Executive Leadership
Brittany Tran, MD Cardiology Fellow
Co-Founder & Co-Director | She/Her
Ms. Tran was born and raised in Orange County, California. She graduated top 5 at Trabuco Hills High School and spent her high school years playing varsity lacrosse, being a member of National Honor Society and California Scholarship Federation, and promoting literacy service in her community as Team Leader in the children’s Summer Reading Program at her local public library.
She went on to pursue a major in Chemistry and Chemical Biology with Distinction in All Subjects, and two minors in East Asian Studies and Nutrition and Health at Cornell University in 2018. At her time at Cornell, she was a resident advisor for freshmen for 3 years, the historian of Alpha Epsilon Delta pre-health honors society, and a member of Alpha Chi Sigma professional chemistry fraternity. She also was an undergraduate research assistant in a plant virus biology lab at Cornell, a research intern in an acupuncture cardiovascular regulation lab at UCI School of Medicine, and a research volunteer in a traumatic brain injury lab at UCI School of Medicine.
She then matriculated to UMASS Chan Medical School in 2018. Throughout her time in medical school, she was a leader of the Hematology/Oncology Interest Group and of the Cardiac Health Outreach Program, which sought to teach the Worcester community about the importance of initiating hands-only CPR. Ms. Tran went on to develop a public service announcement about how to perform hands-only CPR, which continues to be televised on Worcester Community Cable Access TV. Her project won a Capstone Recognition Award for its novel approach to trying to change outcomes of cardiac arrest survival rates. She also was a mentor for premedical students through AM Med Mentors, of which she is currently the Vice Director of Advocacy.
Ms. Tran will be graduating from UMASS Chan Medical School in 2022 and continued her training in internal medicine at UMass Chan in Worcester, Massachusetts. Outside of medicine, Ms. Tran enjoys drinking boba, baking, watching shows on Food Network, and understanding the science behind various skincare products that compose her constantly changing skincare regimen.
MERICIEN VENZON, PhD Pediatrics Resident Physician
Co-Founder and Co-Director | She/Her
A Bay Area native, Ms. Venzon graduated as Moreau Catholic High School’s Valedictorian and Associated Student Body President. Figure skating competitively since she was four years old, she also won the 2009 Philippine National Championships, earning her a spot to represent the Philippines at the 2010 Olympic Trials and 2011 World Championships in Moscow, Russia.
At UCLA, Mericien continued to compete internationally while also founding UCLA’s first national figure skating club team. In addition, she was an active member of Pilipinos for Community Health, running senior citizen health screening sites on the weekends. She first got interested in research as an undergraduate and was awarded UCLA's HHMI Undergraduate Research Scholarship. In the ER as part of UCLA’s elite Stroke Team, she assisted in enrolling patients in clinical research trials testing intra-ambulance therapy to more rapidly identify and treat cerebral ischemia. In the Alfaro lab, she pursued her interests in bioinformatics and was the first to apply mathematical models conventionally used in studies of vertebrates to viruses, including flu and HIV, to investigate differential evolutionary dynamics in nonpathogenic vs. pathogenic human viruses. She graduated with highest departmental honors from UCLA in 2014, majoring in Biology with a minor in Evolutionary Medicine. She was chosen as one of five recipients of the 2014 True Bruin Distinguished Senior Award, was honored as a Bruinlife Senior of the Year, and is featured in UCLA’s Optimist Campaign among other prestigious alumni.
She matriculated in New York University School of Medicine’s MD-PhD/Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) in 2016 and joined the Cadwell Lab in March 2018. Under the NIH Pre-doctoral Training Fellowship, her thesis project is looking at the interrelationships between the gut microbiome, host immune system, and intestinal parasites to identify new targets for treatment of human parasitic worm infections. She founded NYUSoM’s Women in MSTP group which helps foster community, mentorship, and allyship in a male-dominated field. Most recently, she was one of the founders of ppe2nyc.com, a centralized grassroots solution to NYC’s PPE shortage at the peak of COVID-19 that enabled PPE to be efficiently collected and distributed to hospitals, nursing homes, and homeless shelters where NYC needed it most via a text-in hotline. Her career aspirations include running her own translational research lab and specializing in neonatology. She prioritizes practicing wellness regularly through hip hop yoga, boxing, and trying to find NYC’s best pizza slice.
