Current Laughlin Fellows
The Laughlin Fellows Class of 2010
Each year, The College selects 10 third, fourth and fifth-year Residents from the United States and Canada and pays for them to attend our Annual Meeting. The Laughlin Fellows are chosen from an elite pool of applicants deemed likely to make a significant contribution to the field of psychiatry. They participate in all educational and social functions held during the Annual Meeting, making valuable contacts with their peers and College Members.
The College is please to announce the 2010 Laughlin Fellows:
Jessica Ferranti, M.D.
Dr. Ferranti was born and raised in Danville, California. She completed her medical school education at the University of California at Davis in 2005. She continued at the University of California, Davis Medical Center for her residency training in Adult Psychiatry.
Dr. Ferranti served as Chief Resident of UC Davis Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in her PGY4 year. During her residency, Dr. Ferranti was the recipient of awards including the Outstanding Resident Teaching Award and the Outstanding Resident Award. In 2008, Dr. Ferranti received the Rappeport Fellowship from the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law for achievement and promise in the field of forensic psychiatry.
Dr. Ferranti has presented at local and national conferences in the areas of violence risk assessment, psychosis and gender differences in psychotic violence. She has co-authored multiple papers in the areas of violence, psychotic violence and phenotypes of fragile X syndrome. Dr. Ferranti is currently working on research investigating differences in female versus male homicide offenders who are insanity acquittees at Napa State Hospital in Napa, California.
Dr. Ferranti is currently a Forensic Fellow in the Division of Psychiatry and the Law at University of California, Davis Medical Center.
Tristan L. Gorrindo, M.D.
Dr. Gorrindo completed medical school at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 2005 after spending a year at the NIMH in the Clinical Research Training Program. He is currently in his final year of the MGH/McLean combined Adult and Child/Adolescent Psychiatry Training Program.
Dr. Gorrindo has developed a niche expertise in the interplay between technology and psychiatry with particular attention to the mental health impacts of social networking, the ways in which technology is changing the patient-physician relationship, and the broad uses of simulation technology in mental health treatment. He is the guest Editor of a forthcoming issue of the Harvard Review of Psychiatry that examines technology and psychiatry, and he has provided consultation to several national media outlets, including NPR, with regard to mental health and technology.
Brian Miller, M.D., M.P.H.
Dr. Brian Miller is currently the Chief Resident in General Psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia. Dr. Miller was born and raised in Newark, Ohio. He holds a BS in mathematics from Vanderbilt University, where he was a Founder’s Medalist. He earned a combined MD/MPH degree, cum laude, at The Ohio State University, and was elected to AOA.
In 2008, Dr. Miller completed a psychotic disorders fellowship at MCG. He is pursuing a doctoral thesis in psychiatric epidemiology through the University of Oulu (Finland), and is the recipient of several Finnish grants in support of his research on paternal age as a risk factor for psychosis and mortality in the Northern Finland 1966 Birth Cohort. Dr. Miller’s research interests also include metabolic abnormalities and inflammation in schizophrenia.
During residency, Dr. Miller has been recognized with young investigator awards from the International Congress on Schizophrenia Research, Society of Biological Psychiatry, NIMH New Clinical Drug Evaluation Unit, APA Research Colloquium for Junior Investigators, and Pittsburgh Schizophrenia Conference. In 2008, he received an APIRE/Janssen Resident Psychiatric Research Scholars Fellowship, and won the Journal of Psychiatric Practice’s Resident Paper Competition.
Dr. Miller’s wife, Kelly, is a biostatistician at MCG. They have 3 sons, ages 5, 2, and 6 weeks!
He enjoys running, and has organized a team from MCG the past 3 years to run a half-marathon to raise money and awareness for the Augusta chapter of NAMI.
Dr. Miller plans to continue his career in academic psychiatry and schizophrenia research as an Assistant Professor at MCG following completion of his residency.
Kristen Ochoa, M.D.
Kristen received her B.A. in English from San Francisco State University and her M.D. from the USC, Keck School of Medicine. She is co-chief resident at the Harbor-UCLA Department of Psychiatry and fellow of the American Psychiatric Association/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. She has worked in the field of public health for 20 years with underserved individuals and has presented and published widely on heroin overdose, needle exchange and injection drug use.
Before medical school, she held leadership positions at the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic and UCSF’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She established a harm reduction program for street youth in Mexico City, co-founded a group to bring cultural responsiveness to medical school curricula and established the Los Angeles Overdose Prevention Task Force.
Her work has resulted in several community service and young investigator awards. Most recently, she received the Rappeport Fellowship from the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.
Interested in decriminalization of the mentally ill and healthcare disparities, she is presently working on a project to provide competency evaluations and advocacy for severely mentally ill persons housed in U.S. Immigration Detention.
Now completing a MPH degree at UCLA, she will begin a forensic fellowship at the USC Institute of Psychiatry and Law in 2010.
Divy Ravindranath, M.D.
Dr. Ravindranath was born in Toronto, Canada and spent much of his life in Northern California. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a B.A. in Environmental Sciences and a minor in Business Administration in 1999. He matriculated into the UC Berkeley – UC San Francisco Joint Medical Program in 2000. Through the Program, he completed a Master's Degree in Health and Medical Sciences from UC Berkeley in 2003 and his M.D. from UCSF in 2005. He was also introduced to medical education as an area of academic study and consultation-liaison psychiatry.
These interests brought him to the University of Michigan for his general adult psychiatry residency, which he completed in 2009. During residency, he helped reshape the didactic series in psychiatry for third year medical students, as well as the curriculum for psychiatry interns, to include more group based learning. He participated in the residency program's Clinical Scholars Track and the medical school's Medical Education Scholars Program for residents and fellows. He was also the recipient of two teaching awards and the Association for Academic Psychiatry's Fellowship for residents and fellows.
He is currently completing a one year fellowship in Psychosomatic Medicine at the University of Michigan, where his clinical interest lies in the identification and basic treatment of mental illness in general medical settings. He authored two winning grant applications to introduce and evaluate a screening program for depression and anxiety in the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center. He is also a fellow consultant for the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine committee on education and co-editor of a forthcoming book for trainees on emergency psychiatry. He hopes to continue to work as a consultation-liaison psychiatrist in the academic medical center on completion of his fellowship.
Heather Shibley, M.D.
Heather Shibley is currently completing her final year in the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship at Brown University, where she also serves as Chief Resident. Disaster and trauma psychiatry is her passion and she serves on several committees including APA's Committee on Psychiatric Dimensions of Disaster and AACAP's Hospital's behavioral health response to disasters including the swine flu response. She has signed on with the United States Navy and plans to report to active duty in July where she will be primarily working with the Navy and Marines and their families. Outside of work, Heather enjoys spending time with her family, playing intramural sports, hiking, surfing and running with her dog.
Karis Stenback was born and raised in Minnesota and currently resides with her fiancé and three dogs in San Diego, California.
Dr. Stenback graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Neuroscience from Smith College in 2000 and subsequently engaged in research for two years, performing computational simulations of retinal neurophysiology experiments at the University of Minnesota. She was awarded a Health Professionals Scholarship with the United States Navy in 2002 and attended the University of Minnesota Medical School, graduating in 2006. While in medical school, Dr. Stenback led a team of health care workers in opening a free clinic in a Minneapolis neighborhood while carrying on her research in physiology and was presented a national award for excellence in women’s reproductive health research.
Upon graduation, Dr. Stenback entered Active Duty military service as a lieutenant with the U.S. Navy and began her internship and residency at Naval Medical Center San Diego. She currently is the chief resident in the Adult Psychiatry Residency program and continues to engage in research, now studying the effects of psychotropic medications on individuals’ ability to accurately engage in small arms fire. Dr. Stenback also remains committed to residency education, having led curriculum reform for residents in all years of training and she teaches many courses to both medical students and residents as well.
Dr. Stenback has a special interest in women’s mental health issues and has served on a focus group for the Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services. She will remain an Active Duty Naval Officer for at least 4 additional years after completing her residency in 2010 and will be deployed to Afghanistan to serve as a psychiatrist in support of the Marine Corps. Dr. Stenback’s longer-term career goals include pursuing a fellowship in addiction medicine and to remain closely involved in psychiatric education.
Dr. Tobe completed his undergraduate studies with a degree in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago-Pritzker School of Medicine in 2005 where he was a two-year recipient of the ARRISE Autism Service Award and the Daniel Friedman award. He completed his adult psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University in 2009 where he was selected as a Circle of Excellence Nominee for teaching by medical students at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Dr. Tobe is currently a first-year clinical fellow in child and adolescent psychiatry in the Divisions of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Columbia University and Weill Cornell Medical Centers. During his time at Columbia, Dr. Tobe investigated changes in cerebellar morphology in Tourette's Syndrome and tic-related OCD. The findings of this research were recently accepted for publication in the Annals of Neurology and will be presented as part of a symposium at this year's Society of Biological Psychiatry meeting.
Alexander Tsai, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Tsai is a fourth-year psychiatry resident at the University of California, San Francisco. He has been deeply influenced by the writings of Stanley Hauerwas, Timothy Keller, and Miroslov Volf, whose work is foundational to his own vision on how the Christian community ought to care for the poor and excluded. His research focuses on the social and behavioral aspects of health and health care in resource-limited settings.
Dr. Tsai has published widely in different fields including, most recently, a major report in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization on setting priorities for global mental health research. Currently he leads several research teams studying antidepressant medication treatment and viral suppression among the homeless and marginally housed (San Francisco); socioeconomic determinants of sexual violence perpetration and victimization (Botswana and Swaziland); and food insecurity, depression, and HIV outcomes (Uganda). Most recently, he started a project to implement community-based perinatal depression screening by lay health workers in a South African township, using mobile handset software for data collection & monitoring and to improve worker supervision.
Dr. Tsai received his A.B. with honors in Economics from Harvard College; M.A. in Economics from the University of Toronto, where he studied as a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar and Resident Junior Fellow of Massey College; and M.D. and Ph.D. in Health Services Research from Case Western Reserve University.
Natalie Weder, M.D.
Natalie Weder, M.D., is a second year Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Resident and Clinical Instructor at the NYU Child Study Center. She was a recipient of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training (AADPRT) International Medical Graduate Mentorship Award in Psychiatry, the APA/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Minority Award Fellowship and the AACAP Pilot Research Award. She has published several articles and co-edited two books. One of her articles won the Peter Henderson, M.D. Memorial Award, given by the American Academy of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training to the best unpublished article in the field of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Prior to joining the Child Study Center, Dr. Weder completed her adult psychiatry training at Yale University, where she became interested in the treatment and prevention of child abuse and neglect and the interaction between genes and the environment in the development of psychopathology in maltreated children. Her latest manuscript in this area was recently published in Biological Psychiatry. Dr. Weder completed her medical education at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where she belonged to the High Quality Education program.
