TEAM

Mohamad Anas Hussain, MD, PhD, RPVI, FAHA, FRCSC, FACS

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Vascular & Endovascular Surgeon, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Core Faculty, Center for Surgery and Public Health
Assistant Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Mohamad A. Hussain is a surgeon-scientist in the field of vascular surgery with research expertise in observational epidemiology, health services research, prospective clinical trials, and knowledge translation. He is a staff Vascular and Endovascular Surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Core Faculty at the Center for Surgery at Public Health, and Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He is board certified in vascular surgery by both the American Board of Surgery and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

He obtained his medical degree from the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. He completed a vascular surgery residency and a PhD in clinical epidemiology and health services research through the Surgeon Scientist Training Program at the University of Toronto. He also completed a cardiovascular research fellowship at the Brigham and an internship at the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Hussain is PI of VESELab, which focuses on the study of vascular diseases from an epidemiological and population-based perspective. In addition, he serves as site PI of several clinical trials in vascular surgery at BWH. Between 2022 and 2024, he received a Brigham & Women’s Hospital Heart and Vascular Center Junior Faculty Research Award and a BWH Department of Surgery Osteen Fellowship for his research work.

Jim is a general surgery resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and research fellow at the Center for Surgery and Public Health. He is currently serving as the chief VESELab fellow (2023-2024). He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Pittsburgh and his medical degree from the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. His clinical and research interests involve health outcomes and quality improvement in vascular surgery. Jim’s primary project focuses on understanding variation in dialysis access creation across the United States as well as patient and center factors associated with forearm arteriovenous fistula creation.

Abena is a PGY-2 general surgery resident at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and research fellow at the Center for Surgery and Public Health. She is currently serving as the junior VESELab fellow (2023-2024). She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and medical degree from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. Her research interests lie at the intersection of data science, structural inequity, and health policy. Abena’s primary project ‘MAGNIFY-PAD’ focuses on developing machine learning tools to improve the diagnosis of peripheral artery disease in administrative databases and electronic health records, as well as geographic and racial/ethnic disparities in vascular surgery. Her research is supported by the American Heart Association

Patrick is a senior general surgery resident at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He served as a Center for Surgery and Public Health research fellow, NIH T32 fellow, and VESELab fellow between 2021 and 2023. Patrick is an aspiring vascular surgeon-scientist with keen interests in data science.

Jessica is a senior general surgery resident at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She served as a Center for Surgery and Public Health research fellow and VESELab fellow between 2021 and 2022. Jess will begin her vascular surgery fellowship at NewYork Presbyterian Hospital—Columbia University Medical Center in 2024.

Chris is a Clinical Research Assistant in the Division of Vascular Surgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Davis and is currently applying to medical school. Chris is interested in exploring quality improvement and health outcomes in vascular surgery. Chris helps coordinate clinical research trials for new drugs, devices, and implants in the Division of Vascular Surgery. Within the VESELab, he has helped with a pilot project in using auscultatory recordings and machine learning in the detection of hemodialysis access dysfunction.

Mengyuan is a biostatistician in the Center for Surgery and Public Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She received her B.E. in biochemical engineering and B.S. in mathematical finance from Xiamen University and her M.S. in nutrition science from Tufts University.  Mengyuan is passionate about applying diverse quantitative methods and innovative data visualization approaches to address health-related research questions. Mengyuan is currently working on the PREDICT-AVF project, which seeks to leverage machine learning methods to develop a tool that can predict patient-specific autogenous arteriovenous fistula (AVF) outcomes in those with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD). The goal is to develop an interactive web application that can help inform clinicians in guideline-concordant decision-making to maximize AVF appropriateness and performance.

Tanujit is the associate director of Biostatistics for the Center for Surgery and Public Health and an assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. He is a graduate of the University of Kalyani (West Bengal, India) and received a PhD in statistics from Case Western Reserve University. Tanujit’s methodological research interests include: Bayesian statistics; big data; causal inference; data mining; ensembles; environmental spatial statistics; high dimensional variable and model selection; longitudinal data analysis; machine learning; mediation analysis; reliability theory; and survival analysis. He works closely with VESELab investigators.

Melissa is a dedicated second-year medical student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine, currently aspiring to pursue a surgical career. She earned her undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University-Kingsville. Melissa is actively engaged in exploring vascular surgery research, with a particular interest in fistula outcomes. Melissa is currently engaged in the DIAL-In project, which aims to compare the safety and effectiveness of endovascular arteriovenous fistula (AVF) creation with open surgical AVF creation for hemodialysis access across various participating centers. Her work is funded by the NIH T35 Harvard-Longwood Short-Term Research Training in Vascular Surgery (2023).

Lucy is an undergraduate student at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) studying Physiological Science with a Minor in Education studies. She is an aspiring medical student with vast research interests from surgical health outcomes to the neurobiology of memory persistence. She seeks to gain a deeper understanding of how physiological systems affect holistic wellness and how health systems and surgical practices can be improved through this understanding. Lucy is currently studying the utilization of pre-operative venograms in dialysis access planning. This project seeks to understand whether the practice of utilizing venograms for visualization of venous anatomy is safe and able to effectively create fistulas for use in dialysis patients.

Ali is a second-year medical student at Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a prior Harvard-Longwood T35 research fellow. He earned his BSPH in biostatistics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ali is passionate about utilizing his data analytics background to promote an epidemiological understanding of vascular diseases. Ali’s research is centered on employing targeted trial emulation to improve the methods of the Vascular Quality Initiative. Additionally, he aims to deepen the understanding of the differences between single and dual antiplatelet therapy in patients undergoing carotid endarterectomy.

Ascharya Balaji

Ascharaya is a medical student at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Buffalo, NY. In summer 2022, Ascharya completed the NIH T35 Harvard-Longwood Short-Term Research Training Program in Vascular Surgery at VESELab. Her work focused on describing the lack of consensus for the definition of PAD in healthcare data. She presented an abstract at the 2023 Annual Academic Surgical Congress in Houston, TX, and her work serves as the rationale for the MAGNIFY-PAD study.

Nabil Ahmad

Nabil is a medical student at Augusta University in Georgia. Nabil travelled to Boston in summer 2022 with support of the Augusta University Medical Scholars Program. He focused on developing the SPPADE registry to capture cardiovascular and limb outcomes of patients with premature PAD.