People

Dr. Quoc-Dien Trinh is an associate surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center. Dr. Trinh received his medical degree from the Université de Montréal in Montréal, Canada, where he also completed his residency training in urology. He subsequently received fellowship training in minimally invasive urologic oncology at the Vattikuti Urology Institute in Detroit, Michigan, where the first robotic surgery training program was established in 2001. His clinical practice focuses on the treatment of prostate, bladder and kidney cancer using the daVinci® Surgical System.

Dr. Trinh has published more than 300 articles in distinguished journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Journal of Clinical Oncology and Lancet Oncology. His research focuses on costs, patterns, and outcomes of prostate cancer treatments, including robot-assisted procedures.

He currently serves as the Associate Editor for Health Services at the British Journal of Urology. He is a core faculty at the Center for Surgery and Public Health, a joint program of Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Trinh is fluent in French and Vietnamese.

Maxine is a research scientist with the center for surgery and public health division of urology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, will investigate why prostate cancer contributes to the high economic burden in the United States and the costs associated with prostate cancer ranking among the top five cancers in contribution to national expenditures. As part of her research, Dr. Sun will study healthcare spending patterns associated with men diagnosed with prostate cancer. The results of her research will aid providers and policymakers in optimizing the value of care for men with prostate cancer.

Junaid is a Senior Research Project Manager at the Department of Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In his current role, he is responsible for overall administrative management of numerous research projects, including, investigating provider- and hospital-level factors associated with racial and ethnic disparities in surgical oncology; evaluating the fiscal impact of consolidating care of complex patients; and, examining systematic factors that lead to opioid over-prescribing patterns after surgery. He has also undertaken research that examined the effect of health disparities that arise from social and political disenfranchisement and the relationship between trauma care and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Previously, he was a Fellow in Bioethics at Harvard Medical School where he studied bioethical issues in global healthcare delivery; role of bioethicists in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and other evolving technologies; and, emotional intelligence in bioethical analysis. He is a New Voices Fellow at The Aspen Institute, Washington, D.C., and a Fellow at Harvard Graduate School Leadership Institute, Boston. Twitter: @JunaidNabiMD

Maya is a statistician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital department of surgery and the Center for Surgery and Public Health Cancer Comparative Effectiveness group, where she provides biostatistical and programming support to the team, contributing to research in patterns and outcomes of cancer care. Prior to joining BWH, Maya was a statistical consultant at Montana State University Statistical Consulting and Research Services in Bozeman, MT. She received her MS in Statistics from Montana State University and her undergraduate degree in Economics from University of Maryland College Park.

Xi is a Biostatistician working on Dr. Trinh’s research team at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her current research project primarily focuses on workplace performance amongst patients undergoing different urological procedures. She is primarily responsible for performing statistical programming and analysis. Before joining BWH, Xi had experience in research in different therapeutic areas including gastrointestinal cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Substance Use Disorder. Xi received a BA in Psychology (with a minor in Statistics) from Miami University in 2015 and a MPH in Biostatistics and Epidemiology from Boston University School of Public Health in 2017.

Sebastian is a German research fellow at the Department of Urology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Berg received his medical degree at the University of Ulm in Germany. He has been working as a third year resident at the Department of Urology at the Ruhr University Bochum before he had begun his one year fellowship at the Trinh Lab. In recent years a close and productive cooperation between the Department of Urology at the Ruhr University Bochum and Prof. Quoc-Dien Trinh has developed. He has just started his academic work by submitting first projects, most of them regarding urologic oncology. After his research fellowship, he will go back to Germany to continue his residency.

David is currently pursuing a 1-year T32 grant sponsored clinical/research fellowship.  Following college he spent 1 year working in the California State Assembly as a Jesse Unruh Fellow where he focused on health reform efforts being undertaken by then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  He attended Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and then the Harvard School of Public Health with a concentration in health policy and management where he conducted urologic health services research under the tutelage of Jim C. Hu and Daniel A. Barocas.  More recently, he completed a residency in urologic surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he continued to cultivate his interest in urologic health services research under the mentorship of Quoc-Dien Trinh. Upon completing his research year, he will pursue a 1-year minimally invasive clinical fellowship at the University of California – San Diego under the guidance of Roger Sur.  His research interests include value based purchasing and its effect on clinical practices/outcomes as well as clinical effectiveness research focusing on nephrolithiasis, benign prostatic hyperplasia, and GU malignancies.

Marieke is an international research fellow who joined Quoc’s lab at Brigham and Women’s hospital in January 2018. She’s being supported by a grant from the department of urology in Frankfurt on the Main, Germany. Her research focuses on health policy, treatment trends, racial disparities and comparative effectiveness in prostate and bladder cancer care. After her graduation from medical school in 2014 she completed her doctorate in July 2015. She will finish her fellowship in January 2019 and resume her fourth year of residency in the department of urology in Frankfurt on the Main thereafter.

Sean is a fourth year medical student at Harvard Medical School. He is originally from South Florida and received his Bachelor of Science degree in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry from Yale University. While in medical school, Sean spent a dedicated research year under the mentorship of Dr. Trinh in the Brigham and Women’s Division of Urological Surgery as well as the Center for Surgery and Public Health. His primary focus is on health services research in urologic oncology, including the study of disparities in access to high-quality cancer care. His work has been published in impactful journals such as The Journal of Clinical Oncology, Cancer, and Urologic Oncology: Seminars and Original Investigations. Sean plans to pursue an academic career in Urology.

Dan is a Society of Urologic Oncology Fellow and Instructor in Surgery at the Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Pucheril received his MD and MBA  from Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Pucheril completed his residency training at the Vattikuti Urology Institute at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. Dr. Pucheril’s research interests include studying the effects of policy on health behaviors, trends in utilization of robotic surgery, development/optimization of robotic techniques, and urologic oncology.

Ashwin is an MD Candidate at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and is currently pursuing a graduate program at Harvard Kennedy School. He collaborates with the q Lab on research projects that focus on health services and national health policy.

Shen is a Urology resident at University College London, UK who is currently completing his PhD. He is also a visiting researcher at the Department of Urology, Brigham & Women Hospital. His research interest includes optimizing the investigation of hematuria and bladder cancer, device assisted therapies for bladder cancer, robotic surgery and comparative outcomes research.

David-Dan is studying medicine at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) as an Azrieli Loran Scholar.

He received the Herbert Brendler, MD Fund AUA Summer Medical Student Fellowship, offering outstanding medical students the opportunity to pursue urology research alongside world-class urologic scientists. As part of this program, David-Dan’s work focuses on the impact of care setting and racial disparities on surgical outcomes.

David-Dan is passionate about health services, community health and medical technology. Seeking to better understand how we can deliver better care, he has worked with Dialogue Technologies, a telemedicine startup that has recently completed a $12M Series A, as well as co-founded the CHASM Incubator, an accelerator for sustainable student-led community health projects targeting the needs of historically marginalized populations of Montreal. He is an active member of the Choosing Wisely Canada Students and Trainees for Resource Stewardship (STARS).

His research interests include costs, patterns, and outcomes of surgical care, disparities in care, medical technologies and medical education. David-Dan aspires to later work at the intersection of clinical care, medical innovation and health policy.

Alex Lander is a research trainee in the Urology Department at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is engaged in health services research to investigate disparities and access to care. His research interests also include technology and its potential medical applications along with rural medicine and how to improve access and reputation for quality and diversity of care. Alex is originally from the Catskills in New York. He received his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at Syracuse University in 2015. He has previously worked in the Information Technology field in the greater Philadelphia area as a Quality Engineer before returning to school at the University of Rochester as student in its Post-baccalaureate Pre-health Program.