MGB Team

N. Stuart Harris
MD, MFA, FRCP (Edin)

Luke Apisa
MD

 Erik Antonsen
MD, PhD, MS, FAAEM, FACEP

Lonnie Petersen
MD, PhD

  • N. Stuart Harris is the founder and Chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital Division of Wilderness Medicine, and the founding Director of the MGH Wilderness Medicine Fellowship. He is the founding Chief of MGH SPEAR (Space, Ecological, Arctic, and Resource-limited) Med. He is the founding Director of the MGH/Boston sites of the MGH-Baylor Space Medicine Fellowship.He is a full-time attending physician in the MGH Emergency Department and an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School.He is Faculty Affiliate at the Arctic Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.Harris' Arctic work experience extends from the Gulf of Alaska (commercial fisherman) to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta tundra and Cherski, Siberia (NSF-funded field medical support for Woodwell Climate Research Center), to the summit of Denali (mountaineer/ physician with the National Park Service) to community care in remote Native Alaskan communities (Kotzebue). Working with colleagues in Kotzebue, Alaska, he helped found Siamit to learn from and contribute expertise to community care in remote Native Alaskan communities.Harris’s research focuses on investigating the pathogenesis and treatment of acute hypoxia/ high altitude illness, advancing medical expertise into remote and underserved areas, on the interplay between ecological forces and human health, and the impact of climate change as a healthcare emergency. His high-altitude research has spanned from the Everest Region, to Denali, Kilimanjaro, Japan, and N. America.Along with MGH WM Fellowship graduate, Dr. Tracy Farkas Cushing, he served as Associate Editor of Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine (7th Edition).To teach a new generation the concepts and vocabulary of an ecological view of health, since 2005 he is Co-director/ faculty of the NOLS “Medicine in the Wild” course for senior medical students, most often in the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico. He is Chair of the NOLS Board of Trustees.He is father of Walker, Emma, and Elizabeth and husband to Malinda Polk.A key quality of life metric is “Did I get on my MT bike for a ride today (tonight) in the Blue Hills?”

  • Dr Antonsen started and is the director of the Space Medicine Fellowship. He is also an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at MGH and a lecturer with the AeroAstro Engineering Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also holds a PhD in aerospace engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagin.

    He continues to do research developing advanced risk assessment and analysis capabilities for space medicine, AI in medicine, and space health systems design and edited the recently published textbook Systems Medicine for Human Spaceflight. His previous role includes the Element Scientist for Exploration Medical Capabilities in the NASA Human Research.

  • Luke Apisa is the Assistant Fellowship Director of the MGH Division of Wilderness Medicine and the inaugural fellow of MGH’s Space Medicine program. Dr. Apisa is a Clinical Instructor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He continues to be active in Arctic affairs through the Harvard Kennedy School’s Arctic Initiative and ongoing work with the Maniilaq Health Center in Kotzebue, AK on quality improvement, virtual medicine, and austere healthcare. During his fellowship year he spent a season researching changes in human cardiopulmonary dynamics at altitude in Pheriche, Nepal. Ongoing topics of interest include high altitude pathology and the application of terrestrial hypobaric hypoxia research to space vehicle atmospheric design.

  • Dr Lonnie Petersen M.D., Ph.D. is a professor of Aerospace Engineering in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT as well as the Harvard-MIT program in Health Sciences and Technology. She was also appointed the Samuel A Goldblith Career Development Professor of Applied Biology.

    Dr Petersen leads the Aerospace Physiology Lab and conducts research relating to human health and performance during spaceflight, aviation, search and rescue, as well as technology and device development and human-hardware interaction. Her work is supported by NASA, DoD, NSF, and Draper labs. Her clinical background is from anesthesiology and her service is in prehospital care and remote area medicine and she has served in Greenland.

Dana Levin
MD, MPH

Ali S. Raja
MD, MBA

Lorenzo Albala
MD

Jonathan Clark
MD

  • Dr. Levin is board certified in Aerospace and Emergency Medicine. He has worked as the Systems Engineering and Integration Physician for Nasa’s Human Research Program Exploration Medical Capability Element, as a Flight Surgeon for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and currently for KBR under the Human Health and Performance Contract with UTMB on risk assessment and medical systems development for NASA’s Earth Independent Medical Operations. Currently, Dr. Levin is the flight surgeon for VAST Space, a company aiming to develop commercial space stations.

  • Ali S. Raja, MD, DBA, MPH, FACHE is the Executive Vice Chair for the Department of Emergency Medicine at Mass General Brigham, the Mooney-Reed Endowed Chair at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a Professor of Emergency Medicine and Radiology at Harvard Medical School. Board-certified in both emergency medicine and clinical informatics, he received his MD and MBA from Duke, MPH from Harvard, and DBA from Case Western. After training in emergency medicine at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Raja completed a research fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He remained on staff at BWH, eventually assuming the role of Vice Chair of Network Development, until he left for MGH. After a 10-year career at MGH as the Executive Vice Chair, he took on a new consolidated role overseeing both hospitals' emergency departments in 2024.

    A practicing emergency physician and author of over 300 publications, including two textbooks and a children’s book series, his research focuses on improving the appropriateness of resource utilization in emergency medicine. He serves as president of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine and the Massachusetts Chapter of the American College of Healthcare Executives, and he sits on the boards of Boston MedFlight and the Spaulding Rehabilitation Network. Previously, he was the editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine’s Journal Watch Emergency Medicine.

    Dr. Raja is also an expert on managing critically ill patients in the emergency department and prehospital arenas. He has served as a critical care air transport team commander and flight surgeon for the United States Air Force, a civilian flight physician, a tactical physician for the FBI, Massachusetts State Police, and Cincinnati Police Department, and a physician with MA-1 DMAT.

  • Lorenzo Albala is affiliated wilderness medicine staff at MGH SPEAR. During his Wilderness Medicine Fellowship he worked in the Northwest Arctic Borough of Alaska, where he developed various quality improvement initiatives, including the purchase and implementation of ultrasound equipment for the Maniilaq emergency department. He also worked as a point-of-care ultrasound instructor for emergency providers in Samoa, applying for grants to provide much-needed ultrasound equipment. He is continuing his interest in global emergency medicine through projects in tropical island environments, including Chuuk (Micronesia) and Trinidad. Outside the hospital, he is an avid surfer and kiteboarder.

  • Jonathan Clark is an adjunct Associate Professor of Neurology and Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor of Aerospace Medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Dr. Clark served 26 years on active duty with the U.S. Navy, and qualified as a Naval Flight Officer, Naval Flight Surgeon, Navy Diver, U.S. Army parachutist and Special Forces Military Freefall Parachutist. His assignments including heading a research centrifuge facility at the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Lab, and the Neurology and Hyperbaric Medicine divisions at the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute where he treated diving and altitude decompression sickness and studied divers exposed to high intensity sonar. During Operation Desert Storm he was the 3rd Marine Air Wing Special Projects Officer responsible for the Air Wing Chem/Bio Defense Plan and the Sustained Operations Plan. He flew combat medical evacuation missions and was in the first air element into Kuwait City with the Marine Corps. He ran the aeromedical department at Marine Aviation Weapons & Tactics Squadron One, and participated in Marine Recon and ANGLICO fire control teams’ High Altitude jumps. Dr. Clark worked at NASA from 1997 to 2005, was a Space Shuttle Crew Surgeon on six shuttle missions, Chief of the Medical Operations Branch and an FAA Aeromedical Examiner (AME). He was a Member of the NASA Spacecraft Survival Integrated Investigation Team from 2004 to 2007 and a Member of the NASA Constellation Program EVA Systems Project Office Standing Review Board from 2007 to 2010. He was the Space Medicine Advisor for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute from 2005 to 2017. In 2008 he was an expedition physician supporting the Haughton Mars Project on Devon Island in the high Canadian Arctic. He was Chief Medical Officer for the orbital commercial space company Excalibur Almaz from 2007 to 2012, and Chief Medical Officer for the Inspiration Mars Foundation from 2013 to 2018. Dr. Clark was Medical Director of the Red Bull Stratos Project, a manned stratospheric balloon freefall parachute flight test program, which on 14 October 2012 successfully accomplished the highest stratospheric freefall parachute jump (highest exit altitude) from 127,852 feet, achieving human supersonic flight (Mach 1.25) without a drogue chute at 843 miles per hour. In 2012 Dr. Clark joined the StratEx Space Dive project as the lead flight surgeon and medical advisor, and this project set a new high altitude exit freefall record of 135,890 feet reaching Mach 1.22/ 822 miles per hour in 2014. From 2017 to 2020 he was on the Navy Clinical Case Review Panel to address the On Board Oxygen Generator (OBOGS) Physiologic Episodes. He has been a consultant for Virgin Galactic, Heinlein Prize Trust, Paragon Space Development Corp, and SpaceX. He currently works for JAG Human Performance, Space Perspectives, Operator Solutions, and the Foundation for Aerospace Safety and Training. Dr. Clark is board certified in Neurology and Aerospace Medicine and is a Fellow of the Aerospace Medical Association. Recreational activities include scuba diving, parachuting, flying aircraft, and spending time in the wilderness. His professional interests focus on the neurologic effects of extreme environments, crew survival, and resilience.

Gary Strangman
PhD

Erik Swenson
MD

Lucas Trout
MD

Leland Melvin
MS

  • Dr. Gary Strangman, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Neural Systems Group at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a Lead Scientist for the NASA-funded Translational Research Institute for Space Health. His research focuses on translational neuroscience and behavioral health, and in particular developing and testing novel neuroimaging technologies for use in operational environments including spaceflight. He is affiliated with the MIT Bioastronautics Program, as well as the Baylor College of Medicine's Center for Space Medicine. He currently oversees 12 spaceflight-related research efforts, and has conducted studies in NASA's Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA), the German Aerospace Center (DLR) :envihab facility, parabolic flight, high-altitude settings, Neumayer and Concordia Stations in Antarctica, as well as onboard the ISS.

  • Dr. Erik R Swenson is an attending physician in pulmonary and critical care medicine division at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth School of Medicine in Hanover, NH. He is currently the editor-in-chief of High Altitude Medicine and Biology and is a section editor for the Clinical Pulmonologist section of the Annals of the American Thoracic Society and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Physiology and American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

    His clinical interests beyond pulmonary and critical care medicine include high altitude and wilderness medicine, medical education, exercise and sports medicine, and respiratory pharmacology. He is a regular consultant with the US Food and Drug Administration on the safety and efficacy of drugs and devices in pulmonary, cardiovascular and renal medicine.

    Dr. Swenson graduated with an AB in biochemistry from Princeton University and his MD from the University of California, San Diego. He underwent a fellowship in pharmacology at the University of Florida and completed residency in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, before completing his pulmonary and critical care medicine fellowship at the University of Washington and the Hammersmith Hospital, Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London, England. He was then appointed to the faculty in the Department of Medicine at the University of Washington. He was invited to be a visiting professor from 1996 to 1997 in the Division of Sports and Performance Medicine of the University of Heidelberg, Germany. After 40 years at the University of Washington he has moved to Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, NH.

    For over 35 years he has been a principal investigator at the Mt Desert Island Biological Laboratory, a marine station on the coast of Maine. His research interests in wilderness medicine include the integrative physiology of humans and animals living in different and extreme environments. This has taken him from studying fish and amphibians in hypoxic and acidic waters to mammals in simulated high altitude and acid-base disturbances in the laboratory to humans at high altitude, in the laboratory and in the intensive care unit. Over his career he has had an abiding interest in high altitude medicine with studies focusing on the pathogenesis, prevention and treatment of acute mountain sickness and high altitude pulmonary edema, including performing bronchoscopy, echocardiography, exercise testing, cellular studies and drug trials on Mt Denali, in Alaska, the Peruvian Andes, the Alps and the Himalayas and in the Rocky and Cascade mountains. Another major area of interest considerably overlapping with his high altitude studies has been the investigation of carbonic anhydrase and its inhibitors, such as acetazolamide, in a variety of organ systems in many creatures, and in the many ways that acetazolamide is useful in prevention and treatment of high altitude illnesses.

  • Lucas Trout is lecturer on global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, faculty director at Siamit, and Sayaqagvik director at Maniilaq Social Medicine. In these roles, Lucas leads clinical, research, and training programs focused on supporting rural and tribal health systems through responsive, equitable, and lasting academic-community partnerships.

    Lucas grew up in the Midwest as one of eight siblings. He spent his early career working as a firefighter and EMT in the Mountain West and Alaska, where he discovered a love for the crossroads of health care and social science. He went on to study clinical psychology at Seattle University before returning to Kotzebue to found Maniilaq Social Medicine and Siamit in 2016.

    Since then, Lucas and the Siamit family have worked to build a model for tribal health partnerships around the principles of Indigenous leadership, social medicine, and clinical excellence. For this work, Lucas was named a Young Leader in Primary Care by the World Health Organization. In his free time, Lucas likes to roast coffee, read fiction, and skijor with his dog, Casimir.

  • Leland Melvin is a former NASA astronaut and material sciences research engineer. He served twice on the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-122 and STS-129) to help build the International Space Station. Additionally, he led NASA’s education program, co-chaired the White House’s Federal Coordination in STEM Education Task Force, and chaired the International Space Education Board. He has advised multiple defense and space organizations. He was a MIT Media Lab fellow. He is the Board Director of BWX Technologies. After college, he was drafted to play in the National Football Leagues Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys. He is an advocate of rescue dogs and S.T.E.A.M. education.

Stephen Thomas
MD, MPH

Timothy B. Erickson
MD, FACEP, FACMT, FAACT

William D. Binder
MD

Aleksandra Stankovic
PhD

  • Dr. Thomas finished LSU's six-year MD program in 1990, moving to North Carolina to train in Emergency Medicine at East Carolina University. After a fellowship in Air Medical Transport at ECU, he joined the faculty at Harvard and MGH. He served as a founding faculty member of the Harvard Affiliated EM Residency program. In 2009 he took over as the first Kaiser Foundation Professor & Chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Oklahoma.

    In 2015, Dr Thomas became the system chairman for government-operated EDs in the State of Qatar and chief of service of the 400-bed ED in Hamad General Hospital, a Level I trauma center.

    After completion of the Qatar-based FIFA World Cup in December 2022, he returned to the Department of EM at Harvard and is now based at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). He has transitioned from administrative leadership to focus on education, research, and faculty development. He continues to have particular interest in helicopter transport, working with BIDMC’s Division of EMS to coordinate the international Critical Care Transport Collaborative Outcomes Research Effort (CCT CORE).

  • Dr. Erickson is an emergency medicine physician at Mass General Brigham in Boston, MA. He is the Division Chief of Medical Toxicology and Vice Chair of Academic Affairs in the Department of Emergency Medicine. He is faculty member at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. His areas of academic expertise include wilderness and environmental toxicology, poisonous plants and venomous animals, climate change, wastewater epidemiology, CBRNE, and acute injuries in global conflict settings such Ukraine.

  • Pending bio

  • Dr. Aleksandra Stankovic is the Director of the Human Performance Laboratory of the Massachusetts General Hospital, and is a member of the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Her research promotes high-level human performance in extreme and isolated working environments through behavioral health support and improved training, teaming, and cooperation between humans and technology systems. She has conducted extensive research in isolated, confined, and extreme environments, including spaceflight analogs and Antarctic research stations. Her work has strong translational applications for improving access to medical support in isolated and remote areas, and for making operational performance across many high-risk professions better and safer.

Jaime Mateus
PhD

Sarah B. Hiza
PhD

Gary Snyder

Christopher Vaudo
PA-C

  • As SpaceX’s Manger of Space Medicine, Jaime oversees all the medical and health aspects of human spaceflight operations. Jaime and his team of physicians, researchers, and engineers strive to integrate the latest research, medical data, and operational experience to keep humans safe in space and prepare for long-duration spaceflight. Jaime’s responsibilities include providing medical evaluations, training, and support during launch and recovery operations for human spaceflight missions; development of medical systems for Dragon and Starship; management of SpaceX’s research program; and operation of clinics supporting SpaceX activities at Starbase and Cape Canaveral.

    Jaime started at SpaceX as a Senior Medical Research Engineer in 2021, where he developed the company’s commercial astronaut spaceflight research program. From collaborating with investigators on research design to certification of flight hardware, he strove to integrate cutting edge technology into human spaceflight research and executed the first set of studies on the Inspiration4 mission. Under his leadership, the team has played an integral part in medical oversight of eight human spaceflight missions, and they have further designed a research program focused on solving the biggest health challenges associated with sending humans to Mars.

    Prior to SpaceX, Jaime’s background includes being the founder and CEO of a deep-tech startup, working in bio-tech venture capital firm, and being an advisor to early-stage start-ups. Jaime received a Master of Engineering in Aeronautical Engineering from the Imperial College London. Afterwards, Jaime continued his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he received a Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics and his PhD in Aerospace Biomedical Engineering.

  • Dr. Sarah Hiza is the Vice President and General Manager of the Strategic and Missile Defense line of business at Lockheed Martin Space, and she also serves on the Board of Directors for Lockheed Martin U.K. Strategic Systems, Ltd. In these roles, she is responsible for over 7,500 employees across 18 U.S. and U.K. sites supporting a broad portfolio of programs in strategic deterrence, missile defense, directed energy and hypersonic strike. She works to infuse innovation and emerging technologies into these programs to deliver for national security missions for the U.S. Department of Defense and U.K. Ministry of Defence.

    Dr. Hiza’s technical expertise includes work in polymers and energetic materials, including explosives and rocket propellants, chemistry and missile hardware/subsystems. She holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), and a doctorate degree in polymer science from The University of Akron. She has one patent, has authored eight national publications and has been highlighted in national media.

    Dr. Hiza has a passion for cultivating an inclusive work environment, which is evident in her people-focused approach to leadership and how she encourages the next generation of leaders to think about how their decisions impact their place of businesses, their co-workers, the community and the world around them. She is also an avid outdoor enthusiast based in Evergreen, Colorado, and she serves on the Board of Trustees for NOLS.

  • For over 15 years, the poet Gary Snyder has graciously served as the Poet Laureate of the MGH Division of Wilderness Medicine. His support of our mission is an unearned grace -- and one of Stuart's proudest achievements.

    Gary is an extraordinary poet and essayist and one of the great minds of our time. Born in 1930, his early poetry has been associated with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance and he has been described as the "poet laureate of Deep Ecology." He has a deep history in Western and Japanese culture and literature, Buddhism, and ecological thought. Gary's work has earned a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the American Book Award. His poetry and essays from "The Practice of the Wild" have been critical influences on a generation of medical students on our HAEMR/ NOLS "Medicine in the Wild" Course in New Mexico's Gila Wilderness. Gary's work rewards demanding and ambitious readers. New students will write prior to leaving for the field "The Etiquette of Freedom was really interesting, but I'm not exactly sure what it was about.' When I meet these same students after 3 weeks of crossing the Gila Wilderness, the response is inevitably -- "Now I get it!"

    "For several centuries Western civilization has had a drive for material accumulation, continual extensions of economic power, termed 'progress'...The longing for growth is not wrong. The nub of the problem is how to flip over, as in jujitsu, the magnificent growth energy of modern civilization into a non-acquisitive search for deeper knowledge of self and nature."

  • Chris Vaudo has a background in Chemistry with a bachelor's degree from Boston College. During that time, he also spent a semester in Tanzania, including an internship in rural HIV care (and a breathtaking climb up Kilimanjaro). After graduating, he spent a year volunteering through AmeriCorps in Anchorage, AK which helped to solidify his passion for medicine and underserved populations, and for outdoor adventure. He subsequently went to PA school at the George Washington University in Washington, DC to earn his master's degree. In the 6 years since, he has worked largely in Emergency Medicine, with some Surgery and Urgent Care on the side. He currently works in the Emergency Department at Mass General Hospital and is a part of the SPEAR MED team as PA-2 for Wilderness Medicine.  In his free time, he enjoys hiking, distance running, rock climbing, baking bread, practicing yoga, and road cycling. 

Fellows

Carlo Canepa
MD

Kenny Chao
MD

Lisa “Suzanne” Leslie
MD, PhD

Page Mieritz
MD

  • Space Medicine Fellow 2023-2025
    Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine

    Dr. Canepa is board certified in Emergency Medicine and a Fellow of the Academy of Wilderness Medicine. He completed an ultrasound fellowship and a wilderness medicine fellowship and has worked around the world, including Nepal, Saipan, and most recently, Alaska. His research interests include the use of portable ultrasound devices in remote environments.

  • Kenny Chao, M.D. is a space medicine fellow with MGH SPEAR. He completed medical school and emergency & internal medicine residency training at SUNY Downstate / Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, NY. Before steering his path towards medicine, he received an undergraduate degree in business management and worked in the finance industry. Other interests include wilderness medicine.

  • Suzanne Leslie, MD, PhD is the current wilderness medicine fellow. She completed her undergraduate degree at Truman State University - studying physics, math, and Spanish - before earning her doctorate in optics at the University of Rochester specializing in quantum optics and Bose-Einstein condensates. From there, she was a post-doctoral researcher in bioengineering University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, focused machine learning to detect cancerous tissues.

    She graduated from the Weill Cornell Medical College and completed her emergency medicine residency at Boston Medical Center.

  • Dr Page Mieritz earned her Bachelor's degree in Biology, Community and Environmental Sociology, and Environmental Studies from the University of Wisconsin. Before pursuing medicine, she pursued a career in freshwater ecology (Limnology), working on projects ranging from the predatory impact of sea birds on migrating fish species to aquatic invasive species management to studying nutrient uptake and runoff in streams. She has had in-depth experience living and working on remote research stations, both in the States and abroad. She worked as a study abroad leader for teenagers on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation and in the British Virgin Islands and as a ski instructor in Montana and Wisconsin.

    She earned her MD from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and completed her emergency medicine residency at Maine Medical Center in Portland. Her medical interests include wilderness and environmental medicine, rural emergency medicine, rural URM populations, medical communication and jargon, and alternative and experiential education. She also enjoys trail running with her pup, Aster, downhill skiing, being on the water in any capacity, gardening, foraging for wild edibles, art, antique shopping, and spending her free time in the outdoors.

Adam Pissaris
MD

Ryan Zahalka
MD

  • Adam Pissaris is a wilderness medicine fellow with MGH SPEAR. He completed his undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering at Yale, before attending Northwestern University for his MD and MPH. From there, he pursued a residency in Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. His interests include global emergency medicine, rural medicine, and point-of-care ultrasound. Outside of the hospital, he enjoys playing soccer and running.

  • Dr. Ryan Zahalka completed his undergraduate, medical school, and emergency medicine training at the University of Pennsylvania. He is particularly interested in exploring the interdisciplinary nature of Space Medicine, combining knowledge of human physiology with physics, engineering, ethics, and logistics. His experiences include research on medical ethics in deep space, developing a space medicine elective for medical students, and scholarship delving into the medical-legal risk environment of commercial spaceflight.

    Inspired by his upbringing in Appalachia, Ryan is passionate about translating technology, training, and infrastructure developed for space missions towards rural medicine applications. Ryan enjoys metalworking, writing, and reading about ancient cultures outside of medicine.

Baylor Team

Mohammad I. Hirzallah
MD, MMSc

Daniela Ortiz
MD, MPH

  • Assistant Professor Departments of Neurology,
    Neurosurgery, and Center for Space Medicine
    Section of Neurocritical Care and Vascular Neurology
    Baylor College of Medicine

    Dr. Hirzallah is board certified in Neurology and Neurocritical Care with masters degrees in Neuroscience and clinical research, and training in Wilderness and Marine Medicine. He is a coinvestigator on a NASA grant evaluating long-term neurological changes in NASA astronauts and multiple TRISH-sponsored grants evaluating the health and well-being of commercial astronauts.

    His research interests include evaluating novel, non-invasive technologies in the ICU and spaceflight environments, including the use of eye tracking technology in the ICU, advanced applications of pupillometry, novel applications of telemedicine, optic nerve sheath diameter, and machine learning for ultrasound image analysis.

  • Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine

    Dr. Ortiz is board certified in emergency medicine and a medical education fellow completing a Master of Education in the Health Professions through Johns Hopkins. Her research interests include curriculum and program development within space medicine, investigating educational needs within space medicine, researching clinical learning barriers, and has received funding for interprofessional simulation education through the Center of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Alumni

Paul Barre, MD
2004 - 2005

  • Pending bio

Peter Fagenholz, MD
2005 - 2007

  • Pending bio

Tracy Farkas, MD
2008 - 2010

  • Born and raised in NYC, reluctantly moved to Boston for residency. Graduated from fellowship in 2009. Moved to Colorado seeking high altitude experience, never looked back, and founded the University of Colorado Wilderness Medicine fellowship. Served as the fellowship director for 8 years and retired from academics as an associate professor from the University of Colorado. Currently practicing community emergency medicine and starting a lifestyle/integrative practice for oncology patients, while focusing on climate health and plant based nutrition. Happiest place is on two wheels or on a trail.

    Most proud of: being the first MGH wilderness medicine fellow and starting my own fellowship.

    Wilderness related since graduating: too many to list - WMS board of directors, Wilderness and Environmental Medicine associate editor and clinical practice guidelines series editorial board member, ran a fellowship, educated a generation of WM fellows, worked in Pheriche for HRA, many publications and field educational experiences.

    Words of wisdom: there is virtually no environment on Earth where you will be incapable of providing care as a WM fellow - seek opportunity everywhere and the doors will open. A lifetime of amazing experiences and training await.

    Coolest experience: I started a festival event company that provided on-site care for patrons of large music events. It was a great combination of remote/resource poor medicine, toxicology, and emergency care. I saw an incredible variety of pathology, and provided hospital-level care in a tent - because wilderness medicine training showed me I could.

Doug Gregorie, MD
2010 - 2011

  • Pending bio

John Tanner, MD
2011 - 2013

  • John Tanner studied wilderness medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital from 2011 to 2013. His research included the effects of high altitude on sleep as well as a randomized trial of acetazolamide versus temazepam for sleep at high altitude. He was able to present his research at the Hypoxia Symposium in 2013 and publish his findings in the journal High Altitude Medicine & Biology and also in the journal Sleep Disorders. Before leaving MGH he founded the Himalayan Rescue Association Data Repository. Since his fellowship, Dr. Tanner wrote a book chapter in Auerbach’s Wilerness Medicine, acted as the medical director for White Pass Ski Area, chief of staff at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital, medical director for Snoqualmie Valley Hospital Emergency Department, and spent time as a member of Yakima County Search and Rescue. He is currently a busy father of four and loves spending time with his family.

Hillary Irons, MD
2012 - 2015

  • Pending bio

Justin Pitman, MD
2013 - 2014

  • Exploration of the outdoors has always been an integral part of my life. My youth was spent exploring the Olympic Mountains in the Pacific Northwest, and subsequently was drawn to the Green and White Mountains of New England after my migration East. As I learned, exploration and outdoor pursuit is not without inherent risk. After several harrowing misadventures and close calls, I sought to improve my own resourcefulness as an austere medical practitioner. After completing my residency at the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency (HAEMR), I became an ED attending at Mt. Auburn Hospital where I have practiced for the past 10 years. During the period of 2018-2020, I was fortunate enough to serve within the division of MGH Wilderness Medicine as the assistant fellowship director. I remain passionate about the outdoors, spending my time cycling, mountain biking, hiking, and instilling the love of nature in my children.

Renee Salas, MD
2013 - 2015

  • Pending bio

Lara Phillips, MD
2014 - 2015

  • Dr. Lara Phillips is a clinical Associate Professor in emergency medicine at Thomas Jefferson University. During her Wilderness Medicine fellowship, she worked at Health Aid Posts through the Himalayan Rescue Association and continued to volunteer with relief efforts after the Nepal earthquake in 2015. She has worked in rural settings with the Indian Health Service as well as help with numerous covid initiatives during the pandemic. Currently, she is one of the directors for the Breckenridge Wilderness and Environmental Medicine Elective. She continues to pursue an academic career by combining patient care and teaching in traditional and non-traditional emergency medicine settings.

Isabelle Algaze Gonzalez, MD
2015 - 2017

  • She is a clinical associate professor of Emergency Medicine at UC Irvine. She established and is the director of the departments’ Wilderness Medicine Fellowship. She was born in Puerto Rico at the same hospital where she completed her residency training in Emergency Medicine. Furthermore, completed a two-year fellowship in Wilderness Medicine from Harvard Medical School at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Algaze is trained in primary hyperbaric medicine, white water rescue, avalanche medicine mountain medicine, and served as an emergency medical teams coordinator for the Pan-American Health Organization. Algaze also served as the expedition doctor for a private jet company and a National Geographic funded preservation project. As part of her training, she spent three months in a remote aid post at 14,500 feet in the Khumbu region of Nepal, serving as site physician for locals, trekkers and climbers while she completed her research project. She is now serving as the Medical Director of Catalina Island Medical Center Emergency Department – a rural, critical assess, free standing emergency department, on an island with 4,500 residents and an excess of a 1 million tourist.

David Hu, MD
2016 - 2017

  • Pending bio

Terez Malka, MD
2016 - 2018

  • Terez Malka began her career as a wilderness EMT, after witnessing multiple injuries in remote settings while working as a whitewater kayaking instructor and raft guide. Volunteering with the Israeli ambulance service in southern Israel and Gaza which inspired a passion for disaster response and working in underserved areas. After combined Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics residency at Indiana University, Terez worked as emergency medicine faculty at Carolinas Medical Center. She was deployed to respond to the Nepal earthquake in 2015, which reawakened her passion for disaster response and wilderness medicine, and decided to pursue further training with the MGH wilderness medicine fellowship. Since completing fellowship, Terez earned her MPH at Johns Hopkins University and spent 2020-2022 working in hospitals most impacted by COVID within the US and abroad- including New York City, the US Virgin Islands, and western Zambia. She is now splitting time between Denver, CO and Wichita, KS, where she is establishing an emergency medicine residency program at Wesley Medical Center. She volunteers regularly with Lindblad-National Geographic expeditions, Team Rubicon Disaster Response, and Earth's Edge Adventure Travel, and is on the operational team at Duration Health, a travel and disaster medical kit supplier. In her free time, Terez loves whitewater kayaking, hiking, and climbing with her two sons and her pug, Squash.

Nat Mann, MD
2016 - 2018

  • Pending bio

Carlo Canepa, MD
2017 - 2018

  • Carlo Canepa, MD, FAWM, was born in Lima, Peru, and raised in New York. He completed the MGH wilderness medicine fellowship from 2017-2018. Prior to that he completed an ultrasound fellowship and an emergency medicine residency. He has worked in Nepal, Saipan, and Alaska. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and a Space Medicine fellow at Baylor College of Medicine. Carlo has a special interest in human physiology at the extremes: high altitude, severe cold, ultra-endurance, and low gravity. He enjoys running, mountaineering, mountain biking, and anything on snow and ice.

Rob Inglis, MD
2017 - 2018

  • Pending bio

Brian Jarrett, MD
2018 - 2019

  • Pending bio

Brian Strickland, MD
2019 - 2021

  • Originally from Kansas City, I'm currently a resident of Denver and am currently working with the University of Colorado. Since my fellowship, I have worked in Alaska, Nepal, and the Northern Mariana Islands. My specific interests are the delivery of care in high altitude, tropical, and remote environments, and am actively involved in clinical research focusing on the treatment of altitude-related illnesses. I'm also interested in skiing, scuba diving, and mountain bikes/dirt bikes.

Ashley Kochanek Weisman, MD
2019 - 2020

  • Thanks to Stuart’s visionary, full-spectrum definition of wilderness medicine, I spent my fellowship focusing on rural emergency care and building our clinical and educational relationship with Maniilaq Health in Kotzebue, Alaska. I am now faculty at the University of Vermont Health Network where I build rural-academic partnerships and education programs and work clinically in ERs large and small throughout Vermont and northern New York. Most often, I can be found skiing trees, climbing granite, and canoeing rivers in the Greens and the ‘Dacks with my husband and two boys.

Clay Dalton, MD
2020 - 2021

  • Pending bio

Luke Apisa, MD
2021 - 2024

  • Pending bio

Brandon Berger, MD
2022 - 2023

  • Pending bio

Lorenzo Albala, MD
2022 - 2023

  • Lorenzo Albala is affiliated wilderness medicine staff at MGH SPEAR. During his Wilderness Medicine Fellowship he worked in the Northwest Arctic Borough of Alaska and in Samoa, implementing emergency medicine quality initiatives focused on point-of-care ultrasound. His interests include wilderness medicine education and global emergency medicine development. Outside the hospital, he is an avid surfer and kiteboarder.

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