By Catherine Zisk, MD
UVA Health System
Charlottesville, VA
2024-2025 has been a busy and exciting time for the UVA Psychiatry program. We have some new faces among our faculty that continue to help our program grow. This year, we were happy to welcome Dr. Hema Kher. She has already been such an asset to the Psychiatry Consult service as a physician and as a teacher.
Our residents have also continued to be involved with various academic opportunities. Many of our residents presented their research posters at the Psychiatric Society of Virginia 2024 fall meeting. At this meeting, our PGY3 resident, Anand Saripalli won first place for his poster presentation, and co-presenters Christina de Fontnouvelle, Matthew Zelig and David Chung won second place for their poster. PGY2 Kira Panzer presented her poster at the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture Annual Meeting and PGY1 Gabriella Miggins led a workshop at the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training Conference. Later this spring, Anand Saripalli, Kira Panzer, and Ted Tsonis will be presenting at the American Society for Addiction Medicine annual meeting in Aurora, Colorado. The majority of our PGY3 class will also be presenting posters at APA’s 2025 Annual Conference in Los Angeles.
In addition to academic pursuits, our residents have been involved with healthcare advocacy. Residents Katherine Wu, Catherine Zisk, Anand Saripalli, Matthew Zelig, and Ted Tsonis attended Medical Society of Virginia lobby day, where we joined other MSV members to speak with our state representatives regarding upcoming bills related to healthcare.
Our current PGY4’s (and one PGY3 fast-tracking to child) are moving on to do great things after graduation in June.
- Dr. Alex Bao and Dr. Jason Shugoll will be joining a private practices in Charlottesville.
- Dr. Daniel Thompson will be joining a private practice in Cincinnati, Ohio.
- Dr. Anna Jane Davis-Geng is planning to join a practice in Texas.
- Dr. Abigail Wang will be joining a private practice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
- Dr. Catherine Zisk will be working on a newly opened inpatient psychiatric hospital in Indiana, Pennsylvania.
- Dr. Matthew Zelig will be fast tracking into a Child Psychiatry fellowship at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts.
- Dr. Alaa Abouelnasr will be doing a Forensics fellowship at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Oregon.
- Dr. Elli Novatcheva will join the faculty as an attending physician at Medstar in Washington D.C.
- Dr. Katherine Wu will be staying at UVA and joining the faculty as an attending physician.
We are so happy for them as they move forward in their careers!
As the PGY4s depart, we will welcome 11 new interns to our program. Joining the UVA Psychiatry department as the class of 2029 will be Drs. Jenina Ezra David, Sofia Flores, Abhinaya Gunasekar, Andrew How, Meheret Kinfe, Jacob Kula, Grace Pouch, Samantha Ratakonda, Natalie Saadeh, Luiza Santos, and Sara Shen.
We are looking forward to a great 2025-2026 year!
