Varun Saxena, MD

Brett Ley, MD

San Francisco VA Medical Center

Varun Saxena, MD
Varun Saxena was originally born in India, but moved to the U.S. at the age of two. He attended Stanford University for college and has been at UCSF since. After his time as a chief resident at the San Francisco VA, he will start GI fellowship at, you guessed it, UCSF. Outside of medicine, he has interests in basketball, golf, BBQing and finding the perfect brunch spot in San Francisco.

Brett Ley, MD
Brett grew up in a small farming town in Northeastern Colorado (population 1000). Failing to walk onto the Colorado State Football team was probably the best thing to happen to him because it led to him transferring to UCLA for something new (where he played rugby instead) and ultimately going to UCSF for medical school (where he met his wife) and residency. After his chief resident year, Brett will be sticking around at UCSF as a pulmonary and critical care fellow. He loves patient care and teaching and will be happy no matter what the future as long as he gets to continue to work with residents and medical students. His research interests are interstitial lung diseases and prediciton modeling. His hobbies outside medicine are traveling with his wife, biking, snowboarding, writing, and, recently, photography.

Ambulatory Care

Ryan Laponis, MD
Ryan Laponis is originally from Santa Barbara, CA and went to Stanford University where he majored in Drama and Biology. He obtained a master's degree during his time at Stanford working in cellular neuroscience. He attended the UC Davis School of Medicine and spent a year performing medical education research at NYU's Bellevue Hospital. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine in the UC Primary Care Track and completed the Health Professions Education Pathway. His interests are in providing primary care, teaching trainees, and understanding how educational interventions affect communication skills, professionalism and pursuit of primary care careers.

Quality and Safety

Krishan Soni, MD

Krishan Soni, MD
Krishan Soni grew up in Long Island, New York and went to Yale University where he became fascinated by healthcare economics, deciding to major in biophysics and economics. He continued at Yale to complete a combined MD/MBA (Masters of Business Administration) program with a focus on healthcare operations, finance and strategy. At several stages in his training, he took time off to work in management consulting, which broadened his perspective and skills in analytical training. In 2008, he made the transition to the West Coast to start his residency in Internal Medicine at UCSF, which has proven to be a tremendous source of both personal and professional growth. He now looks forward to using his training in both clinical medicine and in business to improve healthcare delivery and finance systems.

San Francisco General Hospital

Mia Lozada, MD

Mia Lozada, MD
Mia was born in San Francisco, but at three months her parents moved to Honolulu, Hawaii where she was raised and attended Punahou School. She studied Biology at Harvard and then spent a year working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and Guatemala, working in parasitic diseases research. She attended the University of Chicago for medical school before joining UCSF as a part of SFPC (the primary care track based at San Francisco General Hospital) for residency. She continues to develop her new-found interest in improving the quality of care we provide at the high-risk time of hospital transitions (during the period of discharge from hospital back to home) and clinical communication among providers and with their patients. Mia is looking forward to a career in primary care of underserved patients in the safety-net setting. In her free time she tends to get lost for hours in many of the city's amazing farmer's markets and loves to come home and cook new and exciting dishes.

Jennie Wei, MD

Jennie Wei, MD
Jennie Wei grew up in Skokie, IL and spent most of her time in her dad’s Baskin Robbins scooping ice cream. She then moved to Boston and received her undergraduate, masters in public health and medical school degrees at Harvard. (And also worked at the Ben and Jerry’s in Harvard Square.) She moved to San Francisco and completed her internal medicine residency at UCSF in the San Francisco General Primary Care Track. She is interested in pursuing a career in primary care for the urban underserved, with a particular focus on women’s health and addiction medicine. She loves chatting with residents and med students about any and all of the above, especially if ice cream is involved.

UCSF Medical Center

Vasantha Jotwani, MD
Vasantha Jotwani grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area but left to the windy city of Chicago for college and medical school at Northwestern University. After weathering the bitter cold for eight years, she returned to San Francisco for Internal Medicine residency at UCSF, where she participated in the PRIME pathway, focusing on clinical and epidemiological research. In addition to her current position as a chief resident at UCSF's Moffitt-Long hospital, she is the proud new mother of a baby girl. In the spare time she finds between medicine and motherhood, Vasantha enjoys outdoor running, cooking, and singing Indian classical music.

Lisa Bebell, MD

Lisa Bebell, MD
A lover of wide open spaces, Lisa originally hails from Colorado where she grew up in the shadow of the Rockies. After brief stints in Oregon and Texas, she spent some time in Brisbane, Australia as a Fulbright fellow before matriculating at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons for medical school. Always fascinated by the HIV virus and interested in the health challenges facing underserved populations, especially in the developing world, she spent 2 years during medical school in South Africa and Uganda. There she conducted research on Acute HIV and interactions in HIV and Malaria. In 2008, she found her way back to the 'left' coast, completing her residency at UCSF in 2011. After this current year as a Chief, Lisa will continue her academic journey in Boston as an Infectious Disease and Critical Care fellow at the Harvard combined programs. Aside from her passion for medicine, she is passionate about running (3 marathons to date), triathlons (second one in Hawaii this April), playing violin and local travel-- especially anything that gets her outside!