Steve Weissman, M.D. ’63, reports that he’s still here!
Joseph Citron, M.D. ’71, says he is experiencing a rebirth, as he is enrolled at Kennesaw State University in Georgia and plans to graduate in December 2025 with a degree in anthropology.
Roger Duvivier, M.D. ’74, reports that in October 2024, the Einstein Alumni Association staff treated him and several of his classmates from the “most memorable Einstein classes of ’74 and ’74A” to the celebration of the 50th anniversary of their graduation from medical school. The weekend events included a dinner dance at the Lighthouse Restaurant of Chelsea Piers 61; a State of the College address by Einstein’s dean, Yaron Tomer, M.D.; two lectures on A.I. (artificial, augmented, or assisted intelligence) in medical education, research, and healthcare; a conversation with neurosurgeon Jack Stern, M.D., Ph.D. ’74, on his personal and professional journey; an award ceremony honoring Ruth Gottesman, Ed.D., professor emerita of pediatrics and Einstein’s most-generous philanthropist; and a guided tour of the campus, including its renovated library. The 11th annual Roger Duvivier, M.D., FACOG Lecture was held at Einstein on April 22, 2025, co-hosted by Einstein’s office of community outreach and engagement and the department of obstetrics & gynecology and women’s health.
Mark Erlich, M.D. ’75, is marking several milestones: 50 years since graduating from Einstein, 10 years of teaching clinical gross anatomy at Einstein, and the honor of receiving the Harry Eagle Teaching Award this year.
Robert Katz, M.D. ’75, has been retired from the active practice of pathology for several years but remains in touch with medicine, serving as president of the Board of Health of Morris Township, N.J., where he lives, and as a member of the credentials committee at Morristown Medical Center. He also continues his lifelong fascination with Sherlock Holmes stories; he has edited several books on the subject while serving as an officer of the international Holmes organization, the Baker Street Irregulars.
Sten Vermund, M.D. ’77, Ph.D., has left Yale University for a late-career adventure as dean of the College of Public Health at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He continues to work on infectious-disease epidemiology and children’s and women’s health. With the loss of support from the U.S. Agency for International Development, he is seeking help to continue maternal and child health capacity-building in Chad; he still has a National Institutes of Health grant for HIV research in Kazakhstan. His classmate and wife, Pilar Vargas, M.D. ’77, Ph.D., has retired as a child and adolescent psychiatrist; she and their sons Julian and Gabriel are well.
Joseph Barbuto, M.D. ’78, continues his private practice in adult psychiatry and psycho-oncology in New York and New Jersey. He also teaches at Weill Cornell Medical College and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Currently he is serving as president of the Weill Cornell department of psychiatry faculty council. He says hello to his classmates.
Michael Katz, M.D. ’80, and his wife, Sherry, are expecting their 11th grandchild; their eldest grandchild is entering high school. Dr. Katz says they are grateful for their health and the time to travel. He reports that he has been winding down his practice and helping medical students with mock residency interviews.
Nita Maihle, Ph.D. ’83, was honored with the 2024 Mayo Clinic Distinguished Alumni Award. Dr. Maihle is a professor of medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. She completed fellowships at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. She has directed labs at the Mayo Clinic, the Yale University School of Medicine, and the Georgia Cancer Center at Augusta University. A recipient of approximately $30 million in direct funding, Dr. Maihle is regularly published in top-tier biomedical research journals. She has 10 patents in her name and is a co-founder and board member of several biotechnology companies.
Peter Kratka, M.D. ’84, retired from private practice at Diagnostic Radiology and is now living in Palm Beach, Fla., and New York. He has eight grandchildren. He just published a memoir about his experiences at Einstein and its affiliated hospitals, Medical Tales: A Peek Beneath the Sheets. Dr. Kratka’s first book is Golf Is a Four-Letter Word.
Ron Alterman, M.D. ’86, has been chief of neurosurgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a professor of neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School for the past 13-plus years. He lives in Cambridge, Mass., with his wife and teenage daughter and has a grown son from his first marriage who is married and lives in Dallas.
Joseph R. Maldonado Jr., M.D. ’86, has been given the Henry Irwin Fineberg Award for Distinguished Service to the Medical Society of the State of New York, the highest honor given by the society. Dr. Maldonado is the chief executive officer and president of the Empire State Medical, Scientific, and Educational Foundation. He continues his Orthodox semicha studies and anticipates completing them this year. His return to Orthodox Judaism was recently featured in Mishpacha magazine.
Judy Yee, M.D. ’87, was voted president-elect of the Society of Chairs of Academic Radiology Departments (SCARD). Dr. Yee has served on the board of directors of SCARD for the past three years. She is a professor and the chair of radiology at Montefiore Einstein.
Leslie Fuchs, M.D. ’88, says she is still “California dreamin’,” spending more time playing music and gardening after leaving a job in Santa Barbara County. She says the social medicine component of Einstein, from remarkable mentors and thought leaders to the very good people of the Bronx, continues to sustain us.
Marty Ross-Dolen, M.D. ’92, has written a memoir, Always There, Always Gone: A Daughter’s Search for Truth, which has just been published by She Writes Press and distributed by Simon & Schuster.
Jil C. Tardiff, M.D., Ph.D. ’92, has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society and the publisher of the Science family of journals. Dr. Tardiff is a professor of medicine and of cellular and molecular medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and is a member of the Clinical and Translational Institute at the BIO5 Institute. Her career has been focused on understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a disease that can result in heart failure and sudden death.
Robyn Klein, M.D., Ph.D. ’93, was named vice provost and associate dean for graduate education for the division of biology and biomedical sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. She is also the founding director of the university’s Center for Neuroimmunology and Neuroinfectious Diseases. Dr. Klein is an elected member of the advisory board of the International Society of Neuroimmunology and a recipient of the Dana Foundation Award for Neuroimmunology. She is a founding member of the International Society for Neurovirology and a member of the American College of Physicians, the American Society for Microbiology, the American Society for Immunology, and the International Society for Neuroimmunology.
Peter Taub, M.D. ’93, is the system chief for plastic and maxillofacial surgery across the Mount Sinai Health System. Nationally, he has been a director of the American Board of Plastic Surgery, serving as the chair of the oral-exam committee for three years. He is currently a board vice president for the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, responsible for all of the society’s educational endeavors. This past January he returned to Lima, Peru, with the nonprofit Komedyplast to treat children with complex craniofacial anomalies. He says he is proud to note that this year, one of his graduating chief residents and one of his matched interns are Einstein alumni.
Amanda Brown, Ph.D. ’96, was the keynote speaker at the 11th annual Marie M. Daly, Ph.D., Memorial Lecture at Einstein in February. Dr. Brown is an associate professor of neurology and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the associate editor of the Journal of Neuroinflammation, and the director of the Johns Hopkins Internship in Brain Sciences. Her talk was “Where Curiosity Leads: Systemic Disruption and Rebalancing of Neuro-Glial Circuitry in Viral Infection.”
Brian Blaufeux, M.D. ’96, was recently promoted to the role of regional chief health informatics officer for Northwell Health. His region covers the system’s hospitals and practices in Westchester County, Manhattan, and Staten Island.
Roger Greenberg, M.D., Ph.D. ’00, a professor of cancer biology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, has received Einstein’s 2025 Distinguished Ph.D. Alumnus Award. Dr. Greenberg will be a plenary speaker at the 2025 Second Spatial Genome Organization Conference, to be held in the fall in Riviera Maya, Mexico. Dr. Greenberg was part of a panel discussion on the challenges of choosing a career path in science at the 2025 Gordon Research Seminar on Mammalian DNA Repair, held in February in Ventura, Calif.
Neeral Shah, M.D. ’01, a professor of medicine in gastroenterology and hepatology at the University of Virginia (UVA), has been named by the State Council of Higher Education as a recipient of its 2025 Outstanding Faculty Award. During his 15 years at UVA, Dr. Shah has received every major teaching award the university offers. He also created the Quantra Hemosonics machine, which assists anesthesiologists while they are using blood products in patients.
Beth Tarini, M.D. ’01, was named the 2025 Norman J. Siegel New Member Outstanding Science Award recipient for her contributions to pediatric science by the American Pediatric Society. The award was presented to Dr. Tarini at the Pediatric Academic Societies 2025 Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, in April.
Dahlene Fusco, M.D., Ph.D. ’04, has recently relocated from New Orleans to the University of South Alabama in Mobile. She is the infectious-diseases division chief and an associate professor of medicine and a joint associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the university’s Laboratory for Infectious Disease. She says her team is working hard to improve healthcare in the impoverished Gulf Coast area and urges alumni to consider a visit.
Joshua Rosenberg, M.D. ’04, a facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon in Manhattan, has been recognized as a 2025 Top Patient-Rated Doctor by Find Local Doctors, an online directory.
Dominique Aimée Jean, M.D. ’05, has written The Script (Rx): An Insider’s Guide to Thriving and Staying Fabulous in Medical School. She says it is a road map, journal, and keepsake that offers advice, perspectives, and real-life anecdotes.
Jose Polo, Ph.D. ’08, has been appointed the new scientific head of EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory) Australia. Dr. Polo is an expert in cellular reprogramming, epigenetics, and stem-cell biology. He is the inaugural director of the Adelaide Centre for Epigenetics, the program lead at the South Australian immunoGENomics Cancer Institute at the University of Adelaide, and a professor in the department of anatomy and developmental biology at Monash University.
Utibe Essien, M.D. ’13, M.P.H., was the featured speaker at the second annual Dr. Ed Burns [M.D. ’76] Lecture held in April at Einstein. His talk was “Bending the Arc Toward Quality Healthcare for All.” Dr. Essien is an assistant professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a health-services researcher at the VA Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation, and Policy.
Samantha Stradleigh, M.D. ’13, has co-authored a children’s picture book about vascular surgery, Vascular Surgery for Kids. Inspired by her sons, she says she wrote it to introduce young minds to the world of vascular surgery in a fun and engaging way.
Maria Chavez Santos, M.D. ’14, reports that she decided to pursue her dream of living in California, and she drove from New York City on a cross-country road trip to San Diego in the spring of 2024. She is an active member of the Encinitas Run Club and is a family physician at a federally qualified health center called TrueCare, which provides primary care for the community of Carlsbad, Calif. Dr. Santos is involved in projects to improve the metabolic health of residents. She and her dogs are embracing the beach life and loving every minute of it, she says.
Amanda Guardado, M.D. ’15, is living in New York City and working for NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital as an obstetrician/gynecologist. She is the site director for OB/GYN at the Washington Heights Family Health Center and is the clinical lead for the postpartum doula program and OB community health worker program, which are part of NYP-Columbia’s Maternal and Child Integrated Mental Health Program. She reports that she was married in February and is looking forward to seeing everybody at Einstein’s reunion.
Avi Kohanzadeh, M.D. ’24, reports that he and his wife, Dafna, recently welcomed a beautiful baby girl, Naomi. The chief OB/GYN resident who assisted in delivering Naomi was Rachel Zeuner, M.D. ’21, a friend from their time at Einstein. Dr. Kohanzadeh is completing his first year of anesthesiology residency at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He recently co-authored a study, “Erector Spinae Catheter in the ICU for Thoracoabdominal Aortic Aneurysm Repair,” which will be presented at the regional anesthesiology and acute-medicine meeting in Orlando. During his time at NYP-Columbia, he says, he has enjoyed meeting many Einstein alumni and exchanging memories.
Keep your classmates up to date by submitting your news to Einstein magazine. We look forward to including you. Email us at einsteinalumni@einsteinmed.edu.
