Lab Members

Donghee Han, MD
Research Assistant Professor, Imaging

Han earned his MD from Yeungnam University College of Medicine, South Korea, and his fellowship at the Dalio Institute of Cardiovascular Imaging at Weill Cornell Medicine. After training, he was an assistant clinical research professor in the cardiology division at Yonsei Cardiovascular Center. Han’s goal is to become a physician-scientist.  

Alan Kwan, MD
Staff Physician, Cardiology

Kwan performs research in clinical and translational multimodality cardiac imaging, with a focus in cardiac MRI and coronary CT. He attended the University of Washington School of Medicine, with a fellowship year at the National Institutes of Health, and completed his internal medicine residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital.  

Pankaj Malhotra, MD
Cardiac Imaging Fellow

Pankaj earned his medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine and  completed his internal medicine residency at Cedars-Sinai, where he performed echocardiography imaging research with Robert Siegel, MD. His general cardiology fellowship at UC Davis Medical Center allowed him to perform cardiac CT imaging and echocardiography research.

Bashaer Gheyath, MD
Cardiac Imaging Fellow

Bashaer earned her medical degree from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, completed her internal medicine residency at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio and her general cardiology fellowship at UC Davis Medical Center. She is board certified in internal medicine, echocardiography and cardiovascular CT. 

Kaveh Rezaei Bookani, MD
Cardiac Imaging Fellow

Kaveh completed medical school at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in Iran, his internal medicine residency at Medstar Health in Baltimore, participated in cardiac imaging research studies at Johns Hopkins, and completed his fellowship at University of Chicago–NorthShore. Kaveh’s goal is to expand his knowledge in multimodality cardiac imaging.

Sharon Shalom Natanzon, MD
Cardiology/Cardiac Imaging Fellow

Natanzon is a senior cardiologist at Sheba Medical Center, Israel, and a research fellow in the Berman Lab. He graduated from Tel Aviv University Sackler School of Medicine, completed his internal medicine residency at Rabin Medical Center, and his fellowship at Sheba. Natanzon seeks expertise in advanced cardiac imaging.

Hidenobu Hashimoto, MD, PhD
Visiting Postdoctoral Scientist

Hashimoto earned his MD and PhD from Toho University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan. He worked as a general cardiologist in Japan and interpreted cardiac imaging, specializing in nuclear medicine. He also performed clinical research related to cardiac imaging, including nuclear medicine, coronary CT angiography and cardiac MRI.

Guadalupe Flores Tomasino
Postdoctoral Scientist

Tomasino received her MD from the University of El Salvador School of Medicine. She started as a clinical research associate before promoting to a postdoctoral scientist, working closely with the Dey Lab. At Cedars-Sinai, she implements AutoPlaque, an AI-enabled software which characterizes plaque from coronary CT angiography images.

Romalisa "Lisa" Miranda Peats, MPH, CCRP
Research Program Administrator

Peats completed her BA in biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame and a master of public health in epidemiology from UCLA. She joined Cedars-Sinai as a research project assistant and was promoted to team lead and eventually program administrator, responsible for administrative oversight of the Berman Lab.

Rebekah Park, MPH, CCRP
Research Operation Associate, Team Lead

Park earned her psychology degree from UCSD and her master of public health in global health from Liberty University. Previously, Park was the lead coordinator of clinical trials that lead to the FDA approval of Otiprio®. She has also participated/led worldwide mission trips, focusing on children’s programs/health promotion.

Rhona Littman, CCRP
Regulatory Coordinator

Littman has spent 40-plus years as a licensed dental radiographer, a liaison between independent physician groups, working on the Board of Directors and Utilization Management Committee for a medical management company, and as a research coordinator at UCLA. She joined the Berman Laboratory in 2003.

Heidi Gransar, MS, CCRP
Biostatistician

Gransar earned both her bachelor of science and master of science degrees at UCLA. She joined the Berman Laboratory in 2000 and helps with data management of cardiac research registries and consulting for research grants—focusing on the study design, statistical analysis plans and power, and sample size calculations.

Frances Wang, MS
Biostatistician

Frances started as a clinical research associate before promoting to a biostatistician in the Cardiac Imaging Research Team. She graduated with a master’s degree in biostatistics and epidemiology from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and is currently pursuing her PhD at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Mark C. Hyun, CNMT, NCT, RT (N, R, CT), FASNC
Research Technologist

Hyun received his education and clinical training from Los Angeles County + USC Medical Center Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine Technology. Upon graduation, Hyun was a staff and research technologist at Cedars-Sinai, then promoted to a lead technologist, responsible for supervising technical activities at Tower Nuclear/Cardiac and Vascular Lab.  

Aryabod Razipour, MD
Postdoctoral Researcher

Razipour received his BA in biochemistry from UCLA and his medical degree from Universidad Central del Este in the Dominican Republic. Since 2009, he has worked with Matthew J. Budoff, MD, at LA BioMed/Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. In 2017, Razipour joined the Dey Laboratory to research cardiac computed tomography angiography entities.

Ananya Singh, MSc
Programmer/Analyst

Singh earned her master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California. She specializes in image processing and deep learning in medical imaging. She’s currently working on integrating deep convolutional neural networks to further automate cardiovascular imaging. Ananya hopes her work contributes to expedited and accurate patient diagnoses.

Aditya Killekar, MSEE
Programmer/Analyst

Killekar earned his engineering degree at the University of Southern California and worked there as a research programmer implementing deep learning-based methods for detecting deepfake face manipulations. At Cedars-Sinai, Killekar currently works on developing a deep learning-based real-time detection and segmentation of COVID-19 lesions on noncontrast chest CT.

Nipun Manral, MSEE
Data Scientist/Specialist II

Manral earned his master's in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California. He specializes in machine-learning, deep-learning and data-mining technologies and is currently working on the applications of deep learning for plaque segmentation using CTA images. Prior to Cedars-Sinai, Nipun worked as a systems engineer in Germany and India.

Chloe Findling, BA
Clinical Research Associate I

Findling graduated from Scripps College in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. Previously, Chloe worked as a research associate at Lenox Hill Hospital, examining cardiac risk factors in youth. Chloe was also a crisis advocate for sexual assault survivors and a teaching assistant in her college’s organic chemistry laboratory.

Sunidhi Gupta, BS
Clinical Research Associate I

Gupta graduated from UCLA with a BA in psychology and is working toward a career in medicine. Previously, she worked as a medical assistant at Beverly Hills Urology and volunteered in social neuroscience studies at UCLA. She also volunteered at an off-campus nonprofit that targets food insecurity in low-income neighborhoods.

Contact the D. Berman Lab

8700 Beverly Blvd.
Taper, Room 1258
Los Angeles, CA 90048