency Medicine and PGY-2 Emergency Medicine/Critical Care combined Programs at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Koehl earned her PharmD degree at the University of California San Francisco, and completed her PGY-1 and PGY-2 Emergency Medicine pharmacy residencies at the University of Wisconsin Health. Dr. Koehl is currently an Attending Clinical Emergency Medicine Pharmacist at Massachusetts General Hospital with practice interests including substance use disorders, neurology, and geriatrics.

Rachel M. Skains, MD, MSPH

Assistant Professor

University of Alabama at Birmingham

Dr. Skains is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine (EM) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) with a joint faculty position at the Birmingham VA Medical Center (BVAMC). After graduating from Wake Forest School of Medicine (2016), she completed her EM residency at UAB (2019) followed by a Clinical Research Fellowship focused on Geriatric EM while pursuing a Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH) in Clinical and Translational Science from the UAB School of Public Health (2021). Dr. Skains was awarded the AHRQ NRSA T32 Postdoctoral Scholar Fellowship in the UAB Health Services Research Training Program (2020-2022), in addition to funding through the UAB Integrative Center for Aging Research (ICAR), Geriatric Emergency care Applied Research (GEAR) 1.0, NIA Grants for Early Medical/Surgical Specialists' Transition to Aging Research (GEMSSTAR) R03 (2023-2025), Exploratory/ Developmental Grant R21 (2023-2025), and GEMSSTAR for EM Supplemental Funding Program through SAEMF/EMF to examine the risk of adverse health outcomes, such as delirium, with potentially inappropriate medication use among older adults in the ED. In addition, Dr. Skains was an ED physician champion for the UAB – Highlands and BVAMC Geriatric ED Committees, which received Level 1 (2021) and Level 3 (2023) accreditations respectively, completed the UAB Geriatric Scholar Interprofessional Program (2019-2021), updated the Geriatric ED Guidelines 2.0 in Medication Safety, published the first expert consensus-based list of high-risk prescriptions for older ED patients (GEMS-Rx),  and serves as Member-at-Large for the SAEM Academy of Geriatric Emergency Medicine (AGEM) (2024-2026).

William A. Kantrales, DO

HCA Florida Orange Park Hospital

Susan Stroud, MD

The University of Utah

Dr. Stroud is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and is the Residency Director at the University of Utah. She completed her residency training at Alameda County Medical Center (Highland) in 2001. After residency, Dr. Stroud was a faculty member at San Francisco General Hospital and an instructor at UCSF School of Medicine. She joined the faculty at the University of Utah in 2003 where she initially served as Medical Student Clerkship Director and helped to create the residency program. She has served as the Residency Director since 2008.

Christine Miyake, MD

Valley Health System

Dr Miyake is a board certified emergency physician currently practicing in Las Vegas NV. She attended medical school at the University of Nevada School of Medicine and completed her emergency medicine residency in 2007 at the University of Rochester. She has 15 + years of experience and has worked at multiple academic centers across the country. She has been actively involved in sepsis quality initiatives throughout her career. Dr. Miyake is program director for the Valley Health System emergency medicine residency program in Las Vegas. In addition Dr. Miyake is currently medical director for short stay reviews for Livanta LLC. She enjoys crafting, reading and spending time with family.

Simi Jandu, MD

University of Massachusetts

Simi Jandu is a senior Medical Education Fellow and serves as an Attending Physician at UMass Chan. Dr. Jandu went to Beaumont Health - Royal Oak for residency and then moved to Massachusetts where she is completing her second year education fellowship. She is also currently completing a Master of Education in the Health Professions as an adjunct to the fellowship.