Biography

As a U.S. citizen growing up abroad, an international medical graduate, and during my residency and fellowship training in the USA, he has first-hand unwanted experiences of disparities and inequities both as an Immigrant abroad and after returning to the USA. This empowered him to develop and adapt with unique positive skillsets, cultural sensitivity, and maturity that he has been compassionately incorporating to enhance equity, diversity, and inclusion into my daily professional and personal life. Furthermore, his work in on-communicable disease projects of the World Health Organization, practicing medicine overseas, post-graduate training at the University of Southern California (MS in clinical and biomedical investigations 2010) and University of California Los Angeles (K30 Translational Research), post-doctorate fellowships in preventive cardiology and cardiovascular imaging at Harbor-UCLA, Cedars Sinai, and Greater Los Angeles VA, and doing a residency in adult psychiatry at Chicago Medical School, and child & adolescent psychiatry fellowship at UCLA, have provided him with a unique set of skills and knowledge that will allow him to pursue my academic career as a physician neuroscientist and daily clinical practice to passionately serve our patients and the scientific community using positive psychiatry approach.

During each phase of his academic career, he has been committed to enhancing the quality of service, teaching, and wellbeing of our communities through translational research, creative inside, and outside-of-the-box thinking and approaches, developing and expanding interdisciplinary collaboration, and training compassionate competent students and physicians with a positive mindset in holding working environment with North Star Culture. These core values have been central to his daily clinical practice, research, teaching, supervision, and mentoring since medical school, and a main drive to become a progressive neuroscience clinician with a positive psychiatry approach. He is grateful for the valuable support of our UCLA family in our joint flourishing journey; letting him to realize his dream of being a positive change champion, and compassionately look forward to the next steps of this joint adventure to train the next generation and enhancing our communities wellbeing with the best of services and humanistic approaches.

“Building your castle from the rocks thrown at you, or standing in your way, will have strength untold about your grit, mindset, and resilience.”