2022-2023 Global Cancer Program Fellows

David Ayangba Asakitogum, MPhil, RN is a UCSF SON scholor, studying his PhD in nursing. He received his nursing diploma from Bolgatanga NTC, masters in nursing at University of Ghana, and a certificate in Leadership and Managment in Health at the University of Washington. His experience includes working as a nurse clinician and nurse educator in rural districts in Ghana, became a women's health advocate on Malaria in Pregnancy Prevention, HIV PMTCT, Cervical cancer awareness creation, and promoted adolescents' sexual reproductive health policies. Asakitogum's interest in oncology started when he took obstetrics and gynecological studies in college, where this shaped his research interest in cancer care and prevention with an emphasis on the quality of life of patients with gynecological cancers. His previous research includes cervical cancer, screening practices, traditional and orthodox care, and management modalitie. The UCSF Global Cancer Fellowship will support him with his research goal to develop an intervention to improve the quality of life of rural gynecological cancer patients and establish a cancer registry in Ghana.

Priscilla (Priz) Espinosa Tamez, MD is a researcher in the Center for Population Health Research at the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico City, Mexico. Dr. Espinosa received her medical degree at the University of Monterrey in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. As the Manager of the UCSF-Mexico Cancer Collaboration in Mexico, she contributed to the analysis of results of the Mexican National Cancer Institute and the University of Veracruz colorectal cancer screening studies. She managed the study to evaluate the feasibility of colorectal cancer screening in Mexico City, which developed a context-appropriate screening program that aims to overcome barriers at multiple levels. She is a Fulbright-García Robles scholar studying at the University of California, San Francisco in the Ph.D. in Epidemiology and Translational Science. The UCSF Global Cancer Fellowship will support her studies in the design and implementation of context-appropriate screening interventions in the primary care health system in Mexico. 

Lauren Eyler, MD, MPH is a resident physician in General Surgery at UCSF. During the research years of her residency, she is also completing a PhD in Biostatistics at UC Berkeley. Her experience in global health began in medical school at UCSF, when she taught CPR and first aid to community health workers in rural Nicaragua. During her MPH at UC Berkeley, she developed a data-adaptive statistical algorithm and software package to facilitate health disparities research in low- and middle-income countries. Since then, her research has centered on the applications and development of machine learning algorithms for addressing global health problems. During her surgical residency, she became interested in working to decrease disparities in access to breast cancer diagnostics and care in low-resource settings. She joined the UCSF Global Cancer Program Future Global Cancer Leaders Group in 2019 in order to pursue this interest. The UCSF Global Cancer Fellowship will support her work on modeling the potential cost-effectiveness and clinical benefits of scaling up the GeneXpert Breast Cancer Assay for point-of-care biomarker analysis in Eastern Africa.

Sean McClellan, MD is a family physician and fellow in the National Clinician Scholars Program, a health services and health disparities research fellowship. He studies primary care interventions to improve cancer outcomes in vulnerable populations in Mexico and the United States. His prior work has been guided by mentors from the Instituto Nacional de Cancerología and the Instituto Nacional de Geriatría and has included projects investigating efforts to implement screening mammography in Mexico and barriers to treatment among Mexican women with cervical cancer. He sees patients and precepts residents at the Family Health Center at San Francisco General Hospital.

Cham Nguyen, PharmD  received her Doctorate of Pharmacy at Loma Linda University School of Pharmacy in 2010. She completed an ASHP-accredited Acute Care Pharmacy Residency at the University of California San Diego Medical Center followed by PGY2 Oncology Pharmacy Residency at Loma Linda University Medical Center.  She is dual-board certified in oncology and infectious diseases. Her research interest is in quality improvement and patient safety as she is completing her Master’s in Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety at Johns Hopkins University. She currently practices at the University of California San Francisco Health, where she is an oncology clinical pharmacist.

2021-2022 Global Cancer Program Fellows

Geoffrey Buckle, MD, MPH is a physician trained in internal medicine and public health who conducts research on strategies to improve the delivery of cancer care in resource-limited settings. He is currently a clinical fellow in Hematology-Oncology at UCSF. He has been actively engaged in research and program development in the field of global oncology since 2010. His research has focused on examining barriers to diagnosis and management of malignancies in this context, including prior work on endemic Burkitt lymphoma in Kenya and Uganda, cervical cancer in India, and more recently, esophageal cancer in East Africa with the UCSF Global Cancer Program and the African Esophageal Cancer Consortium (AfrECC). Dr. Buckle graduated from Colby College, received his MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and his MD from UMass Medical School. He completed the UCSF Internal Medicine Residency Program and Program in Residency Investigational Methods and Epidemiology (PRIME).  

Priscilla (Priz) Espinosa Tamez, MD, is a researcher in the Center for Population Health Research at the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico City, Mexico. Dr. Espinosa received her medical degree at the University of Monterrey in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. As the Manager of the UCSF-Mexico Cancer Collaboration in Mexico, she contributed to the analysis of results of the Mexican National Cancer Institute and the University of Veracruz colorectal cancer screening studies. She managed the study to evaluate the feasibility of colorectal cancer screening in Mexico City, which developed a context-appropriate screening program that aims to overcome barriers at multiple levels. She is a Fulbright-García Robles scholar studying at the University of California, San Francisco in the Ph.D. in Epidemiology and Translational Science. The UCSF Global Cancer Fellowship will support her studies in the design and implementation of context-appropriate screening interventions in the primary care health system in Mexico. 

Lauren Eyler, MD, MPH is a resident physician in General Surgery at UCSF. During the research years of her residency, she is also completing a PhD in Biostatistics at UC Berkeley. Her experience in global health began in medical school at UCSF, when she taught CPR and first aid to community health workers in rural Nicaragua. During her MPH at UC Berkeley, she developed a data-adaptive statistical algorithm and software package to facilitate health disparities research in low- and middle-income countries. Since then, her research has centered on the applications and development of machine learning algorithms for addressing global health problems. During her surgical residency, she became interested in working to decrease disparities in access to breast cancer diagnostics and care in low-resource settings. She joined the UCSF Global Cancer Program Future Global Cancer Leaders Group in 2019 in order to pursue this interest. The UCSF Global Cancer Fellowship will support her work on modeling the potential cost-effectiveness and clinical benefits of scaling up the GeneXpert Breast Cancer Assay for point-of-care biomarker analysis in Eastern Africa.

Asteria Kimambo, MD is a recent graduate of the Master of Medicine in Anatomical Pathology at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Science (MUHAS). She is currently a staff member in the Department of Anatomical Pathology at MUHAS. Her interest is to engage in research that has a significant impact on cancer care in Tanzania. She is one of the key members of a global research partnership between MUHAS, Ocean Road Cancer Institute, and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). Through this MUHAS-ORCI-UCSF Cancer Collaboration, Dr. Kimambo spent a month at UCSF and learned a breadth of skills, including fine needle aspiration biopsy technique, immunohistochemistry, and laboratory management, which greatly impacted her decision to pursue her future research career. Dr. Kimambo’s current research interest is to increase breast cancer biomarker testing which has the potential to increase access to hormonal therapies, reduce delays in initiating treatment, and improve patient care.

Roberto Ruiz-Cordero, MD is an Assistant Professor of Pathology and a John A. Watson faculty scholar at the University of California, San Francisco. He completed residency in anatomic and clinical Pathology at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami followed by fellowships in Cytopathology, Molecular Genetics Pathology, and Hematopathology at MD Anderson Cancer Center. His research interests focus on Molecular Cytopathology and Global Cancer, where he focuses on developing novel molecular workflows to improve cancer diagnostics in resource-constrained settings to address health care disparities. The UCSF Global Cancer Fellowship will support his development and implementation of a comprehensive molecular assay in Mexico for pediatric cancer patients.

2019-2020 Global Cancer Program Fellows

Geoffrey Buckle, MD, MPH is a physician trained in internal medicine and public health who conducts research on strategies to improve the delivery of cancer care in resource-limited settings. He is currently a clinical fellow in Hematology-Oncology at UCSF. He has been actively engaged in research and program development in the field of global oncology since 2010. His research has focused on examining barriers to diagnosis and management of malignancies in this context, including prior work on endemic Burkitt lymphoma in Kenya and Uganda, cervical cancer in India, and more recently, esophageal cancer in East Africa with the UCSF Global Cancer Program and the African Esophageal Cancer Consortium (AfrECC). Geoffrey graduated from Colby College, received his MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and his MD from UMass Medical School. He completed the UCSF Internal Medicine Residency Program and Prgram in Residency Investigational Methods and Epidemiology (PRIME).  

Aslam Nkya, MD, MMed graduated from his residency training in Otorhinolaryngology at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. He later obtained fellowship training in head and neck surgery in Yonsei University, South Korea. He also holds a diploma in global health from Tampere University in Finland and a certificate in designing clinical research (DCR) from UCSF. He has been actively involved in community outreach health education, campaigning on both communicable and non-communicable diseases and its impact to the health sector. Besides research activities, he also teaches both surgical and clinical skills for undergraduate and resident postgraduate students at MUHAS. As a GloCal Fellow and UCSF Global Cancer Fellow, his research interest will focus on studying Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) infections in head and neck cancers in Tanzania, particularly in HIV infected individuals . 

Bao Truong MD is a clinical fellow in Pediatric Hematology-Oncology at UCSF. His interest in global health comes from his experience growing up in Vietnam prior to immigrating with his family to the United States. He received his MD at Harvard Medical School and completed residency training in Pediatrics at UCSF. During his training in medical school, he was introduced by his mentors to the international collaborative efforts addressing the burden of childhood cancers in resource-limited countries, and became involved in efforts to establish a sustainable pediatric cancer program in Vietnam. Over the past 5 years, he has participated in projects focusing on development of training curriculum for pediatric care providers working with childhood cancer patients, and served as a liaison supporting the establishment of collaborative training and clinical partnerships to address pediatric cancers within the country and the region. During the UCSF Global Cancer Fellowship, Dr. Truong will work to develop a validated set of clinical cases that can be used as an educational and assessment tools for management of oncologic emergencies in Vietnam medical settings. 

Melody Xu MD, MS is a resident physician in the UCSF Department of Radiation Oncology. Her interest in global oncology began as a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania, where she served in leadership positions to promote global health and oncology at institutional and national levels. After matriculating into residency, she joined the UCSF Global Cancer Program and Future Global Cancer Leaders Group, where she had the opportunity to visit the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences and Ocean Road Cancer Institute (ORCI) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. After completing a one-month clinical observership at ORCI in 2018, she became interested in the use of digital technology to improve radiation oncology operations in low- and middle-income countries. The UCSF Global Cancer Fellowship will support her feasibility study of implementing a machine learning based program to accelerate 3D conformal radiation planning for cervical cancer at ORCI. 

2018-2019 Global Cancer Program Fellows

Dharma Bhatta, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Community Medicine and Public Health at Tribhuvan University, People’s Dental College, Kathmandu, Nepal where he leads a dynamic research team which conducts multidisciplinary research on non-communicable disease, infectious disease, reproductive health, statistical modeling, outcomes and health system/operations research, and tobacco epidemiology. During the fellowship period Dr. Bhatta will work at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education mentored by Stanton Glantz, PhD. His fellowship is funded jointly by an NIH grant and the UCSF Global Cancer Program. Dr. Bhatta will pursue studies on the use of tobacco industry documents, understanding tobacco industry behavior and how it influences tobacco control policy including the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), determinants and economic impacts of tobacco use.

Rebecca (Becky) DeBoer MD, MA is a fellow in Medical Oncology at UCSF pursuing a career in global oncology. Dr. DeBoer received her joint MD and MA in Medical Humanities and Bioethics from Northwestern University, and her master’s thesis was titled The Ethics of Global Cancer Care and Control. She completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of Chicago and a fellowship at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. During her medical training, she studied clinical research ethics in Mumbai, India and pursued clinical oncology rotations in Kampala, Uganda, and Nigeria. Before her fellowship in medical oncology, she worked as an oncology clinician at the Butaro Cancer Center of Excellence in northern Rwanda with the organization Partners In Health/Inshuti Mu Buzima. The UCSF Global Cancer Fellowship will support her study of cancer care delivery in East Africa.

Maria del Carmen Manzano Robleda, MD, is a gastroenterologist in the Endoscopy Unit at Instituto Nacional de Cancerologia de Mexico (INCan) in Medico City. Dr. Manzano received her MD from Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City. She completed residency in gastroenterology at Fundación Salud Médica Sur by the Universidad Nacional Autonoma (UNAM) and fellowships in endoscopy and endoscopic ultrasound at INCan and UNAM. Since completing her fellowships, she has been working as junior faculty in the Endoscopy Unity at INCan, where the makority of her work focuses on pancreato-biliary diseases and colorectal cancer. Since 2017, Dr. Manzano and her colleagues have been working on developing strategies to prevent colorectal cancer through detection of pre-malignant lesions, and she is very interested in colorectal cancer screening policies in Mexico. The UCSF Global Cancer Fellowship will support her study of risk factors associated with colorectal cancer and the barriers and facilitators to colorectal cancer screening in Mexico. 

2017-2018 Global Cancer Program Fellows

Dharma Bhatta, PhD is an assistant professor of community medicine and public health at Tribhuvan University, People’s Dental College, Kathmandu, Nepal where he leads a dynamic research team which conducts multidisciplinary research on non-communicable disease, infectious disease, reproductive health, statistical modeling, outcomes and health system/operations research, and tobacco epidemiology. During the fellowship period Dr. Bhatta will work at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education mentored by Stanton Glantz, PhD. His fellowship is funded jointly by an NIH grant and the UCSF Global Cancer Program. Dr. Bhatta will pursue studies on the use of tobacco industry documents, understanding tobacco industry behavior and how it influences tobacco control policy including the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), determinants and economic impacts of tobacco use.

Rebecca (Becky) DeBoer MD, MA is a fellow in medical oncology at UCSF pursuing a career in global oncology. Dr. DeBoer received her joint MD and MA in Medical Humanities and Bioethics from Northwestern University, and her master’s thesis was titled The Ethics of Global Cancer Care and Control. She completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of Chicago and a fellowship at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. During her medical training, she studied clinical research ethics in Mumbai, India and pursued clinical oncology rotations in Kampala, Uganda, and Nigeria. Before her fellowship in medical oncology, she worked as an oncology clinician at the Butaro Cancer Center of Excellence in northern Rwanda with the organization Partners In Health/Inshuti Mu Buzima. The UCSF Global Cancer Fellowship will support her study of cancer care delivery in East Africa.

Michael Mwachiro, MBChB, is a surgeon at Tenwek Hospital in Bomet, Kenya with expertise in the early detection, surgical treatment and palliation of esophageal cancer. He successfully carried out the first endoscopic screening for esophageal cancer with Lugol's chromoendoscopy in Africa. Dr. Mwachiro is also a recipient of the GloCal Health Fellowship which provides aspiring global health researchers with outstanding interdisciplinary education and training in innovative research designed to improve health for populations around the world. This career development fellowship is jointly sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Fogarty International Center (FIC), the GloCal Health Fellowship Consortium, and the Global Cancer Program. Dr. Mwachiro will investigate the molecular determinants of esophageal cancer in Kenya as part of a larger collaboration to investigate the high incidence of this disease along the eastern corridor of Africa.