Student ScholarsJohn P. McGovern Academy of Oslerian Medicine

Carlos Chavez was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. He grew up on both sides of the border where he was able to encounter the inequities of the Hispanic community firsthand which influenced his pursuit of medicine. He was the first member of his family to be fluent in English, pursue higher education, and achieve a college degree. He would teach his family members English as well as tutor his younger relatives to assist them in their pursuit of higher education as well. Carlos pursued a degree in Biochemistry from the University of Texas at El Paso where he graduated with honors. He worked multiple jobs during his time at UTEP while working at least 3 full-time jobs simultaneously at any given moment to help fund his higher education. He would work 12-hour night and weekend shifts in the multiple emergency departments where he was able to immerse himself in the health disparities that plagued his community. As a result of his upbringing, he developed an immense passion for mentorship, fighting health inequities, and increasing underrepresented minority representation in higher education.

Carlos embraces these passions at UTMB by contributing to several organizations and causes on campus. He has devoted much of his time to helping mentor his colleagues and serve the URM communities within Galveston and in the border regions. He has served as the Vice-President of the Latino Medical Student Association, Vice-President of the Class of 2024, Phi Beta Pi Medical Fraternity President, Que Quiere Decir Student Organization Co-Director, and the Simulation Society Vice-President. He hopes to uphold and teach the principles of Sir William Osler in the attempt of improving the state of our healthcare system and promote the equity and personalization of the patients seen.

Carlos is interested in general surgery with the hopes of increasing underrepresented minority (URM) representation in the field, mentoring students who are interested in pursuing it, as well as inspiring future generations of students. He aspires to elicit change in the healthcare system and advocate for health equity among disadvantaged populations. Above all else, however, he wishes to follow in the path of the trailblazers that came before him so that he may also leave a trail for those who may follow. 

John is an MD-PhD student in Population Health Sciences at UTMB. His interests range from the traditional humanities and medical ethics to creating a deeper evidence-base in medicine through the use of meta-analysis and other novel techniques. His passion is advocating for health interventions and policies that create egalitarian opportunities for all persons to survive, thrive, and enjoy life. He serves as Chair at the St. Vincent’s Student Run Free Clinic in Galveston, and regularly serves as a peer reviewer for journals in family and internal medicine. He ultimately hopes to serve his community as an academic and clinical cardiologist. His time outside of work revolves around spending time with his wife Jacquelyn and the rest of his family.

Sheina Duncan was born and raised in Houston, TX. She earned a bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering, with honors, and a minor in Religious Studies from The University of Texas at Austin. As a MD-MPH student at UTMB, she serves as the President of SOM Class of 2024, Founder and Executive President of Connect at UTMB, and President of Street Medicine Galveston. She also sits on several institutional and community boards, as she has always been more focused on uplifting those around her.

Sheina is passionate about addressing the social determinants of health that impact health care feasibility and accessibility for marginalized and underserved populations, through policy and technological interventions. Her time spent in the Galveston community earned her the UTMB Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award, making her one of the first MS1s to be nominated and win the honor. She was UTMB's first medical student to be selected as a Graduate Fellow in the Archer Fellowship Program in Washington, D.C. Also, she was recently named a Schweitzer Fellow to further develop her community program to empower socioeconomically disadvantaged elementary and middle school students in their educational endeavors. Yet, spreading the Gospel remains her greatest commitment. Thus, her heart plans her direction, but she knows the Lord directs her steps.

Caleb was born in San Jose, California and lived in the tropical island of Taiwan during his high school years. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, majoring in mathematics and biophysics and minoring in Latin. He immersed himself into research, whether it be solving for protein dynamics with mathematical models or writing essays on Cicero’s political rhetoric. Outside of academia, he held several jobs in community housing and education. He worked at an independently run housing cooperative, a non-profit organization founded on shared resources and social justice. He mentored and tutored middle school students for an afterschool program, where he started various initiatives including science demonstrations and field trips to UCLA. He also taught SAT, GRE, and MCAT courses for The Princeton Review.

After college, Caleb worked as a research trainee at the NIH, where he studied brain network changes in patients with motor neuron diseases. Seeing the suffering of these patients with debilitating, incurable diseases inspired him to pursue a career as a physician-scientist, where he would be able to find solutions for patients by combining the creativity of scientific research and the humanitarian mission of medicine. He currently serves as a QI/R&D director at St. Vincent’s Student Clinic and a research and publications chair for the Society of Student Run Clinics. He was also recently named a Schweitzer fellow to develop a community garden program to empower patients suffering chronic diseases to take control of their health. On his off time, Caleb has immersed himself into Galveston’s island culture and taken up surfing in the infamous “Galveston brown”; last year, he had the privilege of helping children with disabilities learn to surf through Waves of Impact. As a physician-scientist in training, Caleb hopes to serve as a link among the realms of scientific theory, clinical practice, and spirituality. He is honored to be part of a community of students and faculty who seek to learn from medicine’s past, contribute to its present, and advance its future.

A lifelong Texan, Grayson R. Jackson was raised in Grapevine and attended Baylor University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 2020. At Baylor, Grayson studied biology, public health, and medical humanities as a University Scholar and completed the Honors Program and the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core while maintaining a perfect GPA. He was named a Hillis Scholar in Biomedical Science and a Texas finalist for the Harry S. Truman Scholarship and inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Grayson was introduced to scientific research in an environmental science lab at Baylor where he investigated lead-contaminated soil and childhood lead exposure. He also spent two summers at the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development in Houston where he conducted projects related to antigen cloning and purification for neglected tropical diseases like schistosomiasis and dirofilariasis. This research inspired his honors thesis, which explored the intersections of vaccine hesitancy with populism, political polarization, and public policy. Aside from his undergraduate studies, Grayson was also actively involved as a trumpet player and staff member in the Golden Wave Marching Band and as a member of student government, in which he helped organize Baylor's inaugural mental health awareness week.

Grayson is currently an M.D.- Ph.D. student at UTMB with aspirations to become a physician­ scientist, physician-advocate, and medical educator. His clinical interests include infectious diseases and LGBTQ+ health, and he will pursue a Ph.D. at the Institute for Bioethics & Health Humanities to study ethics, law, and health policy. A believer in interdisciplinary education, Grayson also studies in the interprofessional Scholars Program and the global and public health tracks. Since moving from Waco to Galveston, Grayson has volunteered at St. Vincent's as a member of the steering committee and administrative team for the newly established interprofessional Clinic. He also serves as president of the Pediatric Student Association, chair of Allies in Health, and UTMB's student delegate to the Texas Medical Association. Grayson hopes to promulgate the values of Sir William Osler as a student and in his future clinical practice-one which integrates the medical humanities with patient-cent ered care.

Jasmine Jones was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. After attending a career high school where she completed her EMT certification training, Jasmine began her collegiate career at The University of Texas at Austin. Here she pursued a Bachelor of Science and Arts in Biology, a Business minor, and graduated with honors. During her time as a student, Jasmine was a course assistant for introductory biology, a student educator and public speaking consultant at Sanger Learning Center, an ambassador for the Joint Admission Medical Program (JAMP), and a committed volunteer for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Texas. Most notably, Jasmine received the Mary Pendleton Volunteer of the Year Award for serving families with children in the neonatal intensive care unit at St. David's Medical Center.

Now at UTMB, Jasmine is a dual degree MD/MPH candidate in the Class of 2024. She is inspired by William Osler's dedication to his patients and a desire to make a difference as she fosters a passion for community engagement and health policy hoping to make an impact in the communities where she resides. Currently, she is a student representative on the curriculum committee where she is able to provide a voice for fellow classmates pertaining to curricular changes. As First in the Family's second president, Jasmine advocates for first generation medical students through mentorship, networking, and incorporating first generation physicians at UTMB and now at undergraduate institutions across Texas. Regionally, Jasmine serves as the Health Policy and Legislative Affairs Chair for the Student National Medical Association. In this role, she relays information and the national board's interests to the regional board concerning public health initiatives, voting, and policymaking in addition to serving on a national subcommittee that consists of constructing policy statements. Of utmost importance, she will create, plan and execute her own health initiative pertaining to physical and mental wellness in the Age of COVID-19 this year as the new chair. When she isn't involved in her passion projects or serving at the local, free student-run clinic, Jasmine enjoys trying new delicacies at Houston's top food spots, spending time with family and friends, reading anti-racism literature, or trying to stay healthy with a good workout.

Currently, she's interested in obstetrics/gynecology and psychiatry, with the hopes of creating sustainable change in whichever fields she decides. Ultimately, Jasmine is dedicated to advocating for equitable healthcare, dismantling the systems that allow health disparities to exist and anti-racism work in her communities.

Kimberly Khoo was born in Houston and raised in Sugar Land, Texas, for the majority of her life. She attended the University of Texas at Austin and graduated with a Bachelor of Science and Arts in Biology with a concentration in Classical Civilizations.

During her undergraduate career, Kim's passion for learning and meeting others led to her involvement in a variety of extracurricular activities, including being the Developmental Director of Alpha Epsilon Delta, the Admissions Director for the Health Careers Mentorship Program, and the Chapter Director of Camp Kesem. Her work with Camp Kesem, in particular, reinvigorated her desire to pursue medicine and showed her that there is more to being a physician than just treating an illness. She began to think of health as more of a holistic quality, not just a state of physical well-being. This led her to complete her honors thesis in the School of Social Work, where Kim sought to understand the development of resilience in children ages 9-12 years who have a parent with cancer. Kim also greatly enjoyed mentoring others during her time at UT. She was a mentor for incoming freshmen as they transitioned into college, as well as a mentor in a lab that sought to teach freshmen basic research skills. Kim also served as an undergraduate researcher in the George Georgiou lab, where she worked with Wissam Charab in the field of protein therapeutics.

At UTMB, Kim hopes to grow in her mission to learn as much as she can and to be the best physician possible for her patients. She is humbled to have been chosen as an Osler Student Scholar and hopes that she can use this opportunity to learn more about the values that Sir William Osler demonstrated in his lifetime and to be an example of his teachings to her fellow classmates.

Jose Alberto, known as Alberto, was born to undocumented immigrants in Honey Grove, a small town in northeast Texas with a population of less than 2000. He completed his undergraduate career at Rice University and graduated with a B.A. in Civil and Environmental Engineering with Distinction in Research and Creative Works. The summer of his sophomore year, he completed both a Global Brigade in Honduras and an internship with Shell before decided to drop all of his classes and switch into a pre-med track as a junior in college. During his time at Rice, he focused his volunteer and extracurricular interests on three main areas: college readiness, healthcare access, and immigration activism. Because of these efforts, he was awarded the Alan Grob Community Service Award and was one of three graduating seniors recognized at graduation with the Rice Service Award.

After graduating from Rice, Alberto pursued a gap year working at MD Anderson in the inaugural class of Assistant Clinical Research Coordinators. In his new role, he coded over 500 chart reviews involving GU, CNS, breast, and bone metastasis subjects. His biggest project involved analyzing financial toxicity of a new rapid access bone metastases clinic. Alberto presented his research in an oral presentation at the largest professional Radiation Oncology conference, American Society of Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). His abstract was then chosen to be presented at the Best of ASTRO conference. Due to his efforts at MD Anderson, he has completed three abstract publications and one manuscript in the past year with more projects in the works.

Since joining UTMB, he has continued to be involved. Alberto’s interest in academic medicine attracted him to the Translational Research Track and he is sponsored by the National Institute of Health to continue his work in the Radiation Oncology Department at MD Anderson. As a son of undocumented Mexican immigrants, Alberto saw firsthand the effects of a broken healthcare system and decided to volunteer regularly at St. Vincent’s, eventually joining the leadership team. He also became President of the Latino Medical Student Association (LMSA) and Treasurer of the Oncology Interest Group. He hopes to one day serve as faculty at a cancer center and continue his interests in clinical and translational research.

Vania Martinez was born in Monterrey, Mexico and moved to Austin, TX with her family at the age of eight. She attended high school at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders and graduated with honor in sciences. Vania proceeded to attend Austin College where she was exposed to the humanities and further enhanced her knowledge in the sciences. She graduated in 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude in Biology with a concentration in Ecology along with a double minor in Anthropology and Chemistry. While in Austin College, Vania was co-president of the pre-health society and was very involved in establishing volunteer opportunities for pre-medicine students at the Texoma Medical Center. Vania is also a proud member of The Joint Admissions Medical Program which facilitated her matching process into UTMB. She received multiple scholarships due to her work in the biomedical sciences and became a member of the Tri-Beta Honor’s Society.

During her time at UTMB, Vania has become a coordinator to the Blackwell Society, where she is able to contribute to the Galveston Community thought various service events. She has also become vice-president of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Student Society, in the hopes to enhance networking and research opportunities for her fellow peers. Vania has been dedicated towards providing for the underserved through her work in Street Medicine as well as her volunteer work in St. Vincent’s. Furthermore, Vania is enrolled in the community engagement track and is pursuing a master’s in Public Health. Through these activities she hopes to acquire the knowledge necessary to assist her future patients beyond the clinic.

Jacob Moran is from Three Rivers, a small town seventy miles South of San Antonio, Texas. He attended Baylor University and graduated with a B.S. in Psychology in May 2014. While at Baylor he served as an RA for three years in two residence halls with special pre-medical programs where he mentored freshmen students. He was extensively involved in the pre-medical community on campus. He is most proud of the role he had in leading the only service-focused pre-medical organization on campus called Baylor Medical Service Organization, where he worked with many compassionate leaders to develop a culture of altruistic service among the membership.

As an incoming medical student, he decided to be more focused in his extracurricular involvement and fully devote most of his energy to a few select endeavors. This has worked well as he has become quite involved with St. Vincent's student clinic where he volunteers weekly. At the clinic he has learned the importance of basic science knowledge as well as patient-centered care from the faculty members. This reminds him of the principles emphasized by William Osler and he hopes his experiences will have a long-lasting effect on his approach to providing quality health care. He plans to specialize in both geriatrics and nephrology and hopes to one day serve as a medical school educator.

Bianca Obinyan was born and raised in Houston, Texas. Growing up under the roof of two Nigerian immigrant, Bianca learned to go above and beyond in her academics and community service. She completed her undergraduate career at the University of Texas at San Antonio where she wrote an honors thesis highlighting how socioeconomic status impacts how elementary students process language and mathematics. Bianca graduated with a B.S. in Biology with a concentration in neurology. Prior to starting medical school, she took a gap year where she worked as a clinical research assistant at The Developmental Neuropsychology Clinic (DNC) at UTHealth Science Center at Houston. In this role, she worked with a team of child psychologists and administered parent questionnaires to measure adaptive behavior in children with cognitive, developmental, and behavioral concerns. Bianca also collected and processed stool samples of a large-scale study investigating the role probiotics have in autism-related gastroenterology issues in autistic children. 

Bianca has continued to be a phenomenal leader and advocate since joining UTMB as an MD-MPH student in 2019. While she has served as the president of Student National Medical Association, Healthy Policy Coordinator of the Center for Violence Prevention, and Deans Ambassador, Bianca is most known locally for her role as the Policy Task Force coordinator of The Future is US. The Future is US is a community-based organization focused on improving the quality of education for Black students in Galveston Independent School District (GISD). As the Policy Task Force Coordinator, she has created a policy brief highlighting the racial inequities in school discipline. Her brief led to a grant prompting an equity audit of GISD. Bianca’s received the prestigious US Public Health Service Excellence in Public Health Award for the impact she has had in the Galveston community. She plans on becoming a Child and Adolescent psychiatrist where she will continue advocating for youth in and outside of the hospital through service and community engagement.

Jacqueline "Jackie" Ochoa was born and raised in McAllen, Texas. Growing up on the border, she experienced social and health disparities within her community, influencing her to pursue a degree in Community Health and a Master of Public Health at Tufts University in Boston. At Tufts, she was given the opportunity to further study the health disparities she witnessed back home from an academic perspective. During her freshman year, Jackie received the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship allowing her to study abroad. She did comparative research on the anti-obesity initiatives, food supply, and cultural perspectives of food in the US and France. Throughout college, Jackie was involved in mentorship and global health equity work through the Latino Peer Leader Program, Compass Scholars, Jumpstart, and GlobeMed. During her time in Boston, she interned at the Brigham and Women's Center for Community Health and Health Equity. As an intern, she worked on a formative evaluation to gain a deeper understanding of barriers to care that impacted new and expecting mothers within low-income communities. Jackie also worked at Massachusetts General Hospital as a clinical researcher in Pediatric Emergency Medicine, conducting bilingual consultations for parents of pediatric patients regarding analgesic dosage and management. After graduating, she moved to Spain to continue learning and experiencing the world, becoming an Elementary ESL teacher in Madrid.

Jackie continues her passion for mentorship and health equity at UTMB as the President of the Latino Medical Student Association, AHEC and interprofessional Scholar, St. Vincent's Clinic Intern, and Andreas Vesalius Osler Student Society Social Coordinator. Given her personal and professional experiences in childhood development, Jackie hopes to become a pediatrician and work on clinical and policy initiatives that address adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) within vulnerable communities. She plans to practice medicine in the Rio Grande Valley to stay close to her family while working with and serving the community that raised her.

Tracy Tang was born in Vietnam and came to the US at the age of two (2). Her father was a major in the South Vietnamese government and held in a prison camp for over 15 years. Tracy’s family was granted asylum and came to the US as refugees. Tracy grew up in Santa Ana, California and graduated from the University of California Los Angeles with departmental honors in biology. After UCLA, Tracy served in AmeriCorps for two years with a nonprofit crisis center for victims of domestic violence.  Tracy also pursued and received her Master of Arts in occupational therapy (OT) at the University of Southern California. After OT school, Tracy practiced as a licensed clinical occupational therapist for two years across industrial rehabilitation, adult rehabilitation, outpatient pediatrics, and home health settings. She has presented her work in OT at state and national conferences. When the pandemic hit in 2020, Tracy made the decision to apply to medical school.

Tracy is interested in the intersection of humanities, community health, business, and technology. She has chosen activities to reflect these values. At UTMB, Tracy is a student coordinator in her Renee Laénnec Osler Student Society, where she helps promote Oslerian ideals and humanities in medicine. Tracy is passionate about community health and serves as the SOM representative for the Steering Committee for Community Engagement and Education. Tracy is a student advisor for the UTMB Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) Studio. Tracy’s team, Village @ Mile Zero, won 2^nd place at Incubate Galveston’s Inaugural Hackathon for designing a digital health application to empower patients with diabetes in Galveston. Since then, they’ve received a grant from the UTMB Institution of Translational Sciences to move forward with their project. Tracy was selected to participate in the inaugural Bridge Venture Fellowship, a learning-opportunity for historically excluded students to learn about venture capital. Tracy is currently collaborating with UTMB’s I&E Studio to develop Sling Health at UTMB, an incubator for cross disciplinary student teams to develop and commercialize solutions to real-world, clinical problems.

Leonard Wang was born in Bellevue, Washington and raised in Austin, Texas. He completed a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Houston through an accelerated BS/MD program. In college, Leonard was awarded funding to conduct environmental conservation research in the Galápagos Islands. In the archipelago, he tracked critically endangered Galápagos petrels and mapped their nests using ArcGIS. He also received a grant for his externship with the University of Houston College of Medicine and the Patient Care Intervention Center to develop social determinants of health screening for Federally Qualified Health Centers in Harris County. Through the FrameWorks Fellowship, Leonard completed a one-year interdisciplinary humanities research program and published an article on the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on material culture, ontological security, and liminality.

At UTMB, Leonard is an MD/MPH student and plans to pursue an MBA as well. He conducts health policy research with UTMB’s Center for Violence Prevention, serves as a leader for No One Dies Alone, and volunteers at St. Vincent’s. Fueled by his passion for narrative medicine and writing, Leonard is an editor-in-chief for Mosaic in Medicine. His interests in the medical humanities and history led him to the American Osler Society, where he serves as a social messaging editor and student member of their History and Archives Committee. As an Albert Schweitzer Fellow, Leonard worked with Teen Health Center, Inc. to deliver a vaping prevention curriculum at Ball High School in Galveston, TX. Leonard plans to pursue a career at the intersection of clinical practice, policy, and healthcare management to reduce health inequities and provide compassionate care to the underserved. 

Kendall Wermine grew up in the small town of Lakewood Village, TX with her parents and three sisters. Even without a college education of their own, her parents knew the value of education and sacrificing to send their four daughters to private catholic school, driving an hour there and back each day. Her parents love to tell the story of her announcing she wanted to be a doctor at the age of three, little did they know, almost 20 years after that she would start medical school. Kendall has always had a calling to serve others receiving the president's gold award for community service in eighth grade and creating a service organization in high school that partnered with the Donami foundation, New Eyes for the Needy, and the Rainbow Room in Dallas to help children both abroad and at home.

Kendall attended Abilene Christian University earning her B.S in Biochemistry and graduating as valedictorian. The road to graduation was rough as in spring of her freshman year she went in for emergency surgery and due to complications, was attached to a wound vac for nine months. She was shuttled between doctors in her small college town and in the large city near home. When she went home the doctors saw her as just her disease that could be fixed with the same resources, they used on everybody else. That was not the case, in fact, the treatment they prescribed extended the healing time leading for her to be attached to the machine longer. When being treated for her disease in Abilene, the doctor sat down and talked with her about life and how she was outside of her disease. Sir William Osler said, "The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease." Kendall has experienced the difference between good and great physicians firsthand, showing her the type of doctor she hopes to one day become. A doctor that sees a patient before they see a problem and a doctor that works with their patients to find what is best for them. This setback did not deter Kendall's goal of becoming a doctor and helping others, in fact she spent her time in freshmen year and beyond continuing to organize service events at the school such as a breast cancer awareness day, writing letters to the troops, and planning Easter and Christmas events for low-income families in Abilene. Kendall's calling to help others never faltered as she became a member of the UTMB class of 2023. Kendall is the Founder of First in the Family, a UTMB organization to help students find access to resources, networking opportunities, and a support system for students facing the challenges of being the first in their family to attend medical school. Kendall organized talks on finding research, mentorship, and understanding financial aid to help first generation students on their road to becoming great doctors. The organization has grown from Kendall's lone idea to now the largest organization in the School of Medicine at UTMB with plans to start expanding to other Texas medical schools. Kendall is also part of the Translational Research Tract at UTMB focusing her research on burns and reconstructive plastic surgery earning a grant from the National Institute of Health through the program.

Kendall's passion for helping others and increasing the confidence of those around her has led her to the field of surgery. As of right now Kendall is leaning towards reconstructive plastic surgery or general surgery with later specialization in burns. Since Kendall knows what it's like to be on the other side of the scalpel and hospital bed, her goal through those fields is to return function and confidence to her future patients and become a doctor who embodies the words of Sir William Osler.