Chair Updates

APA/APAF Leadership

Gaëlle Rached, M.D., MSc., Chair, APA/APAF Leadership Fellows

The APA/APAF Leadership Fellows had an outstanding quarter marked by meaningful professional milestones and continued connection across the cohort. Fellows met monthly with inspiring speakers to discuss career development, fellowship matching, and early job planning as many transition into the next phase of training. We reconnected at national meetings, including AACAP, ACLP, and AAPL, and we are proud to have strong representation at the upcoming APA Annual Meeting, with 13 fellows presenting their work! We look forward to meeting again in person on the West Coast and building on the strong connections we have formed. We are especially excited to celebrate six fellows who successfully matched into fellowship programs across child and adolescent, addiction, and forensic psychiatry. Fellows also continued to excel academically, with multiple conference acceptances and publications in peer-reviewed journals and professional newsletters, alongside ongoing advocacy and leadership initiatives. We are proud of our fellows’ accomplishments and excited to see their continued growth and impact within psychiatry.

Diversity Leadership

Seena Ounsinegad, M.D., Chair, Diversity Leadership Fellows

The Diversity Leadership and Community Diversity fellows had a productive and engaging quarter! We have enjoyed learning from a variety of different experts during our monthly meetings on a diverse array of topics: chemsex in LGBTQ+ populations, trauma-informed forensic psychiatry, and Latine mental health disparities. Our fellows have been busy attending different subspecialty conferences in the fall and winter, connecting with each other and showcasing their achievements! We had several fellows match into CAP, CL, and forensic fellowships this year, and many have presentations accepted at the APA Annual Meeting in San Francisco! The Community Diversity fellows have been learning a lot at their various field placements and are excited to continue this momentum. We look forward to engaging in professional development workshops and getting more involved in the different APA councils and committees as we get through the end of winter and enter spring.

Congratulations!

Join us in congratulating the following APAF Fellows for their achievements.

Karthik Sarma, M.D., Ph.D., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow, was recently elected as APA’s Resident-Fellow Member Trustee-Elect. The results of the election will not be official until the APA Board of Trustees confirms him at its March meeting. In addition, Dr. Sarma will be fast-tracking into the UCSF Clinical Informatics Fellowship, overlapping in his PGY-4 year. He has also been appointed Chief Resident of the UCSF Psychiatry Research Resident Training Program for the 2026-2027 academic year.

Six current Fellows and two Fellow alums were selected as 2026 Laughlin Fellows by the American College of Psychiatrists. The Fellows are:

• Allison Chang, M.D., SAMHSA Resident Fellow alum
• Trisha Chau, M.D., Diversity Leadership Fellow
• Mikaela Kelly, M.D., M.P.H., SAMHSA Resident Fellow alum
• Poojajeet Khaira, M.D., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow
• Julio Nunes, M.D., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow
• Brendan Ross, M.D., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow
• Mary Shen, M.D., M.S., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow
• Camila Velez Florez, M.D., Diversity Leadership Fellow

Two Diversity Leadership Fellows, Faraneh Farhadi, M.D. and Monique Waltman, M.D. received the 2025 Award for Excellence in Psychotherapy by the Austen Riggs Center. The award celebrates emerging psychiatrists who exemplify excellence in psychodynamic psychotherapy and show strong promise in advancing biopsychosocial approaches to psychiatric care.

Danah Atassi, M.D., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow, accepted an offer at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship

Katherine Bui, D.O., Diversity Leadership Fellow, received the Best-Case Report Award at the Florida Psychiatric Society Meeting for her poster, Psychiatrists Advocate for Delirium over Dementia: Rare Case of Parathyroid Adenoma Induced Delirium.

Dimitri Fiani, M.D., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow, will serve as the 2026-2027 Academic Chief of the Cleveland Clinic Psychiatry Residency.

Yaakov Green, M.D., M.B.A., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow, founded the Interventional Psychiatry Consortium. It is a rapidly growing, trainee- and faculty-led community offering global programming in neuromodulation and interventional psychiatry.

Poojajeet Khaira, M.D., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow, was featured on Ideastream Public Media’s 40 Under 40 segment, highlighting honorees with substantial leadership and contributions in health, entertainment, the sciences, public service, policy development, and more.

Hira Mohyuddin, M.D., Jeanne Spurlock Congressional Fellow, was elected as the voting Fellow Member of the APA Council on Psychiatry and the Law for the 2026-2026 year beginning in October 2025.

Julio Nunes, M.D., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow, is a recipient of the 2026 Ruth Fox Scholarship, which is awarded to those who have demonstrated a deep interest in and commitment to the field of addiction medicine.

Sahil Kapoor, M.D., Community Diversity Fellow, was selected as a 2026 AAGP Scholar by the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry.

Venkatesh Panthangi, M.D., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow, was recently appointed Graduate Medical Education Committee (GMEC) Resident Member for his residency program at North Alabama Medical Center. In addition, he is working as a co-author on a project APA Resource Document on use of AI in Psychiatric Practice with members on the APA Committee on Telepsychiatry.

Richard Zhang, M.D., M.A., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow, has been working with ABC News Medical Unit to publish articles, review information and conduct fact-checking for ABC News outputs such as TV scripts and other publications, and interview medical experts nationwide. Dr. Zhang has published on heart disease, measles, flu, and processed foods.

Recent Presentations by APAF Fellows

The following are recent articles, posters and presentations given by APAF Fellows.

Danah Atassi, D.O., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow

• Doxazosin for the treatment of mental health disorders: A scoping review.
• Article published in PLOS Mental Health, November 19, 2025

Nathan Carroll, D.O., M.B.A., M.P.H., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow alum

• Internet Gaming Disorder: A Clinical Strategy Guide for Providers, Parents, and Players
• Book published with APA Publishing, with James Sherer, M.D., and Petros Levounis, M.D., M.A.
• Smart Phones, Anxious People: The Clinical Guide to Digital Hyperconnectivity.
• Upcoming book with APA Publishing, with James Sherer, M.D., and Petros Levounis, M.D., M.A.

Hatice Nur Eken, M.D., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow

• Contact Lenses in Psycho-Oncology and Palliative Medicine: Innovative Approaches for the General Hospital and Community C-L Psychiatrist to Deliver Outcome-Based Culturally Informed Care
• Hatice Nur Eken co-presented with Maria Rueda-Lara, M.D., Shuchi Khosla, and Sheila Lahijani, FACLP, M.D. at the ACLP Conference (.pdf), November 22, 2025.
• Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders and the CL Psychiatrist: A Case Series and Primer
• Dr. Nur Eken gave an oral presentation at the ACLP Conference (.pdf), November 21, 2025.

Dimitri Fiani, M.D., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow

• Psychiatric and cognitive outcomes of iron supplementation in non-anemic children, adolescents, and menstruating adults: A meta-analysis and systematic review.
• Article published in ScienceDirect, November 2025, with Sana Chahine, Mira Zaboube, Marco Solmi, Jacqueline M. Powers, and Chadi Calarge.

Sahil Kapoor, M.D., Community Diversity Fellow

• Early Cognitive Decline in a Young Adult: A Rare Presentation of Fronto-Temporal Dementia?
• Dr. Kapoor will present the poster at the American Neuropsychiatric Association 36^th Annual Meeting, March 10, 2026.

Amanda Koire, M.D., Ph.D., Psychiatric Research Fellow

• Protecting PRAMS: The Importance of the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System for Perinatal Psychiatric Services
• Article published in the National Library of Medicine, November 6, 2025.

Mollie Marr, M.D., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow

• Trauma-Informed Care for Behaviorally Dysregulated Youth – Emergency Department, Inpatient and Residential Programs.
• Article published in Child & Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics, January 2026.

Chaden Noureddine, M.D., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow

• Virtual Virtues: Is it Ethical to Search Patients on Social Media?
• Article published in Focus, The Journal of Lifelong Learning in Psychiatry, January 15, 2026.

APA/APAF Leadership Fellows Gaëlle Rached, M.D., MSc., and Dimitri Fiani, M.D.

• Safety and Efficacy of Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors in Patients Who Use Psychoactive Substances: Potential Drug Interactions and Substance Use Disorder Treatment Data.
• Article published in CNS Drugs, with Ana Campana, Christine Nguyen, Vincent Van den Eynde, Peter Kenneth Gillman, and Brian S. Barnett.

Karthik Sarma, M.D., Ph.D., APA/APAF Leadership Fellow, recently gave a talk at Stanford University on LLMs for behavioral health on behalf of his research group AIMHealth.

APA/APAF Leadership Fellows Mary Shen, M.D., Richard Zhang, M.D., M.A., Karthik Sarma, M.D., Ph.D., Poojajeet Khaira, M.D., Abdallah Tom, M.D., and Gaëlle Rached, M.D., MSc.

• Beyond Clinical Competence: Preparing Psychiatry Trainees for Leadership in Complex Systems.
• Article published in Academic Psychiatry, September 18, 2025, with former Fellows, Thanos Rossopoulos, Angela C. Liu, Jessica Williams, and Mathew Abrams.

Jean Wu, M.D., Child and Adolescent Psychaitry Fellow

• APA Consult Liaison Eating Disorder Book Chapter - New Updates Coming in 2026
• Submitted updates, not published.