Harbor-UCLA
Harbor-UCLA

Neonatal-Perinatal Fellowship

LocationLiu Research Center
1124 W Carson Street
RB-3, Suite 204
Torrance, CA 90502
Contact Connie Madrigal
(310) 222-1969
Linda Morrison
(323) 457-1902
Email
General Inquiries
Connie Madrigal
cmadrigal@lundquist.org
Neonatal-Perinatal Fellowship InquiriesLinda Morrison
lmorrison@lundquist.org

Overview

The Neonatal-Perinatal Subspecialty Training Program is an ACGME-accredited three-year fellowship based at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. The program provides extensive clinical training and scholarly activity. The clinical components of the program are conducted at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and its affiliated center Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s. The NICU at Harbor-UCLA is a designated Regional NICU that offers advanced technologies and provides highly specialized and evidence-based care to the most vulnerable and critically-ill newborns in its community. Beginning July 2021, Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s became the newly affiliated fellowship site, well-known for providing excellent care and state of the art services to even the most complex neonatal cases.

Both Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s share a common mission of providing excellent clinical experience in all fields of neonatal medicine and train program graduates to function as independent neonatologists, both in community and academic settings.

The program supports the development of clinician-educators as well as physician-scientists. Fellows are responsible for supervising Pediatric and Family Medicine Residents, Nurse Practitioners, and Medical Students rotating through the NICU. They participate in numerous educational conferences aimed at reviewing pathophysiology, clinical disease and the latest management options in neonatal practice.

The Division of Neonatology is actively involved in both, basic biomedical as well as patient -based research, and in-line with ACGME prerequisites, all fellows are expected to complete at least one scholarly activity project during their training.

All full-time faculty members have appointments at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Applicant Welcome Letter

Leadership

Virender Rehan, MD, FAAP Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Toxicology David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA Co-Director, Institute of Women’s and Children’s HealthThe Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation Chief, Division of Neonatology Director, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Director, Neonatal-Perinatal Fellowship Training ProgramHarbor-UCLA Medical Center The Lundquist Institute Profile

Dr. Virender Rehan has been caring for the most vulnerable patients in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center since 2000. He is committed not only to providing his patients the highest quality of care, mentoring the next generation of clinicians and scientists, but also to developing new knowledge in the field and rapidly bringing these developments to his patients.

Dr. Rehan is a Principal Investigator at The Lundquist Institute, one of the leading research institutions in the country. Studies from his lab have provided novel insights into the pathogenesis of Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia (BPD), Childhood Asthma, and Chronic Lung Disease and have led to the creation of innovative strategies to prevent/treat these conditions. His research interests include lung development and injury-repair, with a special emphasis on lung injury-repair following perinatal exposure to insults such as hyperoxia, infection, volutrauma, and nicotine. He also studies the potentially serious impact of perinatal exposure to 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-hand smoke on fetal lung development of, not only the exposed pregnant mother’s offspring, but that of the progeny of many subsequent generations. These studies have vastly expanded our current understanding of the impact of perinatal smoke exposure on the epidemiology of chronic lung disease worldwide.

Dr. Rehan is a frequent guest speaker at numerous national and international meetings and is also a frequent Visiting Professor at several medical universities and hospitals in China. In addition to several seminal contributions to the field, Dr. Rehan has co-authored three books on evolutionary biology and has contributed to several book chapters. He has served on several NIH study section panels and is on the editorial boards of a number of peer-reviewed journals in addition to serving as the Associate Editor for Experimental Lung Biology and Frontiers in Pediatrics.

When he is not in the NICU or his laboratory, Dr. Rehan enjoys spending time with his family.

Katherine Kuniyoshi, MD, FAAP, MPH Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLAAssociate Director, Neonatal-Perinatal Fellowship Program Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
Kurlen Payton, MD, FAAP David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA Director, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Associate Director, Neonatal-Perinatal Fellowship Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Faculty

Harbor-UCLA Medical Center

Lynne Smith, MD, FAAP Professor of Pediatrics David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA Chair, Department of Pediatrics Harbor-UCLA Medical Center The Lundquist Institute Profile
Guadalupe Padilla, MD, FAAP Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA Director of Neonatal Quality Improvement Harbor-UCLA Medical Center 
Chie Kurihara, MD, FAAP​ Associate Clinical Professor Pediatrics David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA Team Leader, NICU Resident EducationHarbor-UCLA Medical Center 
Albert Antonio, DO, FAAP​ Neonatology Attending Harbor-UCLA Medical Center 

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Roxanne Arcinue, MD​ Neonatology Attending ​Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s
Caroline Gibson, MD Neonatology Attending ​Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s
Yolanda Brown, MD Associate Clinical Professor Pediatrics David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA Neonatology Attending ​Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s
Seth J Langston, MD, FAAP​
Neonatology Attending ​
Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s
Sara Dayanim, MD, FAAP Neonatology AttendingCedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s ​
Deepti Mathur, MD​ Neonatology Attending Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s ​
Sevini Hallaian Shahbaz, MD​ Neonatology AttendingCedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s ​
Jimmy Nguyen, MD, FAAP Neonatology AttendingCedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s ​
Xin (Cindy) Ye, MD​ Neonatology AttendingCedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s

Goals and Objectives

The goals of the joint Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine training program at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center/Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s are to train subspecialty residents in the clinical care of newborns, provide in-depth research training, and develop their skills as teachers, administrators and policy makers in the field of newborn medicine. The clinical objectives are to provide the fundamentals of physiology and altered structure and function of the fetus and the neonate and acquire the skills and foundation for diagnosis and management. Over fifteen clinical months, the trainees are provided gradually increasing responsibility and independence so that they can provide patient care and instruction independently and competently upon completion of their training. Their remaining months are spent working on their research and quality improvement projects.

Clinical Goals: First Year

  • Establish a clear understanding of the feto-neonatal physiologic principles and their application to clinical diagnosis and management.
  • Deepen awareness of the social and environmental needs of parents and ethical issues involved in the care of the highly vulnerable and critically ill infants.
  • Develop acumen in the transport of critically ill neonates from community hospitals.
  • Begin to teach interns/residents and para-medical staff.
  • Provide antenatal consultations and participate in obstetrical discussions.
  • Develop scholarly activity and quality improvement projects.

Clinical Goals: Second Year

  • Augment and refine the skills acquired during their first year and assume increasing responsibility of managing high-risk infants.
  • Orient and teach interns/residents and paramedical staff, supervise transports, and provide intra- operative care for newborns undergoing surgical procedureas.
  • Act as a consulting resource for the NICU, intermediate care unit, delivery room, and well-baby nurseries.
  • Provide antenatal consultations and participate in obstetrical discussions.
  • Teach NRP courses.
  • Present scholarly activity and quality improvement data at local and regional conferences.

Clinical Goals: Third Year

  • Assume a more supervisory role for the clinical service as well as some of the teaching activities of a faculty member.
  • Under the supervision of the Attending staff, serve as a “pre-attending” physician depending upon their progress and comfort level.
  • Provide antenatal consultations and participate in obstetrical discussions.
  • Present scholarly activity and quality improvement data at local, regional, and national conferences.

Over the course of their training, the subspecialty residents become experienced in the management of the convalescing neonate and learn to coordinate the care of the high-risk infant after discharge in the HRIF (High Risk Infant Follow up) clinic. These experiences enable the fellows to understand the relationship between neonatal illnesses and later health and developmental outcomes, and to become aware of the socioeconomic impact and the psychosocial stress that such infants may place on a family.

Excellence in Research

Neonatal fellows are provided with in-depth experience in performing scholarly activities and meaningful research. Over eighteen months of their three-year training is dedicated to research; fellows learn the scientific and ethical basis of clinical and basic science research, including study design, modeling and methodology, statistical concepts, and data collection and analysis. These research objectives are achieved via direct guidance from research mentors, hands-on experience in data generation, presentation of data at research seminars and regional/national scientific meetings, and preparation of reports of research activities. These efforts are evaluated bi-annually by the Scholarly Oversight Committee. The research goal for each fellow at the conclusion of their third year is to complete a primary project and be the first author of a hypothesis-driven work product.

Highlights of Research on Harbor-UCLA and its affiliated Research campus, The Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation

  • There are more than 120 principal investigators and 400 researchers working on over 600 research studies.
  • There are eight institutes within the institute based on focused themes.
  • The Institute for Women’s and Children’s Health (IWCH), co-directed by Dr. Virender Rehan, was established in 2020 and is focused on excellence in clinical and translational research related to women’s care, pediatric health, and the impact of pregnancy on child and adult health and disease.
  • The goal of IWCH is to support, mentor, and collaborate with junior and mid-level investigators so as to “pass the baton” of scientific excellence and achievement to our next generation of investigators. To that end, current Neonatal-Perinatal Fellows are actively involved in performing research in lung development and injury repair, pulmonary hypertension, neonatal infections, sudden infant death syndrome, as well as brain development and developmental outcomes of newborns born at high risk.

Highlights of Research on Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s Campus

Cedars-Sinai ranks among the nation’s top non-university hospitals for competitive research funding from the National Institutes of Health and — as of 2022— has more than 1,845 research projects, many led by physician-scientists. Cedars-Sinai is a hub for biomedical research, with discoveries occurring in 26 departments and institutes encompassing the full spectrum of medicine.

As a hub for biomedical research and a training center for future physicians and other healthcare professionals, Cedars-Sinai is a model community for studying the impact of healthcare challenges.

Neonatology Research:

  • Emerging neonatal technologies (biosensors and novel PDA closure devices)
  • Randomized control trial of catheter-based patent ductus arteriosus closure versus non-intervention
  • Diagnostic yield and utility of rapid genome sequencing in preterm infants
  • Advanced fMRI and connectivity diagnostic imaging to assess neonatal brain development and response to injury
  • Statewide multi-center collaborative quality improvement studies and translational research using vignette methodology through California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative Network NICUs.

Research Laboratories:

With more than 100 research laboratories, Cedars-Sinai offers scientists unparalleled access to cutting-edge technologies, facilities, and resources for conducting research related to an impressive range of diseases and disorders, from cancer, cardiology, and digestive diseases, to genetics, genomics, neurosciences, and women’s health.

Research Cores:

Research Cores at Cedars-Sinai are a vital collection of centralized labs and services offering state-of-the-art technology, instruments, and resources to faculty, staff, and other researchers. The facilities provide world-class technical infrastructure and expertise required by medical staff and the extended community, helping researchers and scientists achieve their medical discovery and delivery goals.

Conferences & Courses

HUMC/CSMC Combined NICU Fellow Didactics 

Fellow Didactic afternoons are held bimonthly and are mandatory protected time for all Fellows. The board review topics are obtained from the Neonatal-Perinatal Board Specifications and are taught by expert Faculty from all participating institutions as well as alumni. The presentations utilize a hybrid system whereby the majority of the Faculty attend remotely, while Fellows have the ability to gather at the HUMC campus.  In addition to Board topics, Fellows give updates on their Quality Improvement projects as well as present Journal Club (both Clinical and Basic Science).

Required Conferences Additional Conferences Required Courses
NICU Case Conference Pediatric ER Conference NRP Instructor Course 
Journal Club Genetics Clinical Conference ECMO Training Course
Didactic Board Review Pediatric Grand Rounds 
NICU Morbidity & Mortality Pediatric Case Conference
Basic Science Journal Club Schwartz Rounds
Surgical Case Conference Presidential Lecture Series
MFM Case Conference Life After Fellowship 
Review of QI Projects Bio-Statistical Course
Regional Joint Didactic Conference
Scholarly Oversight Conference 
Annual Academic Day for Neonatologists of Southern CA 

Fellows

Class of 2024

Dr. Francesca Le
Residency: New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital​ Research Interests: NEC, HIE, Prolonged QT study, Racial disparity in adverse event reporting
Hobbies: Baking/cooking, travel, foodie, and going to the beach
Dr. Dagem Mammo Residency: Children’s National Medical Ctr​
Research Interests: Fungal Immunotherapy and Modernizing resident education.
Hobbies: (Re) watching Michael Mann movies; Playing basketball, reading non-fiction
Dr. Navneet Singh
Residency: UCSF Fresno​
Research Interests: Lung pathology, breast milk , effect of caffeine on signaling pathways
Hobbies: Hiking, working out, & watching movies
Dr. Rashmi Somu
Residency: Texas Tech University Health Science Center El Paso
Research Interests:  Racial disparity for surgical patients, POCUS, electroacupuncture
Hobbies: Acrylic painting and dancing 

Class of 2025

Dr. Christian Canarte  Residency: New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital​
Research Interests: Global Health, BM and HMO, PPHN
Hobbies: Go to the beach, swimming, hiking and
explore new restaurants

Class of 2026

Dr. Siddarth Amuthan Residency: SUNY Downstate Medical Center​
Research Interests: PDA, breastmilk nutrition and breastfeeding rates
Hobbies: Volleyball, basketball, badminton, chess, poetry, swimming, anime
Dr. Lynn Mercer
Residency: Naval Medical Center San Diego
Research Interests: Delivery room management of neonates, neurodevelopmental outcomes (HRIF), improving care in resource limited environments, post inflammatory damage (particularly in MAS or HIE), maternal conditions affecting neonates
Hobbies: Travel, dance, theater, language, cooking 

Fellowship History

Harbor-UCLA Neonatal-Perinatal Fellowship was the first training program in Los Angeles. The program trained Clinical Neonatologists and Academic Researchers with the first graduating class in the mid- 1970’s. Over the past 40 years, the training program has produced more than 200 US and International Neonatologists and PhD Researchers. Our graduates have gone on to work successfully in academic centers and private practice settings throughout the US.

Fellow Alumni

Fellows Mentored by Dr. Rehan

Class

Current Location

Sanjay Patel, MD 2003 Texas
Daryoush Bassiri, MD 2004 California
Soina Dargan, MD 2005 California
Christine Bixby, MD 2007 California
Sudha Rani Narasinhan, MD 2007 California
Laura Cerny, MD 2008 Missouri
Lavonne Sheng, MD 2008 California
Eddie Chai, MD 2009 California
Nghia Troug, MD 2010 California
Hernan Sierra MD 2011 Illinois
Melissa Kreb MD 2011 Nevada
Sirisha Perugu, MD 2011 California
Edith Morales, MD 2012 Florida
David Paek MD 2013 Texas
Mehtap Yurt MD 2013 Oklahoma
Zeina Kiblawi, MD 2013 Virginia
Armea Botros, MD 2013 California
Francoise Raiola, MD 2014 California
Uchenna Ogbozor, MD 2014 California
Mona Hanouni, MD 2015 California
Nwando Eze, MD 2015 California
Susana Maria Sandoval, MD 2016 Florida
Sneha Taylor, MD 2016 California
Daniel Murphy, MD 2016 Wisconsin
Kamal Gurung, MD 2017 Missouri
Cindy Lee, MD 2018 Nevada
Stella Hwang, MD 2018 California
Elaine Chu, MD 2018 California
Muneesh Mehra, MD 2018 California
Aamir Ansari, MD 2019 California
Himanshu Singh, MD 2019 California
Sreevidya, Sreekantha, MD 2019 India
Sheila Kalyanam, MD 2020 California
Chie Kurihara, MD 2021 California
Monika Martin, MD 2021 Wisconsin
Nina Nosavan, MD 2021 California
Robin Williams, MD 2021 Texas
Shomir Deshpande, MD 2022 Oklahoma
Kar Man Low, MD 2022 Oklahoma
Meghan Moroze, MD 2023 Texas

Information for Applicants

Applicant information to the Harbor–UCLA/Cedars-Sinai Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellowship

How to Apply

We accept applications from either graduates or upcoming graduates from U.S. ACGME-accredited 3 year pediatric residency programs. Applications are accepted via ERAS (Electronic Residency Application System). We currently sponsor J-1 Visas but not H-1B Visas.

Applications will be reviewed starting from mid-August 2020, with interviews via Zoom to commence in early September.

For additional questions, please contact our Fellowship Administrator Linda Morrison at lmorrison@lundquist.org

Benefits

Our fellowship program offers many important benefits:

  • Competitive salary
  • Comprehensive health and dental insurance
  • Generous allowance for CME travel
  • Life and disability insurance
  • Reimbursement for DEA registration
  • Excellent work life balance
  • For the latest salary and benefits, visit the Harbor-UCLA GME Page

Wellness

Living in Sunny Southern California
Harbor-UCLA is located in Torrance, California (20 miles south of Los Angeles), and is a culturally diverse and vibrant city with beaches and mountains in close vicinity. Los Angeles boasts of a very pleasant and temperate climate lending itself to outdoor activities year round. Los Angeles is well known for its world-class restaurants, theaters, entertainment and collegiate and professional sports.

Check out this site for the wealth of fun opportunities in Los Angeles, here.

Art and Culture
Art galleries and museums: The Getty, LA County Museum of Art, Huntington Library and Art Museum, Kidspace Children’s Museum, USS Midway Museum, Natural History Museum of LA County, La Brea Tar Pits, The Queen Mary

Theaters: TCL Chinese Theatre, Dolby, Pantages

Historical attractions: Griffith Observatory, Hollywood Bowl, Greek Theater, Walt Disney Concert Hall

Family friendly amusement parks and zoos: Disneyland, Universal Studios Hollywood, Sea World, San Diego, Legoland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Six Flags Magic Mountain, Aquarium of the Pacific

For Foodies: Three wine regions — Paso Robles, Edna Valley, Arroyo Grande, many local microbreweries, unlimited restaurants focusing on the diversity of our population, many farm-to-table restaurants, year round farmers and flower markets

Sports
Home to Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball, Rams and Chargers Football, Lakers and Clipper Basketball, Kings Ice Hockey and Galaxy Soccer as well as many college sports teams

Outdoor Activities
More than 80 miles of pristine beach: Swimming, stand-up paddleboarding, surfing, kayaking, sailing, freshwater and ocean fishing, wildlife preserves

Winter skiing and snowboarding within a 2 hour drive

Hiking, biking, golfing

Parks: Joshua Tree National Park, Balboa Park, Death Valley National Park, Channel Islands National Park, Hearst Castle

Explore Other Fellowships
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