Instructors receiving mentorship in advanced clinical skills
Advanced Trainees
Cornea
Mathew Margolis, MD
Medical School: Washington University of St Louis School of Medicine
Residency: Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary
Mat is a Bay Area native, and grew up in Marin County. He is a UCLA graduate and completed his medical education at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. This was followed by his ophthalmology residency at The Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary in Chicago. He hopes to find an academic Cornea faculty position in California where he can continue clinical and translational research, as well as spend time teaching and improving educational processes in medicine. He is happily married for four years to his beautiful wife Josie and has two black lab pups, Bailey and Nala. In his free time, he enjoys gardening and cultivating interesting edible plants, outdoor activities hiking/biking/pickup games, and hopes to make good use of his Epic season pass at Tahoe this season. He enjoys martial arts, board, and strategy games, cooking and baking, and spending time with friends, family, and dogs.
Anh Bui, MD, PhD
Medical School: University of California, Irvine School of Medicine
Residency: University of California San Francisco
Dr. Bui is joining Stanford as a cornea fellow. She graduated with distinction from Stanford University in biomechanical engineering and received her MD and PhD from University of California, Irvine, where she was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. She has received numerous awards and grants for her research, including a NIH NRSA F31 award, and made significant scientific contributions at the junction of neuroscience and bioengineering. She completed her ophthalmology residency at University of California, San Francisco, where she was honored with the Hogan/Garcia Award for outstanding research.
Glaucoma
Bryce Chiang, MD, PhD
Hometown: Freehold, New Jersey
College/Graduate School: The Johns Hopkins University
Medical School: Emory University School of Medicine (PhD: Georgia Institute of Technology)
Internship: Alameda County Highland Hospital Internal Medicine Residency
Residency: Byers Eye Institute at Stanford
Global
Sean Collon, MD
Medical School: Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
Residency: University of Utah Moran Eye Center
Sean will be completing a fellowship in global ophthalmology under Dr. Geoff Tabin. Originally from Michigan, he spent a few years working as a mountain guide in Washington state and Alaska before completing medical school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and then residency at the Moran Eye Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. He plans to pursue a retina fellowship after his global ophthalmology fellowship. In his free time, he still loves climbing, and is excited to explore the mountain biking in the Bay Area.
Neuro-Ophthalmology
Naga Pradyumna Kothapalli, MD
Medical School: RS Medical College, Kolar, India
Residency: University of Pittsburgh
Naga finished his residency in neurology at the University of Pittsburgh. Then he did his neuroimmunology fellowship at Mayo Clinic and is excited to now be doing the Neuro-Ophthalmology fellowship at Stanford University.
His research interests include inflammatory optic neuropathies and studying outcome differences and neuroimaging biomarkers in these patients.
Outside of work, he enjoys watching movies (you'll find him going to a movie almost every weekend) and playing cricket and table tennis.
Pediatrics
Melanie Daulton, MD
Medical School: Northwestern University The Feinberg School of Medicine
Residency: Northwestern University The Feinberg School of Medicine
Melanie is originally from Chicago, studied mathematics at Dartmouth, and then completed a post-bac pre-medical program at Columbia. She came back to Chicago for medical school and residency at Northwestern, where she did research in the areas of cancer genetics and vascular malformations, and also enjoyed teaching classes in the medical school. She is excited to be starting her pediatric ophthalmology fellowship at Stanford. In her spare time, she enjoys rock climbing, biking, and skiing.
Uveitis
Ankur Gupta, MD
Medical School: UT Southwestern Medical School
Residency: Geisinger Hospital System
Ankur earned a B.S. and M.S. focused on Biology and Regenerative Medicine from Stanford University. After completing the Biodesign program, he helped implement pre-hospital emergency care in India after developing the first-ever training program for paramedics. He then completed his M.D. at UT Southwestern in Dallas, where he taught the school’s most popular elective course called Innovating Healthcare Solutions. While completing a fellowship focused on retinal imaging at the National Eye Institute with Dr. Emily Chew and the late Dr. Robert Nussenblatt, he worked with his ophthalmologist grandfather to increase access to eye care in rural India with a smartphone fundus camera. After completing his internship at the University of Chicago, he co-founded Spect with Dr. Ted Leng via the prestigious Y-Combinator accelerator program, wherein they incorporated telemedicine and artificial intelligence into diabetic retinal exams. Shortly after bringing the product to market, he returned to clinical medicine during the pandemic, where he learned value-based healthcare delivery in rural settings at Geisinger in Pennsylvania, which recently merged with Kaiser Permanente. He is now thrilled to be back in California to pursue a Medical Retina and Uveitis fellowship, as he and his wife plan to welcome their first child.
Vitreoretinal
Austen Knapp, MD
Hometown: Eureka, Illinois
College: Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Medical School: Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine
Internship: Beaumont Hospital - Dearborn
Residency: Cole Eye Institute - Cleveland Clinic Foundation
Karen Wai, MD
Hometown: San Jose, California
College: Dartmouth College
Medical School: Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Internship: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Residency: Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Ophthalmology
Class of 2025
Glaucoma
Michael Yang, MD
Medical School: David Geffen School of Medicine – UCLA
Residency: Gavin Herbert Eye Institute UCI
Dr. Yang grew up in Southern California for most of his life and went to Alhambra High School, UC Irvine for his undergraduate, UCLA for medical school, and then back to UC Irvine for his ophthalmology residency. He loves everything ophthalmology has to offer but really fell in love with glaucoma under the guidance of Dr. Sameh Mosaed and Dr. Ken Lin. In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his wonderful wife and goofy goldendoodle (Banchan). He loves going on runs, weightlifting, bouldering, exploring new restaurants, and making cocktails. Find him and say hello if you need a running buddy, spotter, or want to try his latest concoction!
Vitreoretinal
Lucie Guo, MD
Medical School: University of Pennsylvania-Perelman School of Medicine
Residency: Stanford School of Medicine
Many at the Byers Eye Institute at Stanford will recognize Lucie, who recently finished her residency here. Now she returns to continue her education as a retina fellow. She is from Chapel Hill, NC. She attended undergrad at Harvard and graduated from the Penn MD/PhD program in 2018, where she did her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics in Dr. Ben Black's lab. She did her internship year at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. Here at Stanford, she spent her SOAR year in Dr. Stanley Qi's lab in Bioengineering/ChEM-H at Stanford, in collaboration with labs of Dr. Yang Hu and Dr. Sui Wang in ophthalmology, where she began projects in developing genome engineering technologies for ocular gene therapy. She chose Stanford because of its exceptional clinical training and unique support for physician-scientists.
Jared Sokol, MD, MBA
Medical School: University of Chicago-Pritzker School of Medicine
Residency: Harvard Ophthalmology Residency Program Eye and Ear
Jared Sokol graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Biological Sciences from the University of Southern California where he was his class’s salutatorian and was elected into the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. He went on to earn his MD from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine as well as his MBA with High Honors from the Booth School of Business. While in medical school, he was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. He recently completed his ophthalmology residency at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts Eye and Ear. His recent research has focused on macular hole pathogenesis and treatment, heads-up vitreoretinal surgery visualization, and injection drug use-associated endogenous endophthalmitis. He is ecstatic to join the Byers Eye Institute as a vitreoretinal surgery fellow!
Photos
Class of 2022 group shot
Front row (L to R): Alice Shen, Karen Wai, Michelle Sun, Amal Al-Lozi, and Irmak Karaca
Back row (L to R): Vikram Shankar, Austen Knapp, Randy Brown, Charles DeBoer, and Bryce Chiang
Not pictured: Kanwal Matharu and Suzanne Michalak