Cardiac Electrophysiology Fellows

Yaanik grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and studied biomedical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He returned to Atlanta to attend medical school at Emory University. He completed his internal medicine training at UCSF, where he served as Chief Resident. He completed his Cardiovascular Medicine Fellowship at Stanford, where he served as Chief Fellow. He is broadly interested in clinical outcomes research, and he is passionate about teaching. He enjoys all things food & wine, philosophy, playing guitar.

Dr. Zaniar Ghazizadeh completed his Internal Medicine training at Yale New Haven Hospital/Yale School of Medicine. He received his medical degree from Tehran University of Medical Sciences and spent a few years as a post-doctoral fellow at Weill Cornell Medicine and Brigham and Women’s Hospital before his residency. His research interest lies in the development of in vitro and in vivo platforms for studying heart regeneration and precision medicine. Dr. Ghazizadeh’s work is focused on identifying the mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias using several experimental systems ranging from genetically engineered animal models to human pluripotent stem cell derived cardiac cell types. His ultimate goal as a clinician-scientist is to utilize this framework for drug discovery and identifying new therapeutic strategies that can prevent or reverse specific arrhythmias.

Residency: Cedars-Sanai 

Dr. Ramya Vajapey grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from Northeast Ohio Medical University via accelerated BS/MD combined track.  She went on to complete her internal medicine residency and general cardiology fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. During her time at Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Vajapey served as Clinical Instructor at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine while taking part in multiple research endeavors.  During fellowship she was involved in clinical research related to spectral characteristics of paced QRS complex in predicting left bundle pacing, and Impella assisted VT ablation outcomes for high-risk patients with advanced heart failure. Dr. Vajapey also has a special interest in multimodality imaging therefore obtained her board certification in Echocardiography as well as Nuclear Cardiology. In her free time, Dr. Vajapey enjoys hiking at national parks, white water rafting and traveling with her family and friends. 

Dr. Chikezie K. Alvarez grew up in the beautiful island country of Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. He obtained his MD degree at St. George’s University, Grenada, graduating Cum Laude. He subsequently pursued internal medicine residency training at Jersey Shore University, St Francis Medical Center, Trenton, NJ, where he served as a 3rd-year chief medical resident. During his training, he spent time on the board of the IRB, assessing various research project proposals regarding whether they were beneficial to and fit the needs of the community. This was the impetus that sparked his interest in clinical research. He subsequently pursued general cardiology fellowship training at the University of Connecticut/Hartford Hospital, where he served as the chief cardiology fellow. During his training, he led several projects including a prospective pilot study evaluating a novel "Burst" exercise treadmill test (ETT) protocol compared to the standard ETT for the evaluation of ventricular arrhythmias in patients with hypertrophy cardiomyopathy. Upon completion of his fellowship training, he was elected to become a member of the University of Connecticut chapter of the Alpha Omega Alpha (AΩA) Honor Medical Society. Outside of work, Dr Alvarez is an avid soccer enthusiast, enjoys playing table tennis, listening to music, traveling, dinning at restaurants, and exploring various cuisines. He is very excited to pursue training as a cardiac electrophysiology fellow at Stanford University.