For UC Riverside’s LACE program director, Moazzum Bajwa, MD, MPH, working as a family medicine physician and advocate comes down to one simple question: “How do you use the skills and resources that you have to make an impact at the one-on-one level and at that larger community level in...

There’s currently no effective treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS), but Seema Tiwari-Woodruff, Ph.D. , the director of UCR's Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program, may be well on her way to finding one. As MS attacks the body, it causes damage to the myelin sheath, the fatty coating around nerve fibers that...

What can people living in the mountains of Peru teach us about people dealing with COVID-19 related oxygen deficiency? Actually, quite a bit. High-altitude exposure leads to hypoxia, or low levels of oxygen in the body—a condition that’s present in COVID-19 and many other medical conditions. Erica Heinrich, Ph.D., an...

Gynecologist, surgeon, professor, researcher: Mallory Stuparich, M.D., an associate clinical professor in health sciences at the UC Riverside School of Medicine and the associate program director for the Fellowship in Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery, fulfills many roles in her career. Yet in each of them, she seeks to increase both...

T his piece is part of a series highlighting members of the School of Medicine’s 2022 graduating class. After growing up in Chino, CA and seeing the health disparities and lack of access to medical care in her community, Yasmin Gutierrez had a single-minded goal. “I just wanted to be...

T his piece is part of a series highlighting members of the School of Medicine’s 2022 graduating class. Seeing a doctor extract fluid from the lungs may not attract most people to medicine, but the thoracentesis procedure fascinated U.S. Navy veteran Maria Guerrero. “He knew where to put the needle...

T his piece is part of a series highlighting members of the School of Medicine’s 2022 graduating class. When Matt Jason Llamas was five years old, he fell off a swing and hit his head on a brick. Knocked unconscious, he was rushed to the emergency department, where he underwent...

Dr. Javier Sanchez is a bilingual family medicine doctor at Kaiser Permanente in Redlands and an assistant clinical professor at the UCR School of Medicine since early 2015. Over that time he has mentored numerous clerkship and LACE students. Sanchez has been described by students as an empathetic physician who...

Pete Benavidez lost most of his vision to Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) at the age of 23. But while losing his vision was a huge personal blow, it set him upon a path that has allowed him to touch the lives of thousands of visually impaired people throughout Inland Southern California...

Dr. Sandra Paniagua of Kaiser Riverside Pediatrics joined the UCR School of Medicine in 2018 after an SOM student spent an afternoon with Dr. Paniagua during UCR's Kaiser Summer Externship program, and approached her with the opportunity of becoming a LACE preceptor. She had never heard of the program, and...

Clinical Professor Samer Ghostine, M.D., chief of neurosurgery and director of neuroscience at Riverside Community Hospital (RCH), joined the UCR School of Medicine after working in health care and medical education with the Loma Linda University Medical Center and the UC Irvine School of Medicine. Ghostine is involved in building...

Antonio Garcia, one of 12 children, is in his third year at the UCR School of Medicine. Garcia, who grew up in Anaheim, Calif., thought he would be a professional boxer like several of his siblings, but a program for gifted students at his high school set him on the...

Meera G. Nair, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical sciences, is one of few professors who can say they were a part of a faculty team who interviewed and welcomed the very first cohort of a brand new medical school. She joined the UCR School of Medicine in October 2012, the...