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Kie Fujii
Kie Fujii was born in Singapore and lived in Japan for a few years before moving to the United States. Although she has lived on the East Coast, she considers San Diego her hometown. She earned her bachelor's degree at UC Berkeley, majoring in Integrative Biology. Go Bears! Post-graduation, she volunteered at various student-run free clinics in California before starting medical school at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine in New Jersey, where she also received her MBA through a joint program with Seton Hall University. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, playing sudoku, and watching Japanese TV shows. She is thrilled to be back in San Diego!
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Neha Kidambi
Neha Kidambi joins us from the UC San Diego School of Medicine. She is a Bay Area native, graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in Molecular & Cellular Biology. During college, she worked as a health advocate for low-income communities in Contra Costa County, where her interest in psychiatry began. In medical school, she managed one of the UCSD free clinic psychiatry specialty clinics and worked with Dr. Ellen Lee on several studies exploring disturbed sleep and its impacts on metabolism in aging persons with schizophrenia. She has many interests in psychiatry, including maternal mental health, psychotherapy, and geriatric psychiatry. Outside of medicine, she enjoys performing Indian classical dance, running, reading, exploring San Diego breweries, and following easy recipes.
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Rekha Narasimhan
Rekha Narasimhan graduated from UCSD School of Medicine and is thrilled to continue her training in San Diego. She grew up in the Midwest and California and attended the University of California, Berkeley where she studied Molecular and Cell Biology with an emphasis on Neurobiology. At UCSD, she was involved in medical student wellness initiatives and researched cannabis use in older adults. She is currently interested in addiction medicine and child and adolescent psychiatry and is excited about the diverse opportunities the field of psychiatry has to offer. Outside of school, she enjoys trail running, backpacking, playing video games, pet-sitting, seeing live music, and hosting game and movie nights.
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Michaela Rand
As a Southern California native, Michaela Rand is so excited to be joining the UCSD psychiatry community! Michaela discovered her passion for human behavior as an English major at Barnard College in New York City. She received her M.A. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University before returning to California for good! Before medical school, she completed the Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program at Scripps College in Claremont, California. Michaela joins us from the UC Irvine School of Medicine, where she fell in love with psychiatry and published a review paper on transient global amnesia. Her interests include psychotic disorders, conversion disorders, and psychotherapy. In her free time, she enjoys baking challah, horseback riding, and traveling.
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Kaitlin Sanzone
Kaitlin Sanzone is very excited to be joining the Psychiatry Department at UCSD. She attended UNC-Chapel Hill for undergraduate education, studying chemistry and biological sciences. Before medical school, she worked on an Inpatient Eating Disorder unit in NYC which sparked her interest in mental health and passion for de-stigmatizing mental illness. She completed her medical training outside of Philadelphia at Cooper Medical School where she was accepted into the Alpha Omega Honor Society. She published her research on eating disorder treatment modalities and mindfulness practices at various national conferences. As an east coaster, Kaitlin is excited about exploring the west coast as she loves the sunshine, running outside, hanging at the beach with friends, or trying new restaurants!
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Ali Shenasa
Ali Shenasa is from the Bay Area of Northern California. He attended UC San Diego for his undergraduate and graduate studies, where he researched the neuroscience underlying addiction. Afterward, he attended medical school at UC San Diego, during which time he researched rTMS. He is very excited to continue his training at UC San Diego! Ali’s professional interests include general adult psychiatry, addiction, and neuromodulation. Beyond medicine, he enjoys literary fiction, espresso, and the San Diego outdoors.
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Jessica White
Jessica White is thrilled to join the UCSD Psychiatry program. She grew up in a northern suburb of Chicago, Illinois before escaping the cold and moving to California for college, where she graduated from USC with a BA in Neuroscience with honors. After graduating, she worked for two years at Stanford VA as the Study Coordinator for two Alzheimer’s disease-related neuroimaging studies. She attended medical school at the Keck USC SOM, where her commitment to psychiatry was solidified. While at Keck, Jessica performed research that aimed to improve the treatment of depression and reduce disparities in psychiatric care using the collaborative care model, a cause she is very passionate about. Her interests in psychiatry include women’s mental health, addiction psychiatry, and community psychiatry. She spends her free time getting active outside, going to live music events, dancing, trying new restaurants, playing fetch with her cat, and spending time with friends.
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Pooja Vyas
Pooja Vyas is a native of Southern California and a graduate of the University of Southern California, where she earned a degree in Biology and Spanish. She also earned a Master's in Global Medicine from USC before attending medical school at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). While at OHSU, Pooja conducted research in Micronutrient Supplementation for Pediatric ADHD and Neuromodulation. She co-founded the Human Rights Clinic, which provides pro-bono mental health evaluations to individuals facing deportation. In medical school, she was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society and the Gold Humanism Society. Pooja is passionate about the intersection of psychiatry, innovation, and access and plans to pursue a career in Child and Adolescent psychiatry. In her free time, Pooja enjoys practicing yoga and meditation, running, going to the beach, and attending live music. She is thrilled to be moving to San Diego.
Community Track
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Matt Abrams
Matt Abrams was born and raised in San Diego, and he is excited to return home. He attended Harvard University for college where he studied Psychology, Global Health Policy, and Spanish. Matt then moved to Madrid for 3 years to pursue a Fulbright Fellowship, teaching in an underserved high school and conducting clinical psychology research. At the University of Central Florida (UCF) College of Medicine, Matt volunteered extensively at the student-run clinic for immigrant farm workers and directed UCF’s Peer Support Program. Matt is an AAAP’s REACH scholar, a program committed to promoting harm reduction and reducing addiction disparities, and recently he was inducted into the Gold Humanism and AOA Honors Societies. He has published multiple articles related to peer support, resilience among Latinx immigrants, burnout, addiction psychiatry, and LGBTQ+ health equity. As a UCSD Community Track resident, he looks forward to pursuing his passions for advocacy, social justice, wellness promotion, and speaking Spanish while providing trauma-informed care to San Diego’s unsheltered, immigrant, and LGBTQ+ communities. Outside of medicine, Matt loves to travel, go to the beach, run, hike, care for his house plants, and strength train in the gym.
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Natalie Constantine
Natalie Constantine joins us from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine where she obtained her M.D. and M.P.H. Before that she received her B.S. in Psychobiology at the University of California-Los Angeles. Natalie has a passion for global and community health and has spent much time in Central America and the Caribbean serving marginalized populations alongside community health workers. She continued to advocate for immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers through her leadership at the Human Rights Clinic of Miami, the Guatemalan-Maya Center, various global health organizations, and free health fairs throughout Miami. Natalie is thrilled to return to California to join the Community Psychiatry Track at UCSD to continue advocating for patients and address the mental health needs of underserved communities and the public sector. She is particularly interested in child and adolescent psychiatry, post-migration mental health, and trauma. In her free time, she enjoys outdoor activities and sports, camping trips, and being out on the water.
Research Track
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Lay Kodama
Lay Kodama was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. Her interest in human perspective and music led her to pursue a Neuroscience major and Writing Seminars minor at Johns Hopkins University. After graduation, she completed a Master’s in Neuroscience research at the University of Cambridge as a Churchill Scholar. She then decided she had done her time in snow and winter, so she moved to the Bay Area to complete her MD/Ph.D. at UCSF. Her Ph.D. thesis focused on sex differences in Alzheimer’s disease through an immunological lens using mouse models. She is extremely excited to be joining the UCSD psychiatry program and moving to even warmer climates. Clinically and research-wise, she is interested in serving the geriatric population by studying the neuropsychiatric symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases using patient-derived data. Outside of work, she loves to spend time with her husband and FMD dog by going to off-leash dog parks and hikes, playing chamber music as a violinist, and exploring new cities/neighborhoods through food.
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Tara Trujillo
Tara Trujillo grew up in San Diego and completed her undergraduate degree in Human Biology at Stanford University, where she worked on clinical research in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. After college, she studied schizophrenia and early psychosis in an EEG and brain imaging lab at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. She attended medical school at the University of Colorado where she utilized fMRI to study neural responses to social threats in adolescents with irritability. She is passionate about working with transitional-age youth and investigating novel therapeutic targets and treatments for mental illness. In her free time, she loves yoga and long-distance running.