BRIDGe Group Members

Click on a member's title to view a full bio.

Leonard Baidoo, MD

Dr Leonard Baidoo is a Professor of Medicine and the Director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Memphis. After his medical degree and training at the University of Ghana and Oxford University Affiliated Hospitals in England he did an NIH research fellowship at the University of California-San Francisco. He completed his residency and fellowship at MCP Hahnemann University Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia, where he also studied Inflammatory Bowel Disease under Dr Lichtenstein at the University of Pennsylvania. He was one of the founding members of the UPMC IBD Center and was the Director of the Northwestern University IBD Center in Chicago before he moved to Memphis.

Brian Bressler, MD

Dr. Brian Bressler is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine, in the Division of Gastroenterology at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Medicine. Dr. Bressler received his MD from the University of British Columbia and completed his residency in internal medicine and gastroenterology at the University of Toronto. He received an MS in Epidemiology from the Harvard Public School of Health and completed an advanced fellowship in Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Bressler is a recognized expert in inflammatory bowel disease. His research interests include population based studies focusing on colon cancer, and inflammatory bowel disease, and clinical trials in inflammatory bowel disease. He has published numerous peer-reviewed manuscripts and lectures extensively.

Adam Cheifetz, MD

Adam S. Cheifetz is the Director of the Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Medical Director of Infusion Services at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Cheifetz graduated magna cum laude from Brown University before earning his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College. Dr. Cheifetz completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Yale-New Haven Hospital and his fellowship in Gastroenterology at Yale University before serving as the Present-Levinson Fellow in Inflammatory Bowel Disease at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City.

Dr. Cheifetz specializes in the treatment of Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and other inflammatory bowel diseases. In addition to his clinical work, he is involved in multiple research projects relating to IBD. His research currently focuses on optimizing the use of biologics through the proactive use of drug concentrations and antibodies and he has published extensively in this area.

Shane Devlin, MD

Dr. Devlin graduated from the University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine in 1999 before coming to the University of Calgary to complete his internal medicine residency and gastroenterology fellowship, which he completed in 2004. He then went on to complete an advanced clinical and research fellowship in inflammatory bowel disease at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA. Since 2006, Dr.Devlin has been part of the inflammatory bowel disease centre at the University of Calgary and actively participates in clinical trials for various therapeutic agents in IBD. He is also the post-graduate training program director for the adult gastroenterology program at the University of Calgary.

Krisztina Barbara Gecse, MD, PhD

Dr Gecse is a consultant gastroenterologist in the Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands, primarily engaged in inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Dr. Gecse completed her specialization training at the University of Szeged in Hungary and at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam. Dr Gecse received international awards such as the Ray Clouse Prize by the Rome Foundation (USA) and the “Rising Star Award” from United European Gastroenterology (UEG). She chaired the clinical research committee of the European Crohn’s Colitis Organization (ECCO) and is currently the president-elect of International Bowel Ultrasound Group (IBUS). Her research is focusing on personalized treatment, prediction of response and non-invasive monitoring in IBD. She has published in Nature Reviews Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Gut, Gastroenterology and Journal of Crohn’s and Colitis.

Peter Irving, MA MD FRCP

Peter Irving is a Consultant Gastroenterologist with an interest in IBD at Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospitals in London. He graduated with distinction from Cambridge University and The London Hospital Medical College in 1995. His training in gastroenterology was mostly in London, at St Bartholmew's and The Royal London Hospitals, and at University College Hospital. He was awarded an MD from the University of London in 2006 for his thesis on platelet-leucocyte interaction in IBD based on his time in research at Queen Mary College with Professor David Rampton. Subsequently, he moved to Melbourne, Australia to work with Professor Peter Gibson to conduct further research and do an IBD fellowship.

Dr Irving has published widely in IBD. In addition to authoring articles, he has edited two books on IBD and co-authored another. He continues to be active in research through his links at King's College London.

Jennifer Jones, MD MS

Jennifer Jones is an associate professor and the Medical Lead IBD Program QE II Health Sciences Center, Nova Scotia Dr. Jones completed her gastroenterology fellowship and Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2004. Following this she completed an advanced IBD Fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota under the supervision of Dr. William Sandborn. She went on to complete her Masters degree in Epidemiology and Health Research Methodology at the University of Calgary where she also worked as a consultant gastroenterologist with the IBD group at the Foothills Medical Center, University of Calgary between 2005 and 2008. Dr. Jones began her first faculty appointment at the University of Saskatchewan in July 2008 where she took on the role of Director of the newly established multidisciplinary IBD clinic and IBD clinical trials and was cross appointed with the departments of Epidemiology & Community Health Sciences and Research & Graduate Studies. Dr. Jones’s research focuses on IBD outcomes and quality through conduct of research related to enhancement of point-of-care interventions and population-based health services research.

Gil Kaplan, MD

Gil Kaplan is a Gastroenterologist and Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary. Dr. Kaplan's medical school, internal medicine residency, and gastroenterology fellowship were completed at the University of Calgary. He completed a Masters of Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health and a Fellowship in the Inflammatory Bowel Diseases at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He is a Canadian Institutes of Health Research New Investigator. His research focuses on exploring the environmental risk factors of IBD.

Patricia Kozuch, MD

Dr. Kozuch is an assistant professor of medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. She completed her medical degree in 1999 at the Cornell University Medical College, residency in internal medicine at the New York Presbyterian Hospital-Cornell campus in 2002, and her fellowship in gastroenterology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center in 2005. She then proceeded to train under Dr. Stephen Hanauer at the University of Chicago for an advanced fellowship in IBD, during which time she also served as an instructor in medicine.

Gil Melmed, MD, MS

Gil Y. Melmed, MD, MS is Director of Clinical Trials at the Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Center at Cedars-Sinai, and Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at David Geffen University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine. Dr. Melmed received his bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He completed his residency at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and his gastroenterology fellowship at UCLA, where he also received a master's of science in Clinical Research. He is board certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in Gastroenterology and Internal Medicine. His main clinical and research interests are clinical outcomes in inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis), including health-related quality of life, post-operative outcomes, vaccination issues in patients with IBD, and why some patients with ulcerative colitis are subsequently diagnosed with Crohn's disease.

Laura Harrell Raffals, MD, MS

Laura Raffals, MD, MS is Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine Associate Chair of Faculty Development, Vice Chair of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Mayo Clinic, and Chair of the Operations Coordinating Group for the Rochester, MN campus of Mayo Clinic. Dr. Raffals’ clinical and research interests have focused on inflammatory bowel disease with a focus on pouch disorders, exploring the intersection of pouch motility disorders and pouch inflammation. Dr. Raffals is also a requested speaker in faculty development, career development, and work-life integration.

Corey A. Siegel, MD, MS

Corey A. Siegel, is Chief of the Section of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and co-Director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Center at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and the Constantine and Joyce Hampers Professor of Medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. Dr. Siegel received his medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts. He completed his residency in internal medicine at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and then served as chief medical resident at Dartmouth, where he also completed a fellowship in gastroenterology. Dr. Siegel was the first IBD fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA.

Miles Sparrow, MD

Associate Professor Miles Sparrow is a gastroenterologist specialising in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) who is the Head of the IBD Unit at The Alfred Hospital, Melbourne and Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor at Monash University. His research interests include use and optimisation of immunomodulators, therapeutic drug monitoring and clinical trials of novel experimental agents in IBD. He is a member of the ANZIBDC Scientific Committee, BRIDGe and spECTRUM IBD special interest groups, and is a faculty member of the Cornerstones IBD medical education program.

Thomas Ullman, MD

Dr. Ullman is the Chief of Gastroenterology and Professor of Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He received his medical degree from Cornell University Medical College, and stayed to complete his residency in internal medicine at the New York Hospital followed by a GI fellowship at Yale University and 19 years on the faculty at Mount Sinai where his scholarly work focused on colorectal cancer, dysplasia and other complications of IBD.

Fernando Velayos, MD

Fernando Velayos graduated medical school with honors from the University of California, San Francisco. He completed his residency training at UCSF where he served as Chief Resident and then remained for GI fellowship. He completed additional training in inflammatory bowel disease at Mayo Clinic and research training at University of California, Berkeley, where he was awarded a Masters in Public Health.

He is a member of the American College of Gastroenterology, American Gastroenterological Association, and the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America. He currently serves as an associate editor for Digestive Diseases and Science and serves on the editorial board of several journals. His clinical and research interests involve use of novel therapies to treat IBD and prevention of colon cancer in patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

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BRIDGe Group Members