School of Medicine Science Day

Medhat Osman, M.D., Ph.D., is a tenured professor and director of the Division of Nuclear Medicine and PET/CT in the Department of Radiology. He is board certified in nuclear medicine and cardiac CT. 

Osman attended Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he earned a Ph.D. and M.S. and completed his nuclear medicine residency, oncology fellowship and PET/CT fellowship.

Osman's research interests include PET/CT, oncology, neurology and cardiology. He has co-authored over 90 peer-reviewed journal articles, six textbook chapters and more than 280 abstracts. 

Susana Gonzalo, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She earned a B.S. in biochemistry from Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Spain, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry and cell and molecular biology from Washington University School of Medicine. 

Gonzalo researches molecular mechanisms that contribute to the genomic instability that drives aging and cancer, focusing on alterations in structural nuclear proteins. 

Ajay Jain, M.D., DNB, is the Anthony Rejent Endowed Professor of Pediatrics with a dual appointment in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology. He serves as chief of the Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, and the director of Pediatric Liver Transplantation at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital. Jain is also the immediate past president of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nurtrition (ASPEN), an organization headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland, that has more than 6,000 members globally and a council member to the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism. 

Jain's seminal contributions include pioneering work in the field of parenteral nutrition-associated multisystem injury, interrogating pathways, and leading development of novel systems to study pathogenesis, diagnosis and therapeutic approaches for appropriate nutritional delivery and rehabilitation. He is also credited with the development of unbiased discovery platforms and excellence in diagnostic and therapeutic testing of pediatric liver diseases and for pediatric obesity. Jain's research laboratory is funded via the National Institutes of Health (NIH), foundations and industry partners. 

Jain has mentored more than 50 students, trainees and faculty. He's been an NIH study section panelist; named a "Best Doctor" for multiple consecutive years; and prominently recognized through more than 75 high-profile, peer-reviewed publications and patents. He's also been honored with multiple national and international invited presentations and awards, including: the recent Grant and John B. Watkins Award for Excellence in Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition from the North American Society for Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition (NASPGHAN); the Best of ASPEN; the Gerard Odell Prize for Excellence in Liver Research from NASPGHAN; and the International Stanley J. Dudrick Award, Recognizing Excellence in Nutrition. 

In addition to superlative research, Jain strives to deliver world-class care to his patients with liver and gastrointestinal diseases, including those receiving isolated and multiorgan transplants and those who have short bowel syndrome or nutritional, metabolic or other GI disorders. 

Sarah George, M.D., is a practicing infectious diseases physician and clinical trialist/vaccinologist, and a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Allergy and Immunology. She holds a joint appointment at the St. Louis VA Medical Center and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. 

George has been the principal investigator on 12 NIH and industry-sponsored clinical trials, conducting phase I-III vaccine and treatment trials on COVID-19, dengue, Zika, yellow fever, influenza, chikungunya, West Nile and pneumococcus. Her NIH and VA-funded laboratory research measures immunity to flavivirus vaccines and infections; she has also worked on HIV/flavivirus coinfections. 

George has been the recipient of six VA-funded research awards (career development awards and merit reviews), NIH funding and industry funding. Her current work focuses on comparing durable dengue immunity after vaccination and infection, and Zika immunity after vaccination in flavi-naives and flavi-experienced people. She has over 50 publications, including four invited review articles and five chapters. She has served on 48 NIH, VA and DoD study sections, including as chair or co-chair on 14. She has also served on nine SLU study sections and three national/international vaccine clinical trial safety monitoring committees (SMCs). 

George is chair of the St. Louis VA IACUC and a member of the VA Research and Development Committee; the SLU Appointment, Promotion and Tenure Committee; and the Internal Medicine Promotion and Tenure Committee. She has previously served on the Research and Planning Committee, the Research Space Review Committee, and the Internal Medicine Research Committee. 

Sandeep Dhindsa, M.D., is a professor in and director of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism. He completed medical school in India and an internal medicine residency and endocrinology fellowship in New York before he came to Saint Louis University in 2016. 

Dhindsa's primary area of research is hypogonadism in men with obesity and diabetes. He has over 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals. 

Elise Alspach, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. She attended Washington University in St. Louis, where she earned a Ph.D. in molecular genetics and genomics, and completed postdoctoral training studying CD4 T cells and their role in tumor rejection.

Alspach's lab investigates how different immunologic environments present in males and females impact tumor evolution and anti-tumor immunity. 

Flavio Esposito, Ph.D., is an associate professor and graduate coordinator in the Department of Computer Science at Saint Louis University. He is director of the Networking Laboratory, and CEO and co-founder of Spaghetti Code Labs, a mobile computer security company with over six million application downloads. 

Esposito earned a Ph.D. in computer science from Boston University in 2013. His research includes computer networks, distributed systems, cyber-physical systems and edge/AI computing, with a focus on network programmability, distributed learning and resilient architectures for agriculture, health care and wireless applications. 

Esposito is the recipient of multiple NSF awards and industry gifts, including interdisciplinary projects on precision agriculture, secure wireless systems and robotic surgery. 

Kana Miyata, M.D., is an associate professor in the Division of Nephrology and Hypertension and the director of the SSM Health/Saint Louis University School of Medicine Nephrology Fellowship Program. 

Miyata graduated from Tokyo Medical and Dental University and completed her internal medicine residency in Tokyo and at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in New York. She then completed a clinical nephrology fellowship at Harbor - UCLA Medical Center in California, and a postdoctoral research fellowship in molecular nephrology at the University of Montreal in Canada. 

Miyata's research interests include glomerulonephritis and diabetic kidney disease. 

Ian Mitchelle de Vera, Ph.D., is a tenure-track assistant professor and director of the Protein Core Facility in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology. He earned a B.S. in chemistry and computer engineering and an M.S. in analytical chemistry from the Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City, Philippines. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in biophysical chemistry from the University of Florida, where he conducted structural and mechanistic studies of HIV-1 protease using NMR and EPR spectroscopy that illuminated drug resistance mechanisms in HIV/AIDS. During his postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps Research Institute-Florida, he conducted biomelecular NMR structural investigations of nuclear receptors while continuing collaborative research on HIV/AIDS therapeutics.

de Vera's solution NMR studies on the orphan nuclear receptor Nurr1 led to the discovery of a novel ligand binding pocket for unsaturated fatty acids that inspired subsequent drug discovery efforts for neurological disorders targeting Nurr1. Furthermore, his work on the intrinsically disordered protein, SRC-2, enabled the first atomic-resolution mapping of this coactivator with the PPARgamma-RXRalpha heterodimer. 

Currently, de Vera's University drug discovery lab focuses on the structural, functional and biophysical studies of orphan nuclear receptors — including Nurr1 and the germ cell nuclear factor — for future therapeutic strategies in Alzheimer's disease and germ cell cancers. 

Rajnandani Kashyap, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral fellow who works in the University laboratory of Dr. Edwin Antony, Ph.D., in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.  Her research focuses on the structural and mechanistic basis of iron-sulfur (Fe-S) cluster enzymes involved in bacteriochlorophyll biosynthesis and human DNA/RNA repair pathways. She integrates anaerobic cryo-electron microscopy, spectroscopy and biochemical assays to capture transient protein conformations and uncover how complex metalloenzymes assemble and function. 

Kashyap has contributed to significant discoveries, such as structural insights into the nitrogenase-like enzyme DPOR — including identification of a novel di-copper cluster and structural asymmetry, regulatory mechanisms of nitrogenase and characterization of human Fe-S enzymes. She has been recognized for multiple awards, and her work has been showcased at national and international conferences. She also won the postdoctoral fellow category of the 2025 SOM Science Day poster session.