Current Laughlin Fellows

2027 Laughlin Fellows

Ruth Bishop Hunter, M.D., M.B.A.

Dr. Hunter is a fifth year combined internal medicine and psychiatry chief resident at the Medical University of South Carolina. She taught English in Colombia as a Fulbright scholar before earning her medical degree from the University of Michigan.

Dr. Hunter’s research, education, advocacy, and community engagement focus on improving outcomes and reducing justice involvement among individuals experiencing homelessness and serious mental illness (SMI). She helped develop a medical school street medicine curriculum and has authored publications on street medicine, curricular development, and barriers to care. She also regularly precepts at free clinics serving uninsured and unhoused patients.

As an APA Public Psychiatry Fellow, APA Council on Advocacy and Government Relations member, and Society of General Internal Medicine Leadership in Health Policy Scholar, she has authored several op-eds/journal articles on policy issues and co-developed a health policy and advocacy curriculum presented at national APA conferences. She hopes to build a career at the intersection of community mental health and academic medicine, providing integrated care to vulnerable populations.  

Andrew Chang, M.D., MMSc.

Dr. Andrew Chang is a third-year resident at the San Mateo County Psychiatry Residency. He earned his BA from Harvard with honors, graduated top of his class from Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management, and was elected Class Marshal for his MD at Harvard Medical School. His research on health disparities and global mental health has appeared in Nature Mental Health, The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, Pediatrics, and other leading journals.

Dr. Chang is a social entrepreneur and founder of Nunchi Health, where he has raised over $1.5M and managed a team of 300+ delivering free mental health programs to immigrant and minority youth worldwide. Before founding Nunchi Health, he spent over a decade in nonprofit leadership: teaching in underserved communities in Peru, volunteering at an LGBTQ+ center in Taiwan, and advocating with Partners In Health in rural Mexico. He has been named a Schwarzman Scholar, APA SAMHSA Fellow, APA Public Psychiatry Fellow, Camelback Fellow, and Obama Leader.

Molly Fessler, M.D.

Dr. Molly Fessler is currently an executive chief resident at Duke University. She studied sociology and peace studies at Bryn Mawr College before serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Belize from 2014 to 2016. She is the co-founder of Auxocardia Journal and a graduate of the University of Michigan Medical School.  She is an Albert Schweitzer Fellow for Life, member of the Gold Humanism Honor Society,  and Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society.

In 2025, she was named one of the National Peace Corps Association’s 40 Under 40 Honorees. Her book, with Dr. Erin Currey, Coping with Loss, is a CBT-informed resource on early career exposure to grief. Her academic and creative works have been published in Tendon Magazine, on NPR.org, in the Annals of Family Medicine, and Academic Medicine, among others.

She is passionate about reimagining systems of care to make them more accessible and humane; to this end she has piloted interventions including foot/wound care psychiatry for neighbors experiencing homelessness and co-developed gardening, music listening, yoga and voting programs for psychiatric inpatients. 

Jordan Hildenbrand, M.D.

Dr. Jordan Hildenbrand is a fifth-year resident in the combined Internal Medicine and Psychiatry program at Emory University School of Medicine. Originally from Kansas City, she attended Duke University School of Medicine and Duke Divinity School before moving to Atlanta for residency. Her clinical and academic interests center on the intersection of psychiatry, medicine, palliative care, and clinical ethics, particularly the care of patients with both serious mental and medical illness.

Her scholarship has explored palliative psychiatry, moral distress and resident well-being, suicidality in medically hospitalized patients, and ethical challenges in caring for patients with severe mental illness at the end of life. She developed a longitudinal Balint-style peer debriefing curriculum for internal medicine residents and has participated in the Harvard Macy Institute and Fellowship at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics.

She plans to pursue Hospice and Palliative Medicine fellowship training, possibly followed by psychoanalytic training, and a career integrating clinical care, ethics, and medical education.

Jason Li, M.D.

Dr. Jason Li is a dual Public Psychiatry and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, where he also completed his adult residency. He graduated with honors from Stanford University and Harvard Medical School, where he received the Dr. Sirgay Sanger Award for scholarship in psychiatry. Prior to residency, he was also a U.S. Fulbright fellow to China and a past E3 Ambassador for the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

An APA/SAMHSA Minority Fellowship Program Fellow, Dr. Li’s work focuses on improving mental health care for underserved youth, families, and communities. For the past decade, he has led workshops on mental health, identity, and justice in Asian American communities, reaching over 1,200 families across the country. His current interests include healing from complex trauma, expanding care for minoritized youth, and community-engaged narrative medicine and art therapy.

Rachel Lockard, M.D., M.P.H.

Dr. Rachel Lockard is a fourth-year and current Inpatient Chief Resident at University of Washington. She received her medical degree and MPH from Oregon Health & Science University, where she supported a low-barrier buprenorphine telemedicine program and led a qualitative study on patient experiences. Upon graduation, received the OHSU Flame Award for Community Engagement and membership in Alpha Omega Alpha and Gold Humanism Honor Societies.

While in residency, Dr. Lockard received a grant to study substance use disorder identification and treatment in carceral settings. This work been recognized with the APA Edwin V. Valdiserri Correctional Public Psychiatry Fellowship and the American Society of Addiction Medicine's Ruth Fox Award. 

She plans to pursue a consultation-liaison fellowship after residency and hopes to combine her interests in addiction and hospital-based psychiatry. Outside of work, she can be found trail running, enjoying Seattle’s music scene, and drinking coffee to try to balance it all. 

Mollie Marr, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Mollie Marr is a fourth-year Administrative Chief Resident in the Physician Scientist Training Program of the Massachusetts General Hospital/McLean Psychiatry Residency Program. She graduated from the Medical Scientist Training Program at Oregon Health & Science University with a PhD in Behavioral and Systems Neuroscience.

She currently serves as Secretary of the World Psychiatric Association’s Early Career Psychiatrists Section, Vice Chair of the American Medical Association’s LGBTQ+ Section Governing Council, and Co-Chair of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry’s Committee on Medical Students and Residents.

Her research focuses on the neurobiological and developmental consequences of childhood trauma, trauma-informed care, and mental health among LGBTQ+ and other underserved populations. She has received funding from the National Institute of Mental Health and authored more than 50 scholarly works. She hopes to build a career bridging neuroscience, child psychiatry, and systems-level advocacy to address the effects of trauma across the lifespan

Mario Montelongo Jr., M.D.

Dr. Mario Montelongo Jr. is a first-year Child and Adolescent Psychiatry fellow at the University of Washington/Seattle Children's Hospital. After graduating from the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara School of Medicine, he completed general psychiatry residency at UTHealth Houston, where he served as Resident Chair of the curriculum committee.

His clinical interests include psychotic and bipolar spectrum disorders in youth, catatonia, and culturally responsive care. A former APA/APAF SAMHSA Minority Fellow, current APA/APAF Leadership Fellow, and Medical Justice in Advocacy Fellow, Dr. Montelongo co-developed Puentes, a bilingual booklet supporting unaccompanied migrant youth, and has led train-the-trainer workshops teaching mentalization and motivational interviewing to community organizations in Texas. Additionally, he contributed to an AADPRT Model Curriculum and APA Resource Document on psychotherapy training.

Gaelle Rached, M.D., MSc.

Dr. Gaelle Rached is a first-year Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellow at Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago/Northwestern University. Originally from Lebanon, she graduated from Saint Joseph University of Beirut before completing her adult psychiatry residency at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. She also completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in neuroscience at Northwestern University. 

She has presented her research at national and international conferences and has authored peer-reviewed publications in psychiatry and neuroscience. Her research interests focus on anxiety in children and adolescents, particularly among youth with chronic or complex medical conditions. She is also interested in neuromodulation and emerging interventions in pediatric psychiatry.

She was selected as an APA/APAF Leadership Fellow and subsequently served as Chair of the Fellowship for 2025-2026. She serves as the Area 4 Resident-Fellow Member Deputy Representative to the APA Assembly and on the APA Council on Children, Adolescents and Their Families.

Joseph Wu, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Joseph Wu is a fourth-year psychiatry resident and Academic Chief at Brigham and Women’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School. He completed his PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and received his medical degree from Brown University.

Dr. Wu is interested in psycho-oncology, medical education, and ethics. He is pursuing a one-year fellowship in psychoanalytic psychotherapy at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and serves on the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Ethics Committee as an APA Leadership Fellow. During residency, he helped to expand the simulation curriculum to ethics and forensics topics, which has been presented nationally and recognized with an institutional teaching award. He is also leading a project examining the influence of socioeconomic status on residency placement outcomes. Outside of work, he enjoys playing water polo, board games, running, and live music.

Melanie (Chang) Zhang, M.D.

Dr. Melanie Zhang is a final-year psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto. She is passionate about improving healthcare access and providing systemic advocacy for structurally vulnerable populations. Inspired by her clinical outreach work in remote regions of the Canadian Arctic, she has developed a deep interest in how geographic isolation impacts mental health. Dr. Zhang is focused on bringing this structural perspective into her daily work and aims to bridge the gap between complex medical systems and equitable psychiatric care.

Dr. Zhang is highly interested in the intersection of psychiatry and other fields of medicine. Her recent academic work spans topics in sleep medicine, emerging psychopharmacology, metabolic psychiatry, and medical education. She looks forward to completing a fellowship after her residency to further integrate these multidisciplinary interests.

Outside of medicine, she enjoys running, hiking, playing with her cat, and is excited to attend surf camp for the first time!

David Zheng, M.D., MSc., M.M.

Dr. David Zheng is chief resident of the dual-board Neurology and Psychiatry Residency at NYU Langone Medical School. He graduated magna cum laude in Philosophy at Princeton University and completed medical school at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds a Master’s of Music in Jazz Piano Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, a Master’s of Science in Bioethics from Harvard Medical School, and is currently completing his graduate dissertation at the Oxford Uehiro Center for Practical Ethics of Oxford University, focusing on the philosophy and ethics of Deep Brain Stimulation.

While in his last year of residency, he is also completing a clinical fellowship in Psychoanalysis at Columbia University. Following residency, he will be completing his clinical fellowship training at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School focusing on the intersection of Behavioral Neurology/Neuropsychiatry, Movement Disorders, and Neuromodulation.    

Dr. Zheng is particularly passionate about philosophical, ethical, and legal issues that arise at the intersection of neurology, psychiatry, and cognitive neuroscience and has received multiple awards for his work in this area including: the American Neuropsychiatric Association (ANPA) Clinical Neurosciences Trainee Award, the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) Neurologist in Training Clinical Ethics Fellowship, the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry (AAPP) Karl Jaspers Award, and the John Martyn Warbeke Prize in Metaphysics and Epistemology.

His work has appeared in Neurology, Molecular Psychiatry, Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology (PPP), and many other journals. In addition to developing into a compassionate and competent clinician and educator, he hopes to contribute to establishing clearer ethico-legal frameworks for the neuro-technologies transforming psychiatric practice, with particular attention to how those technologies impact the most vulnerable patients. In his free time, he is a professional jazz musician and music producer and has been featured in outlets such as NPR and USA Today, is part of the Grammy-winning jazz label Ropeadope Records, and is an official voting member of the Recording Academy/GRAMMY’s.

2026 Laughlin Fellows

Allison Chang, M.D. 

Dr. Allison Chang is a current second-year Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellow at Stanford University. She received her medical degree from the University of Utah School of Medicine and completed her adult psychiatry residency training at the University of Hawai’i.

Her interests include learning more about the intersectionality of culture and addiction within the field of child and adolescent psychiatry. She has been actively engaged in diversity and advocacy initiatives and has written narrative essays and articles highlighting the continued need for diversity in the field of psychiatry and the importance of physician well-being.

In addition, she has presented her research at conferences including the annual AACAP meeting. During residency, she also appreciated the opportunity to have been part of the 2023-2024 APA SAMHSA Minority Fellowship and was the recipient of the AADPRT 2025 George Ginsberg Fellowship Award. She is honored for this opportunity to be a Laughlin Fellow.

Trisha Chau, M.D.

Dr. Trisha Chau is a fourth-year psychiatry resident at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). A native Oregonian, she completed medical school at OHSU before beginning residency at UTHealth Houston, where she spent her first three years focusing on underserved communities. She transferred back to OHSU to complete her final year of residency and is also a public psychiatry fellow at University Hospitals.

Dr. Chau's clinical interests include cross-cultural psychiatry, refugee and immigrant mental health, women's mental health, and psychodynamic therapy, with particular focus on serving underserved and marginalized populations.

Dr. Chau is a recipient of the APA Diversity Leadership Fellowship. In medical school, she held regional leadership roles in the Latino Medical Student Association and the Student National Medical Association, where she created scholarship funds totaling over $3,800 annually and launched mentorship programs that have supported more than 1,000 students.

Outside of her clinical and advocacy work, Dr. Chau enjoys hiking, biking, trying new restaurants, and exploring new areas.

Gaby Dressler, M.D., MBE

Dr. Gaby Dressler is an Addiction Psychiatry fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, where she also completed residency and served as chief resident at San Francisco General Hospital. Originally from Delaware, she studied English and Russian Literature at Columbia University before working in the film industry in New York. Transitioning careers, she then completed a Masters in Bioethics from Harvard Medical School and earned her medical degree from Brown University.

Dr. Dressler’s clinical interests include substance use disorders, psychotherapy, and integrated care. She completed the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Training Program through the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and currently works as an embedded psychiatrist in the Bridge Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital, providing psychiatric care for individuals with co-occurring substance use disorders who face significant barriers to accessing mental health services.

After training, she hopes to continue working to enable equitable access to treatment for substance use disorders, honing her skill as a clinician educator, and deepening her psychotherapeutic expertise.

Norman R. Greenberg, M.D.

Dr. Greenberg is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and the Aaron Stern, M.D., Ph.D. Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Psychodynamic Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine. He is also a candidate in psychoanalysis at Columbia University. Dr. Greenberg received his medical degree from the Yale School of Medicine and completed his residency at Weill Cornell, where he served as Chief Resident. His clinical interests include psychoanalysis, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and personality disorders.

Dr. Greenberg is dedicated to improving psychiatric care through the education of psychiatry residents and other medical practitioners. At Weill Cornell, he directs the introductory course on psychiatric illness for psychiatry residents and co-teaches a course on psychoanalytic models of the mind.

He has contributed to several educational resources for non-psychiatric providers and co-authored the Emergency Medicine Residents’ Association’s nationally distributed guide on psychiatric emergencies. His current work examines how teaching psychodynamic concepts to primary care physicians can improve their management of challenging clinical encounters, and how to improve psychotherapy education for early psychiatry residents.

Mikaela Kelly, M.D., M.P.H.

Dr. Mikaela Kelly completed her psychiatry residency at Stanford University, where she received specialized training in reproductive psychiatry and the care of individuals across the reproductive life cycle. Prior to entering psychiatry, Dr. Kelly trained in Obstetrics and Gynecology, an experience that continues to inform her approach to patient care. She will join Adelpha Psychiatric Group in Oakland in November 2026.

Dr. Kelly earned her M.D. from UCLA as a David Geffen Scholar, graduating Alpha Omega Alpha, and her MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she was a Sommer Scholar.

Her research has focused on the mental health needs of youth involved in the judicial system who are survivors of sexual exploitation. She has presented nationally and published work advancing survivor-centered care. During residency, she held leadership roles on Stanford’s Graduate Medical Education Diversity Committee, the Department of Psychiatry’s DEI Advisory Committee, and the GME Wellness Committee. She is also a recipient of the APA SAMHSA Fellowship and the American Medical Women’s Association Alexandra Symonds Fellowship.

Outside of her professional work, Dr. Kelly and her husband, Wade, recently welcomed their son, Wesley, and are enjoying this new chapter as a family.

Poojajeet Khaira, M.D.

Dr. Poojajeet Khaira is the Academic Chief Resident at MetroHealth Hospital – Case Western Reserve University and a University Hospitals Public and Community Psychiatry Fellow. She serves as Chair of the APA Assembly Committee of Resident-Fellow Members, Vice Chair of the APA/APAF Leadership Fellowship, and Co-Chair of the APA Resident-Fellow Member Caucus. She also chairs the Ohio Psychiatric Physicians Association’s (OPPA) Resident-Fellow Member and Social Media Committees. Additionally, she is co-founder of the Sikh Mental Health Summit.

Dr. Khaira has received multiple honors, including the 2025 Association of Academic Psychiatry Resident Psychiatric Educator Award, 2025 APA William Sorum Assembly Resident-Fellow Member Award, the 2025 OPPA President’s Award, and the 2022 U.S. Public Health Service Excellence in Public Health Award.

Her work focuses on workplace violence prevention, medical education, advocacy, and cultural psychiatry, and she has authored multiple action papers passed by the APA Assembly.

Eric Miller, M.D.

Dr. Eric Miller is a resident in the R25 research training program of the Brown University Psychiatry Residency. His undergraduate studies at Carnegie Mellon University combined computer science and neuroscience. He later completed medical school at U.C. San Diego, followed by an internship at the University of Arizona, before joining the Brown residency.

Dr. Miller’s clinical interests are in psychotherapy and psychodynamic approaches to psychopharmacology. His research utilizes computational methods to investigate topics ranging from sensorimotor processing in animal models of autism to predictors of real-world outcomes in a ketamine clinic. He plans to investigate how psychedelics change cognition, aiming to understand mechanisms of action, as well as safety considerations.

Julio Nunes, M.D.

Dr. Julio Nunes is an Addiction Psychiatry Fellow at UC San Diego. He graduated psychiatry residency as Chief Resident of Outpatient and Addiction Services at Yale University. His work focuses on addiction, chronic pain, and health disparities, with an emphasis on translating research into patient-centered policy, advocacy, and practice.

He serves on the Board of Directors of Doctors for Drug Policy Reform, advancing humane, evidence-based approaches to drug policy. As a graduate of Yale’s Neurosciences Research Training Program and as former fellow at the Stanford University Center for Clinical Research, Dr. Nunes has authored over 40 peer-reviewed publications, chapters, and commentaries.

His work has been recognized with the Leadership Fellowship of the American Psychiatric Association, as well as with awards from the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry, the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and several other organizations. Originally from Brazil and Mexico, he brings a global perspective to issues of access and equity in mental health and addiction treatment.

Brendan Ross, M.D.

Dr. Brendan Ross is a fourth-year psychiatry resident and chief resident at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Originally from rural Missouri, he completed his undergraduate studies before teaching American history in southern China. He earned his medical degree at McGill University in Montreal.

During medical school, Dr. Ross conducted Fulbright research on Indigenous mental health access and traditional healing in Taiwan, later sharing this work through a Pulitzer Center fellowship project published in The Washington Post. His clinical interests focus on consultation-liaison, palliative care, and geriatric psychiatry, particularly psychiatric care for patients with serious medical illness and at the end of life. He will pursue fellowship training in hospice and palliative medicine following residency.

Dr. Ross serves as a study therapist on clinical trials of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy at Mount Sinai's Parsons Center for Psychedelic Healing. He provides multilingual outpatient care (Mandarin, Spanish, French, and Japanese-speaking patients) at Hamilton-Madison House, a community clinic serving immigrant communities in lower Manhattan, and precepts at the East Harlem Health Outreach Partnership, Mount Sinai's student-run free clinic.

He is a fellow of the Doximity Op-Med writing program, and his essays on medicine, culture, and psychiatry have appeared in national outlets. Outside of work, he enjoys backpacking, drawing in pen and ink, and writing when he can.

Steven Server, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Steven Server is a Chief repsident at the University of California, Los Angeles Semel Neuropsychiatric Institute.  Prior to residency, he completed M.D. and Ph.D. training in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Chicago.  There, he developed undergraduate courses in clinical medical ethics and the social studies of medicine.  His dissertation focused on the social, political, and emotional dimensions of medical education in 1930s Mexico.

As a resident, he has continued to advocate for humanistic medical education and clinical care.  In addition to his mentorship duties as Chief resident, he has served as the Education Chief of the residency program for the past two years.  As part of this role, he has designed a longitudinal didactic series in the history and ethics of psychiatry across the four years and is collaborating on a few ongoing graduate medical education studies.

He is a current fellow for the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, and he has book reviews and articles published in and accepted to Academic Psychiatry, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Science, American Journal of Psychiatry-RJ, Synapsis, and others.  Following residency, Dr. Server will pursue a geriatric psychiatry fellowship at UCLA

Mary Shen, M.D., M.S.

Dr. Mary Shen is an instructor at Harvard Medical School and a psychiatrist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Before entering psychiatry, she completed four years of general surgery training at the University of Michigan, including an NIH T32 research fellowship. She has published more than 40 peer-reviewed articles examining medical culture, mentorship, workforce well-being, and emerging treatments in psychiatry.

Dr. Shen’s clinical and academic work centers on the brain’s reward system and its relationship to motivation, connection, and meaning. Her research explores novel therapeutics—including GLP-1 receptor agonists and psychedelics—for addiction and other psychiatric conditions, as well as broader, patient-centered measures of healing. She is also committed to cultural psychiatry and is helping to develop an Asian American and Pacific Islander mental health clinic at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina and Columbia University, Dr. Shen has received multiple awards for her contributions to education, mentorship, culture-building, and the advancement of women in medicine. She is developing a leadership curriculum for psychiatrists and is passionate about communicating psychiatric research to the public in ways that are accessible, culturally responsive, and grounded in evidence. She hopes to build a career at the intersection of innovative mental health care, cultural psychiatry, academic leadership, and public engagement.

Maria Camila Velez Florez, M.D.

Dr. Camila Velez Florez is a first-year Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellow at Mass General Hospital/McLean. Originally from Colombia, she obtained her medical degree from Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá. She worked as a hospitalist for three years before pursuing a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She contributed to a National Science Foundation-funded project addressing COVID-19-related equipment shortages. Her work led to the development of a transparent facemask and subsequent funding from the National Capital Consortium for Pediatric Medical Device Innovation for community implementation.

Dr. Velez Florez completed her residency, where she served as Administrative Chief and was part of the Physician-Scientist Track. Her work focused on health disparities and culturally responsive care. She is an active member of the Hispanic Psychiatry Clinic, where she leads the development of a new research program. Her main research efforts focus on developing therapeutic interventions for PTSD in Latinx Hispanic populations to address gaps in ethnoracial representation. For this work, she received the Nyapati Rao and Francis Lu International Medical Graduate Fellowship and was granted funding by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health.

She currently serves as Diversity Leadership Fellow with the American Psychiatric Association, and second year Laughlin Fellow with The American College of Psychiatrists. Her career is dedicated to improving equity in mental health services, promoting culturally congruent and safe community engagement, and equitable mental health services delivery for marginalized communities.