October 1, 2025
As the academic year begins, we are excited to introduce five exceptional new fellows who have joined the Health Policy Section at the Smith Center. These medical students and fellows bring a range of experiences, perspectives, and passions with them, from clinical medicine and public policy to advocacy and epidemiology. They will be working closely with Dr. Wadhera to deepen their expertise in health policy research, develop innovative studies, and contribute meaningfully to our goal of understanding how health care policies can be effectively used to improve cardiovascular care quality and health.
Kimberly Clinch, BA: Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Fellow, 2025-2026 
Kimberly is a third-year medical student at the University of Minnesota and a Sarnoff Fellow here at the Smith Center. Prior to medical school, she worked as a political organizer. She is drawn to the variety of questions possible within health policy research. Some of the interest areas she's excited to explore with Dr. Wadhera include women's health, housing, and community-level interventions. Long term, she hopes to use these research methods to support community-led hypotheses for improving health policy and outcomes.
Fun fact: They teach ten-minute lessons on biochemistry and physiology in performing arts shows!
Marcos "Gomez" Ambriz, BS, BA: Zimetbaum Fellow, 2025-2026
Marcos “Gomez” Ambriz is the 2025-2026 Zimetbaum Fellow and a 4th year medical student at the 
Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple-St. Luke’s. He is originally from Phoenix, Arizona where he graduated from the University of Arizona, Honors College with degrees in physiology, anatomy, and biochemistry. Outside of his studies, Gomez serves as Director-Elect for the Latino Medical Student Association- Northeast and enjoys giving back to the community through volunteering and mentorship. His research interests include medical debt, impact of immigration policies on healthcare access, and outcomes/access in transplant surgery. Through his one-on-one mentorship with Dr. Wadhera, Gomez looks forward to building a foundation in health policy research, becoming a better scientific communicator and researcher, and meeting others in the field of health policy. After medical school, Gomez is interested in pursuing a surgical specialty and continuing to do research in health policy
Fun fact: Gomez learned he was colorblind during his BIDMC pre-employment health screening!
Prihatha Narasimmaraj, MD: T32 Research Fellow, 2025-2027
Prihatha is a T32 research fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Wadhera in the Smith Center Health 
Policy Section and 2025-2026 co-chief cardiology fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area but has been hopping between the West and East Coast for several years, beginning with her undergraduate years at Princeton studying public policy. She returned to the Bay Area for medical school at UCSF prior to coming back out East for her internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and cardiology fellowship at BIDMC. Her research focuses on the effects of federal and state health policies related to safety-net programs on cardiovascular and other health outcomes. During her T32 fellowship, she is also pursuing a Master’s in Science in Clinical Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Prihatha ultimately hopes to combine her research interests with a clinical career in general cardiology or advanced heart failure/transplant.
Fun fact: her superpower is picking the best thing off a restaurant menu, and she makes a respectable pavlova!
Nicholas Chiu, MD, MPH: T32 Research Fellow, 2025-2027
Nick was born and raised in Toronto and grew up in the cold Canadian winters blissfully shoveling 
driveways alongside his twin brother (who is also a Cardiology fellow). For undergrad, he journeyed far across the border to warmer climates here in Boston, where he studied in the 7-Year BA/MD Medical Program at Boston University and majored in Economics and Medical Sciences. During medical school, he obtained an MPH in Quantitative Methods at the Harvard School of Public Health. He stayed in Boston to complete my residency in Internal Medicine at BIDMC where he worked with Dr. Rishi Wadhera and the Smith Center on projects in health policy and cardiovascular epidemiology. He is now a third-year cardiology fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, also completing an additional fellowship in critical care.
He hopes to build an academic career in cardiology focused on cardiovascular outcomes, health policy, and implementation science. He is particularly interested in using innovative research methods and large national datasets to better identify national gaps in cardiovascular care and how outcomes differ across distinct patient subgroups. His long-term goal is to leverage these findings and help design and test practical interventions that improve care for these groups. Over the next two T32 research years with Dr. Wadhera, he is eager to learn and develop skills in causal inference techniques and apply these approaches to study the impact of national policies and interventions that are often difficult to evaluate in traditional trials alone.
In his free time, you will find him exercising, doing active outdoor activities, and trying new foods with his partner. He likes to run, bike, and (occasionally) lift casual weights. He also loves to hang out with friends and play miscellaneous racquet sports. A night of board games with friends is always a good time. He is looking forward to an exciting two years of research!
Darshali Vyas, MD: T32 Research Fellow, 2025-2027
Darshali is a T32 Research Fellow in the Smith Center’s Health Policy Section under the mentorship of Dr. Rishi Wadhera. After growing up in the Bluegrass State of Kentucky, she came to Boston for college and medical school at Harvard, with a glorious year in between spent living in Madrid. She completed her internal medicine residency at MGH and spent a year serving as Chief Resident. She is now completing her fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in the combined BIDMC/MGH program. Her research interests include the impacts of federal and state policy on access to care and pulmonary outcomes. Clinically, she hopes to integrate pulmonary and ICU medicine in her future career, with particular interests in interstitial lung disease and sarcoidosis.
Outside of work, Darshali is a self-proclaimed reality-TV connoisseur—her toxic trait is still keeping up with every Real Housewives franchise.
