Class of 2026

Phillip Bradshaw, MD (he/him)
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

My path to psychiatry emerged from a passion for languages. Early on, I participated in several exchange programs in Spanish, German and Russian speaking countries. Later, I majored in Linguistics and Russian at Georgetown University. While assisting in aphasia research, I discovered the overlap between medicine and linguistics. On a Fulbright Fellowship in Germany, I further explored the field of psycholinguistics and quickly realized that as a physician, I could pair expertise in communication and medicine to support the health and wellbeing of patients. After a couple years of international adventures, I returned to the US, completed post-baccalaureate premedical studies at Goucher College, and matriculated into the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Faculty mentorship, research opportunities and fulfilling encounters with patients contributed to my decision to specialize in psychiatry at Penn. Between medical school and residency, I consulted for a mental health tech company in the development a natural language processing tool for psychotherapy. I also traveled abundantly and developed my hobbies in gardening and yoga. 

Elizabeth Duthinh, MD, MPH (she/her)
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

I grew up in western Maryland and studied public policy in undergrad at Brown University. After graduation, I moved to Philadelphia and worked in legal services at a nonprofit serving low-income immigrants and refugees. I completed the premedical postbaccalaureate program at Bryn Mawr College and attended medical school at Penn. I took a winding road through medical education, including pursuing an MPH and spending a year teaching high school biology and chemistry. The ongoing warmth and supportiveness of the faculty and residents at Penn psychiatry made the decision to stay here for residency an easy one. I care deeply about my LGBTQ community, health access and equity, and psychiatry and reproductive health.

Elizabeth Flook, MD, PhD (she/her)
Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
Research Track

I was born in London, England where I spent the first half of my childhood before moving to Bay Area, California. I then attended the University of Miami, where I pursued a neuroscience degree and played volleyball. While in Miami, I was bitten by the research bug and, after graduating, went to the NIMH in Maryland for a 2-year research postbac in neuroimaging. At the NIH, I solidified my goal to be a physician scientist in psychiatry. I next moved to Nashville to join the Vanderbilt MD/PhD program. While at Vanderbilt I discovered a love for child/adolescent psychiatry and completed a thesis in the lab of Dr. Jenni Blackford investigating neurocircuitry differences in individuals with alcohol use disorder. I’m so excited to continue my training at Penn, where I aim to conduct neuroimaging research on development and the onset of psychiatric disorders. Outside of the hospital and lab, you’ll find me exploring Philly restaurants and outdoor spaces with my husband and two kids.

QeeQee Gao, MD (she/her)
University of Kansas School of Medicine Kansas City

Hi, I’m QeeQee (pronounced “Chee-Chee”)! I was born in China and grew up in the Little Apple AKA Manhattan, Kansas. From living and dying to neurons and networks, and everything in between, I am excited and inspired by all things human. I majored in biology at MIT, where I discovered the great joys of humanities and social sciences. After two gap years of teaching and serving coffee, I began medical school at the University of Kansas to become a surgeon. Little did I know that I would gravitate to the unassuming pursuit of human connection and meaning that is psychiatry! I hope to combine my love for art and science with policy and innovation to reimagine the social landscape. I am interested in the interdisciplinary crossovers of community and cultural psychiatry, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and medical humanities. In my downtime, you can find me listening to podcasts, binging Netflix reality tv, trying (and failing) to win the love of my cats, and occasionally writing a thing or two.

Trish Ike, MD (she/her)
Medical College of Wisconsin

Hey everyone! I was born and raised in Manassas, Virginia (about an hour south of Washington D.C.) and am the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. I went to Duke University where I majored in Evolutionary Anthropology, minored in Sociology, and obtained a certificate in Human Development. While at Duke, I became very involved in service-learning initiatives and developed a passion for engaging with the community. I furthered this interest after graduating from college when I served as a volunteer in the AIDS United AmeriCorps Program in Washington, D.C. Here, I served as a nursing aid in a hospice home called Joseph’s House. I then found my way to Wisconsin where I went to the Medical College of Wisconsin. I fell in love with psychiatry after completing an addiction rotation with veterans where I discovered my passion for connecting with others and supporting individuals with complex personal histories, including deep disappointments and losses. Currently, my interests in psychiatry are broad and range from addiction, mood disorders, consult-liaison, and psychotherapy. On the weekends, you can find me exploring the wonderful food scene here in Philly, cycling, exploring history museums, or binge watching my favorite reality tv shows!

Nadine Michel, MD, PhD (she/her)
University of Virginia School of Medicine
Research Track

I am a child of Haitian immigrants. I grew up in Columbia, MD and from a young age I became interested in mental illness because I saw how stressful experiences due to poverty and discrimination impact mental health. During my freshman year at Duke a devastating earthquake happened in Haiti that killed hundreds of thousands and left countless survivors. I spent a summer recording the stories of those survivors, learning about their lives, and realizing that I wanted to understand why people responded so differently to trauma. When I returned to college I decided to major in neuroscience and join a lab researching resiliency to social stress. I went on to pursue an MD/PhD at the University of Virginia where I studied how genomic stress impacts neurodevelopment using hiPSCs. Throughout my training I’ve thought a lot about how biomedical research does not often include individuals from marginalized backgrounds. And unfortunately, when they are included it’s often not to the benefit of their communities and can do more harm than good. I’m passionate about conducting research that is restorative to communities that have been excluded from medicine. I’m excited to be part of the Penn Family where I’ll have incredible opportunities to pursue my interests in research, community, and cultural psychiatry.

Zachary Rosenthal, MD, PhD (he/him)
Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine
Research Track

Hey there! I grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey, just outside NYC. From there I headed to Haverford College, where I majored in chemistry and found my passion for research during my senior thesis studying molecular regulation of protein aggregation in Huntington’s Disease. In pursuit of a mixed career as a physician-scientist, I went on to the MD/PhD program at WashU in St. Louis, where my PhD work explored how focal cortical injury and stimulation change brain network dynamics, using neuroimaging and electrophysiology in mouse models. I then returned to the wards and discovered my love of psychiatry, and became particularly interested in interventional neuromodulation therapies like ECT, TMS, and ketamine. At Penn I’m planning to explore my clinical interests in interventional psychiatry as well as use my postdoctoral research to investigate the physiological mechanisms of clinical brain stimulation using neural recordings in animal models. In the psychiatry world, I’m also interested in addiction, LGBTQ populations, and consult liaison psychiatry. In my free time, I enjoy cooking, home fermentation, hiking with my partner Bryan, and petting my cat Linus.

Eugenia Saiegh, MD (she/her)
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

Hi! I was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina and spent the second half of my life in New Jersey. I stayed in New Jersey for college, where I studied biology and nutrition at Rutgers University. As a first-generation Latina immigrant, I have volunteered in Spanish clinics throughout college and medical school to help improve medical care within the Latinx community. In medical school I co-founded the first Culinary Medicine Interest Group at Penn with a mission to improve nutrition and culinary literacy in medical education and patient care. I discovered my passion for psychiatry during my clerkship rotation at the Veterans Affair hospital, and I’m excited to be staying at Penn for residency. Throughout residency I hope to explore my interests in the gut-brain axis, Latinx mental health, and child/adolescent psychiatry. Outside of the hospital, I enjoy rock climbing, training Jiu-Jitsu, cooking vegan recipes, camping/hiking, and being a Philly sports fan!

Kirsten Sandgren, MD (she/her)
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

I grew up outside of Milwaukee, WI and moved to Washington, DC for my undergraduate at Georgetown University. I explored my fascination with human resilience and the experiences that shape and reshape our minds through my double major in psychology and history. I knew that I wanted to build my career in the field of mental health and pursued a Masters in Social Work at the University of Washington in Seattle, where I had the opportunity to work with patients involved in the criminal justice system, soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with the Warrior Transition Battalion at Joint Base Lewis-McChord and finally as an interventionist in a clinical research trial seeking to identify and mitigate the development of PTSD in acutely injured trauma survivors. Throughout my time as a social worker, I was humbled and honored to work with patients during some of the most trying moments of their lives, hear their stories and lend support where I was able. I was privileged to work with superb psychiatrists and as time and was inspired to attend Perelman School of Medicine and become a psychiatrist myself. I have a particular interest in trauma disorders, perinatal mental health, narrative medicine and the role of physicians as allies and advocates in advancing social justice. Outside of my time at the hospital, I fill every moment I can spending time exploring parks with my partner and our young daughters, trying out overly ambitious baking projects and playing board games.

Mila Tamminga, MD (she/her)
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

I was born and raised in Central Pennsylvania. I stuck around to complete my undergraduate degree in microbiology at Penn State, where I also worked in an adult basic literacy program and did research in neuroregeneration. As a medical student at Penn, I fell in love with psychiatry while studying novel therapeutics for addiction and working at a free community clinic. I also developed interests in well-being and the medical humanities, running a course at the Philadelphia Museum of Art about medical bias and completing mixed-methods research on medical students’ experience seeking psychiatric care. I am thrilled to be joining Penn’s warm, expansive program for residency. Within psychiatry, I am interested in collaborative/integrated care, addiction psychiatry, medical education, and well-being. I spend my free time trying new restaurants, walking in Philly’s many beautiful parks, and hanging out with my husband and cats.

Mikiko Thelwell, MD, MPH (she/her)
UCLA/Drew Medical Education Program

Growing up in the South (shoutout to Atlanta) as a first-generation Jamaican American and queer woman of color, I decided to pursue medicine after taking cultural psychiatry at my alma mater, Barnard College. By connecting mental health with social justice, I found my passion. I attended medical school at the Charles R. Drew University (CDU) of Medicine and Science and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. As the only historically Black medical school on the west coast, CDU’s medical education program was designed specifically towards serving patients in under-resourced settings. In my first year, I began working with my mentor and psychiatrist Dr. Eraka on her sexual and reproductive health program for youth impacted by commercial sexual exploitation (CSE). After learning more about her use of community-based participatory research, I decided to pursue my master’s in public health at UCLA in community health sciences. For my thesis, I was honored to help create lessons that challenged cis-normative/binary assumptions around sexual and reproductive health and to use critically informed psychoeducation with young people of color. In my final year of medical school, I continued engaging with multidisciplinary and intersectional mental health care. I completed the first Sub-I in the UCLA STAR clinic and EMPWR program for youth who identify as LGBTQ+ and families navigating complex experiences of trauma. I then translated these experiences through co-authorship of the first Kaplan and Sadock textbook chapter on mental health needs for LGBTQIA+ youth. I hope to continue this work at Penn, practicing psychiatry with an emphasis on public health programming for marginalized communities. Outside of work, I spend time singing, traveling, and doing hot yoga!

Eric Wagner, MD (he/him)
University of Colorado School of Medicine

I am a native of Colorado and was born and raised on the south side of Colorado Springs. I started my educational journey thinking I would play linebacker for the Adams State Grizzlies before an injury and large transition lead me back home to complete my undergraduate degree at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. I became the first person in my family to graduate from college with a degree in biomedical science and became interested about dialogue around mental health within minority communities and how policy shapes health outcomes for those on the margins of society. Two years following undergraduate I entered medical school at CU with tunnel vision focused on a career in psychiatry with a particular passion around patient advocacy. I am ecstatic to finally leave my home base and come to out to a completely different world in Philly where there will be much necessary personal and professional growth. In my free time, I enjoy weightlifting, exploring restaurants, brewing up incredible coffees from the homeland of Panama, and suffering on Sundays when watching my favorite team, the Washington Commanders.