On the evening of Friday, May 31, the Cardiovascular Medicine fellowship group kicked off the department’s graduation season. From tiny babies to tenured faculty, guests arrived in fine attire to enjoy an artful array of heavy hors d’oeuvres.

The room filled with graduating fellows, their friends and family, and celebrating colleagues as the littlest among them enjoyed complimentary coloring pages and crayons.

Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Director of the Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship program, Ferhaan Ahmad, MD, PhD, opened the program by thanking a host of people; “most importantly the spouses, children, and other family members of the graduates,” before addressing the graduates themselves by saying on behalf of the division, “we are honored to call you our colleagues.”

Five awards were presented that evening:

Paul Neuhauser Award
Presented by Ferhaan Ahmad, MD, PhD to Giselle Statz, MD

Dr. Lyle A. and Mabel R. Baker Award
Presented by Paari Dominic, MBBS, MPH to Suvasini Laskhmanan, MBBS

Dr. Irving George Pesek Humanitarian Award
Presented by Catherine Pesek Bird, DO, MBA, CHCOM-PHYADV to Amy Ollinger, RN, BSN

Lewis E. January Memorial Clinical Teaching Award
Presented by Christian Anderson, MD, PhD, to James “Rick” Hopson, MD

Chief Fellow Award
Presented by Ferhaan Ahmad, MD, PhD to Eric Heller, MD

Kanu A. Chatterjee Award for Clinical Excellence
Presented by Ferhaan Ahmad, MD, PhD on behalf of Barry London, MD, PhD, to Giselle Statz, MD

Punctuating the program were rounds of “Two Truths and One Lie” and “Name That Fellow”; games that allowed group participation while favoring those who knew the fellows best.

Cardiovascular Medicine graduated physicians from multiple fellowships, including the Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology Fellowship; the Advanced Noninvasive Cardiac Imaging Fellowship; the Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship; the Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology Fellowship, and the Interventional Cardiology Fellowship.

Graduates thanked their families, their mentors, and one another, for the strong support through their academic careers, and in at least one case, making them a better person for having met them.

Congratulations to the fellowship graduates!

Cardiovascular Disease
Michael Arustamyan, DO, MS
Eric Heller, MD
Suvasini Lakshmanan, MBBS, MSc
Paul Lee, MD
Farhad Sami, M.B.B.S
Giselle Statz, MD

Interventional Cardiology
Nicholas Isom, MD
Vikram Sharma, MBBS

Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology
Tyler Rasmussen, MD
Bharat Surani, DO

Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology
Pavida Pachariyanon, MD

Advanced Noninvasive Cardiac Imaging
Natdanai Punnanithinont, MD