Jacqueline Geer, MD
Jackie was born and raised in New York City. She attended Washington University in St. Louis where she received a B.A. in Women and Gender Studies. Following her undergraduate studies, Jackie attended NYU School of Medicine. She completed her internship and residency at Yale University and stayed on as a chief resident. She completed her fellowship in Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine in 2022 at Yale. Dr. Geer is an Instructor of Medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine.
Her academic area of interest is in exploring the role of obstructive sleep apnea in development and risk of intracerebral hemorrhage. She is also interested in sleep architecture post-stroke.
Jason Yu, MD
Jason earned a Bachelors of Science in Biochemistry from the City College of New York in 2009. He then earned his MD from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 2013. He completed his residency in Otorhinolaryngology at the University of Pennsylvania and a Sleep Medicine Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.
He is interested in improving outcomes of surgical intervention for the treatment of OSA by better characterizing patterns of collapse and anatomic risk factors. His current projects include measurement craniofacial metrics associated with OSA, use of submental ultrasound to quantify tongue fat in OSA patients, using natural sleep endoscopy to visualize upper airway collapse in OSA, and measuring flow and upper airway collapsibility during drug induced sleep endoscopy.
Priya Borker, MD
Priya earned her Bachelor's of Science in Pharmacology from the State University of New York, Stony Brook in 2010. She then earned her MD from Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in 2014. She completed her residency in internal medicine and Sleep Medicine Clinical fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and then subsequently trained in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.
She is interested in the natural history and progression of disease as well as the identification of patients most apt to benefit from therapy. At Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center she investigated the differences in ventilatory control instability (loop gain) among those with central and mixed sleep apnea, and the pathophysiology and phenotype of sleep disordered breathing with heart failure control. She is currently investigating how poor sleep affects immune function in people with and without HIV infection at the University of Pittsburgh.
Phoebe Yu, MD
Phoebe received a Bachelor of Science in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard College. She went on to receive her MD from Yale University School of Medicine. She will complete her residency in the Harvard Otolaryngology program in 2023. She also received a Master’s in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. She will start her Sleep Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania in June 2023.
Phoebe’s research interests relate to clinical trials and outcomes research in sleep medicine. She is working with a trial group on the Pediatric Adenotonsillectomy Trial for Snoring (PATS), a multicenter randomized controlled trial assessing tonsillectomy for pediatric sleep-disordered breathing, as well as the Environmental Assessment of Sleep in Youth (EASY) study, a prospective study of environmental contributors to pediatric sleep-disordered breathing. Her research projects also include the first pediatric trial of hypoglossal nerve stimulation in Down syndrome children.
Courtney Quinlan, DO
Courtney received a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Loyola University in Baltimore. She went on to receive her DO from Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in New York. She completed her residency in General Pediatrics at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New York. She was a Pediatric Pulmonary fellow at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and completed her Sleep fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania in 2021. She is also has a Master of Science in Translational Research from University of Pennsylvania. She is now working as a pediatric pulmonologist in Pennsylvania.
Courtney’s research interests relate to genetic research in pediatric sleep medicine. She is currently working with the Center for Applied Genomics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to identify significant single nucleotide polymorphisms in children with obstructive sleep apnea phenotype using genome wide association studies. Her past research has included the role of polysomnogram in tracheostomy decannulation of children with bronchopulmonary dysplasia and of children with craniofacial abnormalities.
Abigail Koch, MD
Abigail earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from York College of Pennsylvania. She then earned her MD from the University of South Florida and completed residency in Internal Medicine at Wake Forest University. She completed her Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University in 2020. During her fellowship, she completed a Master of Health Science Degree in Clinical Investigation at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at John’s Hopkins University. She is now a pulmonologist in Miami, FL.
She is working on several projects focused on the overlap of sleep and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Specifically she is interested in how poor sleep quality is measured and treated in COPD as well as how air pollution influences sleep disordered breathing among people with COPD. Her long-term career goal is to develop guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders specific to people with underlying obstructive lung diseases.
Christopher Schmickl, MD
Chris earned his MD/PhD from Witten University, Germany. Additionally, he received training in clinical research as part of an MPH at Harvard School of Public Health and hands-on as a postdoctoral fellow at Mayo Clinic. He then completed his Internal Medicine residency at Boston University Medical Center followed by a Sleep Medicine Fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
He is an Assistant Professor Medicine at the University of California San Diego. Through his clinical work he experienced first-hand both the transformative effects of successful OSA therapy, as well as the inability of many patients to tolerate current treatment options. Thus, his long-term goal as a physician-scientist is to develop novel and personalized treatment strategies. Building on the pioneering work by his mentors, Dr. Malhotra and Dr. Owens, Chris “aspires” to develop pharmacological therapies targeting individual pathophysiological traits and evaluate their value for patient care through rigorous clinical trials focusing on patient-centered outcomes.
Oren Cohen, MD
Oren earned a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience and Bachelor of Arts in Religion from the University of Rochester. He earned his MD from Tel Aviv University School of Medicine. He completed his residency and chief residency in Internal Medicine at the Mount Sinai Hospital. He continued with sub-specialty fellowship training at Mount Sinai in both Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, as well as Sleep Medicine. He served as Chief Fellow during his final year of PCCM fellowship. Dr. Cohen is currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Oren’s initial work focused on sex differences in the association between smoking and sleep disordered breathing. This sparked an interest in the relationship between upper airway inflammation and obstructive sleep apnea. In an attempt to explore this relationship non-invasively, Oren and his mentor Dr. Neomi Shah have partnered with imaging experts at the BioMedical Engineering and Imaging Institute at Mount Sinai. Together they have developed and validated a technique for measuring upper airway inflammation using hybrid PET/MRI. Using this technology, they plan to conduct further studies evaluating sleep apnea therapies and outcomes.
Syed Moin Hassan, MD
Moin earned a Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (M.B.B.S) from Hamdard College of Medicine & Dentistry in 2013. He then completed his residency in Internal Medicine from North Shore Medical Center / Salem Hospital. and his Sleep Medicine Fellow at Brigham and Women's Hospital & Massachusetts General Hospital, and was a Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School. He is a currently a Pulmonary Critical Care Fellow at the University of Vermont.
His interest in sleep and pulmonology has made him embark on a journey to intersect his two main interests; sleep-disordered breathing and pulmonary hypertension. He is hoping to integrate clinical medicine, physiology, and genetics in large multicenter observational studies to elucidate the physiological and genetic causes and the cardiovascular consequences of pulmonary hypertension in OSA, under the mentorship of Dr. Susan Redline. He is also helping develop a machine learning algorithm with the aim of identifying Obstructive Sleep Apnea patients in Electronic Medical Records. Previously he had been working with the Brigham and Women’s Hospital pulmonary vascular group on a number of projects assessing the potential of 3D vascular reconstructions derived from CTA’s as an imaging bio-marker of pulmonary vascular disease.
Michael Lam, MD, PhD
Michael is a first-generation immigrant from Hong Kong. He grew up in San Francisco, California, and graduated from UC Berkeley. Then he headed to UC San Diego for his MD/ Ph.D. program. Inspired by how the disruption of gene expression in innate immune cells alone can cause common inflammatory diseases, Michael joined Dr. Christopher Glass lab for his Ph.D. training, where he studied the regulatory mechanism of gene expression in macrophages. He published a high profile study on how RNA transcription at the enhancer elements is functionally integral to gene regulation. This work derived from studying a transcription factor, Rev-Erb, best known in regulating circadian rhythm.
Michael was accepted in the Physician Scientist Training Pathway at UC San Diego for Internal Medicine Residency and Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship. In his clinical experience, he saw how sleep disruption – either chronically with Obstructive Sleep Apnea or acutely in the ICU – affects health outcome. He is inspired to combine his research expertise in inflammatory gene regulation and circadian rhythm with his clinical experience on sleep disruption and critical care. He is currently under the guidance of Dr. Atul Malhotra (UC San Diego) and Dr. Satchin Panda (Salk Institute) to study the impact of sleep on immune function.