Arthur T. Hertig Fellowship Fund

Benefactor Report

October 2025

October 22, 2025

Dear Mr. Hertig,

Thank you for your and your family’s generosity to the Scholars in Medicine program at Harvard Medical School through the Arthur T. Hertig Fellowship Fund.

The Fund supported 14 students during the 2024–2025 academic year. Their projects encompassed a wide range of subjects, from AI-enhanced histopathology to global health work in Rwanda and Kenya. This report contains information about each student and their mentors, and highlights one student’s project—an effort to develop an algorithm that will help cardiac surgeons better identify suitable donor hearts for their patients—in greater detail.

For half a century, the Hertig family’s gifts have immersed HMS students in the methods and tools of medical research, introduced them to mentors who have helped shape their careers, and provided them with unique opportunities to study a diverse range of research subjects. Thank you for your support. I hope you and your family continue to enjoy learning about the young physician–scientists whose careers you help launch.

With sincere gratitude, 

Muhammad Abidi, Class of 2027, "Geometric Perfusion Deficit and Its Association with Contrast Sensitivity in Diabetic Retinopathy" (Mentor: John B. Miller, MD)

Karina Aguilar, Class of 2027, "Components of Fine Particulate Matter Air Pollution and Chronic Kidney Disease, a Longitudinal Cohort Study in the U.S. Medicare Population" (Mentor: Joel Schwartz, PhD)

Lorenzo Arvanitis, Class of 2027, "Practice Patterns and Clinical Outcomes for Tricuspid Valve Interventions Among U.S. Medicare Patients with Cardiac Implantable Electronic Devices" (Mentor: Eric Secemsky, MD, MSc)

Corinne Auger, Class of 2027, "Germline/Somatic Convergence and Patient Outcomes in Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer" (Mentor: Eliezer M. Van Allen, MD)

Irving Barrera Lopez, Class of 2027, "Drug Repurposing for Mood Disorders: A Systematic Literature Review and Database Analysis" (Mentor: Jordan Smoller, MD, SD)

Fatema Begum, Class of 2028, "Evaluating the Effects of Temporal Growth Factor Dynamics on Elastogenesis in Tissue-Engineered Auricular Cartilage for Microtia Treatment" (Mentor: Philipp Fisch, MD)

Serenity Bennett, Class of 2027, "Fertility Care Access among Sexually and Gender Diverse People Across Varying State-Level Policy Contexts in the U.S.: A Mixed Methods Study" (Mentor: Alex Keuroghlian, MD, MPH)

Rami Bikdash, Class of 2027, "A Novel Algorithm for Precise Heart Size Matching in Transplantation: Enhancing Outcomes and Optimizing Organ Utilization" (Mentor: Akinobu Itoh, MD, PhD)

Preston Boyd, Class of 2028, "Developing Novel Interventions to Address Disparities in Colorectal Cancer Screening at Urban Community Health Centers" (Mentor: Adjoa Anyane-Yeboa, MD)

Kaelyn Brown, Class of 2027, "Investigating the History of The Family Van and Community-Based Health in Boston" (Mentor: Nancy Oriol, MD)

Shria Bucha, Class of 2028, "The Impact of Common Thromboprophylactic Regimens on Thrombin Generation in Patients with Peripheral Artery Disease Post-Revascularization" (Mentor: Anahita Dua, MD, MS, MBA, FACS)

Seerat Chawla, Class of 2027, "The Dietary Information Needs of Minoritized Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease" (Mentor: Bharati Kochar, MD, MS)

Ammar Dharani, Class of 2028, "Development and Validation of a Deep-Learning Model for Determining Breast Cancer Subtypes from Histopathology Images at Butaro Hospital" (Mentor: Temidayo Fadelu, MD)

Anastasia Onyango, Class of 2028, "Assessing Art-Based Public Health Interventions" (Mentor: Daniel Palazuelos, MD, MPH)

Rami Bikdash and his colleagues are developing an algorithm to predict a range of healthy heart sizes for an individual in need of a transplant using anthropometric values, such as height, weight, body surface area, age, and gender. When evaluating a donor heart for a given recipient, cardiac transplant surgeons consider both the volume that the heart must occupy within the recipient’s chest cavity and the functional demand the recipient’s body will put on the donor heart.

Currently, surgeons generally use a metric called predicted heart mass (PHM), which incorporates some of the anthropometric values listed above. However, surgeons report widespread dissatisfaction with PHM as a tool. Pediatric surgeons, however, often use a different metric—total cardiac volume (TCV). Some measures of TCV incorporate dimensions from non-gated CT scans in the size-estimation process, resulting in greater accuracy. Bikdash’s team seeks to expand on this strategy by generating a database of healthy heart measurements and correlating body dimensions with a new metric derived from cardiac dimensions, mediastinal box volume, which may better elucidate the size and function match of a donor–recipient pair.