Kristin Andres, MD

Training Dates: 7/07/2022 - 7/06/2025

Kristin is graduating as a Med-Peds resident at the University of Michigan. She received her MD from the University of Kentucky where she was AOA and participated in a prestigious 18-month research fellowship where she helped design a video game to improve the acquisition of advanced cardiac MRI sequences in children. Her current research focuses on reproductive counseling for young women with congenital heart disease and developing patient and provider-focused educational interventions to ease the transition from pediatric to adult care for patients with congenital heart disease. She has also won numerous awards in residency, including a “Pediatric Medical Student Teaching Award” and the “Chair’s Special Award for Impact.” Her hobbies include pub-style trivia, baking, ice cream making, musical theater, and houseplant horticulture.

Andrew Brennan, MD

Training Dates: 7/07/2022 - 07/06/2025

Andrew completed his undergraduate work at Northeastern with a major in Health Science. After college he spent 2 years as a research assistant in pediatric cardiology at Boston Children’s where he worked with the interventional team working on a variety of cath device studies and health care utilization studies for which he first authored 2 papers in Pediatric Cardiology (with one additional 2nd author publication). He then went to medical school at Rutgers – Robert Wood Johnson and ventured west for his residency here at Stanford. Here at Stanford, he has worked with Alisa on evaluating indices of global and regional RV systolic function in our TOF/PA/MAPCAs patients and has submitted an abstract with the EP group on predictors of epicardial pacing lead performance. His personal interests include staying active outdoors (by hiking, gardening, as well as playing soccer, golf, and tennis), reading (especially autobiographies and health care novels), learning new recipes, and travel (with his favorite trip being a visit to Brazil during World Cup in 2014).

Hamsika Chandrasekar, MD

Training Date: 7/07/2022 - 07/06/2025

Hamsika completed her undergraduate work at MIT where she studied Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Computer Science, and Molecular Biology and was a Rhodes Scholar finalist. She completed her medical school training at Stanford before heading to Boston Children’s for her pediatrics residency. She then came to Stanford and has been working as a cardiac ICU hospitalist since graduation. She has completed multiple medical education projects and is currently working on a project comparing abbreviated cardiac MRI to echocardiography for interval assessment of cardiac function in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Joseph Ryan Hitt, MD

Training Dates: 7/07/2022 - 7/06/2025

Ryan completed his undergraduate degree at the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY and was subsequently selected as one of 2% of his graduating class to attend medical school. He attended the military’s medical school at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, MD followed by pediatric residency at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, WA. His research focuses on strategies of ambulatory rhythm monitoring in children and has led to multiple peer reviewed publications and presentations at national conferences. He is joined by his wonderful wife Kristen and two daughters Lauren and Emma. In his free time, he enjoys exploring new places with his family and spending time outdoors.

Ramya Ramachandra, MBBS

Training Dates: 7/07/2022 - 7/06/2025

Ramya joins us from Driscoll Children’s Hospital (Texas A&M College of Medicine) after earning her medical degree at Bangalore Medical College in India. In medical school, she secured the highest score among over 100,000 students in their common entrance examination. She is currently investigating feeding intolerance in infants with ductal dependent congenital heart disease and is developing a clinical pathway for neonatal jaundice. She has also submitted first author manuscripts and presented at AHA on the association between Kawasaki disease and allergies in children and the outcome of Cook Formula stents for vessel stenoses in children with CHD. Ramya rotated here at Stanford as a visiting resident in both the inpatient and outpatient areas of the Heart Center. Her personal interests include oil and watercolor painting, hiking, trying cookbook recipes and dancing.

Priyanka Saha, MD

Training Dates: 7/07/2022 - 7/06/2025

Priyanka ("Priya") completed her undergraduate major in Biology at MIT. She stayed in Boston for medical school at Harvard before returning home to Seattle for residency at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital. During medical school, she received a Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Foundation fellowship which brought her to Stanford for a year where she studied long term outcomes in adults with congenital heart disease. Her Sarnoff work resulted in numerous publications including first author publications in Circulation and the Journal for the American Heart Association. She has continued to pursue research in Seattle, winning the distinction of “Top 5 Oral Abstract” at the 2020 PCICS meeting for her analysis of racial bias in surgical outcomes for children with congenital heart disease. Her personal interests include dancing (she's a proud alumnus of MIT's competitive Bollywood dance team), exploring new music, listening to audiobooks, cooking (especially Bengali food), and exploring restaurants with family and friends.

Laura Wattenbarger, MD

Training Dates: 7/07/2022 - 7/06/2025

Laura completed her undergraduate degree at UT-Austin with a major in biomedical engineering. She then completed her medical school training at Texas A&M and is currently a 3rd year resident at Texas Children’s. On the academic side she has been engaged in a project assessing atrial tachyarrhythmias after lung transplantation. On the personal side she enjoys running (completed five half marathons and currently training for her sixth), playing beach volleyball, hiking in national parks and she is currently a member at Houston's museum of fine arts.

Anna Deitch, MD

Training Dates: 7/07/2021 - 7/06/2024

Anna is originally from Carmel, Indiana and attended Indiana University, where she was a Biology major with minors in Chemistry and Spanish.  She was the undergraduate commencement speaker at Indiana University in 2014, and then stayed at IU for medical school.  After finishing at IU School of Medicine (where she was AOA), she went on to Boston Children’s Hospital for her residency in pediatrics.  At BCH she is involved in several research projects, including an analysis of NEC in term infants with congenital heart disease and a retrospective cohort study of patterns of pediatric death in patients with advanced heart disease. On the personal side, Anna’s interests include hiking, fishing, running, skiing, traveling, playing piano, and reading novels.  

Brendan Floyd, MD

Training Dates: 7/07/2021 - 7/06/2024

Brendan was a resident in Stanford’s combined pediatrics/medical genetics program and has numerous degrees to his name, including a PhD in biochemistry and a M.Ed. in secondary education (he was previously a high school chemistry teacher).  He is currently working on a project studying the prevalence of thiamine deficiency in acute decompensated heart failure with Beth for which he received the Stanford Pediatrics Residency Mary Leonard Physician-Scientist Research Grant, and a separate study looking at an algorithm for genetic testing in infants with congenital heart disease with David Stevenson.  He has numerous publications and research posters to his name and received a Medical Student Teaching Award as an intern. He is a former marching band trumpet player and his hobbies include pasta making and baking.

Lyndsey Hunter-Adamson, MD

Training Dates: 7/07/2021 - 7/06/2024

Lyndsey is joining us from UCSF after earning her MD at St. Louis University in Missouri where she was AOA. In residency she worked with Satish Rajagopol on a prospective study assessing whether changes in BNP are associated with extubation failure in post-op CHD patients; she applied for and was awarded internal funding for the project with the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute Resident Research Funding Award. While in St. Louis, she also published a retrospective review of results from device closure for Fontan fenestration at her institution. In her free time, she is an avid hiker/backpacker, having backpacked for 30 days on the John Muir Trail. 

Azadeh (Azy) Issapour, MD

Training Dates: 7/07/2021 - 7/06/2024

Azadeh was a hospitalist in the Columbia CICU after having completed her residency there. She earned her undergraduate degree at Stony Brook and MD at Albert Einstein where she received the Dean’s Recognition Award in her last year for exceptional academic and clinical performance. During her CICU year she worked with Usha Krishnan on a PH study evaluating ambrisentan and tadalafil which she has presented internationally and at ACC. She is fluent in Persian, is a great cook, and enjoys snowboarding. 

Elisa McCarthy, MD

Training Dates: 7/07/2021 - 7/06/2025

Elisa completed her undergraduate work at Dartmouth with majors in Economics, Government, and Spanish. She completed a post-baccalaureate pre-medical program at Johns Hopkins and then spent two years as a clinical research coordinator with our own Jeff Feinstein. She then went on to Loyola University in Chicago for medical school and was a resident in Pediatrics at Primary Children’s in Utah.  She has won multiple awards for innovation in medical education, has numerous publications, and is currently involved in several research endeavors, including a project related to transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement with Mary Hunt Martin. She was co-captain of Dartmouth's cross-country and track team in college and enjoys spending her free time outdoors (rock climbing, back country skiing, mountain biking, soccer and swimming, to name a few)!

Jeffrey (Jeff) Yang, MD

Training Dates: 7/07/2021 - 7/06/2024

Jeff joined our residency after having obtained his MD at UCSF and bioengineering degree at UC Berkeley.  He published as a first author in Heart Rhythm on pectoral nerve blocks after PM/ICD placement with our EP team and is currently working on several projects in our division. During these COVID times, he has become an expert on baking sourdough bread, finished an introductory course on ceramics, and was a former violinist in the UC Berkeley Symphony Orchestra.

Desiree' Conrad, MD 

Chief Fellow

Training Dates: 7/07/2020 - 7/06/2023

Desiree was an undergraduate student here at Stanford where she majored in French Studies, and stayed here for graduate work where she also obtained her masters in French Studies. After completing her Masters, Desiree went on to work as a Program Manager of Patient Education at Kaiser Permanente. She then went on to the University of Illinois College of Medicine for medical school and then went to Tulane-Ochsner for a Med-Peds residency. Desiree was named med-peds Intern of the Year in 2016 and was the Chief Resident of the Med-Peds program there. She worked on several projects at Tulane, including a research project on the assessment of health disparities in pediatric and ACHD cardiac surgical patients, and a QI project on pediatric hypertension screening. She also volunteered her time through a NGO in Rwanda earlier this year. Desiree has a strong interest in ACHD. On the personal side, her interests include running, baking, traveling, arts & crats, and puzzles (though not the crossword kind!).

Minnie Dasgupta, MD 

Chief Fellow

Training Dates: 7/07/2020 - 7/06/2023

Minnie is joining us from our own residency program where she served as a chief resident. She completed her undergraduate work at Cal-Berkeley and medical school at UCLA. Minnie’s academic focus last year as chief was based on resident education, and she has been involved in a number of projects including an assessment of the safety of performing cardiac caths on PH patients and on kinetic GFR in patients with AKI following heart transplant (which she presented at PAS).

Zsofia (Zofi) Long, MD

Training Dates: 7/07/2020 - 7/06/2023

Zsofia completed her undergraduate work at LSU before going to UT Southwestern for medical school. She started residency at Oakland and then completed her Pediatrics training here at Stanford. This is her second round in our CVICU with some time spent in Florida in between, where she worked on several improvement projects in their Heart Center. She remains academically interested in anticoagulation in our patient population and recently presented several projects at PCICS and has several ongoing projects with both Doff and Raj. Zsofia has 3 children and 2 dogs, including a new puppy.

Aaron Phillips, MD

Training Dates: 7/07/2020 - 7/06/2023

Aaron is joining us from Children’s National Medical Center in Washington DC. He obtaining his MD at Loma Linda University. During residency he did some work in quality improvement (e.g. family-centered rounds) and in evaluating the feasibility of direct-to-consumer telemedicine visits in pediatric cardiology (costs to families, insurance reimbursements, and patient distance traveled). He is from Bend, Oregon and plays guitar in his free time.

Ali Reza Rais Sadati, MD, PhD

Training Dates: 7/07/2020 - 7/06/2024

Ali joined us after completing 2 years of pediatrics training at Boston Children’s where he started on the accelerated research pathway in pediatrics. Ali completed medical school in Finland before completing two PHDs at the University of Helsinki with specific background work in: 1) Clinical Research with a focus on long-term outcomes of pediatric cardiac surgery, and a 2) Biotechnology looking at a gene-based approach to experimental heart transplant rejection. His work has been rewarded with the 1st prize in the Young Investigator Award at the Association for European Pediatric and Congenital Cardiology Meeting. He is an author on 19 publications with 9 as first author in reputable journals including JACC, Circ and EJCS. He has presented his work in multiple podium and poster presentations at international meetings and has already obtained grant support.