School of Medicine
Showing 1-10 of 232 Results
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Peter Acker
Clinical Associate Professor, Emergency Medicine
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research and work focus on optimizing the use of health system data to create intelligent and accurate emergency referral systems to ensure vulnerable populations receive the care they require as efficiently as possible. I am interested in increasing our understanding of currently available health infrastructure in resource limited settings, and pairing that knowledge with technology tools to help identify patient's true needs and match those needs with health system capacity in real-time.
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Leonardo Aliaga
Clinical Assistant Professor, Emergency Medicine
BioDr. Leonardo Aliaga is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Stanford University and a medical education researcher. His scholarly focus lies in error-based learning strategies, adaptive expertise, and clinical reasoning. He is co-Principal Investigator of The Right Kind of Reps, an AI-powered virtual patient simulator designed to accelerate diagnostic skill development through purposeful exposure to cognitive struggle and contrasting cases that sharpen pattern recognition. He has been invited to give international presentations and to lead an international symposium on error-based learning strategies. His research has been published in JAMA Network Open and focuses on designing instructional methods that harness errors as cognitive catalysts to deepen learning and develop adaptive expertise.
Dr. Aliaga is currently pursuing a Master of Health Professions Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where his thesis aims to establish a framework to help educators implement error-based learning strategies across diverse medical education settings. He collaborates with colleagues at UC Davis, Wake Forest University, the University of Toronto, the University of Washington, and University Hospital Basel, and is building the FERN: the Failure in Education Research Network.
Dr. Aliaga brings a unique background to his work, having trained in neurosurgery before transitioning to emergency medicine. That experience shaped how he thinks about expertise and the role of struggle in becoming a truly excellent physician. He also draws from his earlier career in fine arts and photography to shape his approach to teaching—grounded in visual clarity, storytelling, and helping learners “see” through the layers of clinical complexity. He’s known for delivering gritty, high-yield, and visually rich learning experiences that don’t steal the struggle but instead help residents turn missteps into mastery. -
Al'ai Alvarez, MD
Clinical Associate Professor, Emergency Medicine
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI am a Biodesign Faculty Fellow graduate, and my active research is on using biometrics for personalized fatigue-mitigation lifestyle coaching in high-performance teams to minimize sleep-related disruptions.
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Zainab (Zaina) Alzawad
Clinical Assistant Professor, Emergency Medicine
BioDr. Zaina Alzawad is a clinical strategist with extensive experience advancing patient care through research, data-driven innovation, and interdisciplinary collaboration. She currently serves as a Clinical Development and Data Strategy Consultant in the Emergency Department at Stanford Health Care, where she leads and supports research and quality initiatives aimed at improving care delivery, operational efficiency, and clinical outcomes.
Dr. Alzawad’s research background is grounded in pediatric intensive care, with a growing focus on emergency care systems and innovation. She brings specialized expertise in psychometrics, quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and healthcare data analysis, supported by advanced training in measurement, statistics, and nursing science. She previously served as a Nurse Scientist at Stanford Health Care, where she led interdisciplinary studies and mentored clinical teams in research and evaluation. Driven by a passion for inquiry and impact, Dr. Alzawad actively mentors interdisciplinary teams and contributes to the design, implementation, and dissemination of studies that inform clinical practice.
