Global Health Innovation Laboratory Staff & Advisors

Chief: Thomas Burke, MD, FACEP, FRSM

Thomas F. Burke, MD, FACEP, FRSM is Chief of the Global Health Innovation Laboratory at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the Department of Emergency Medicine, and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Burke spent seven and a half years in the US Army and over that time was deployed with the Light Infantry as well as the Second Ranger Battalion. Dr. Burke was a tactical physician for the FBI Hostage Rescue Team at both the hostage incidents in Waco Texas and Ruby Ridge Idaho. On September 11, 2012 Dr. Burke was in Benghazi, Libya when Ambassador Stevens lost his life.

Dr. Burke’s innovations’ research experience spans 25 years and includes three years as a research director at Madigan Army Medical Center, four years as founder and chief executive officer of a successful clinical trials company, and 15 years as director of a global health innovations’ fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Over his career Dr. Burke has pioneered several award-winning scientific advances and thereafter translated them into policy and practice.

Dr. Burke has extensive experience as a leader in the global health arena since 1994, with a focus on maternal survival since 2004. Dr. Burke has led a research program focused on postpartum hemorrhage for the past 10 years and currently co-chairs the International Federation of OBGYN Working Group on postpartum hemorrhage. Dr. Burke has authored of over 120 scientific manuscripts and two books. He is often invited to speak at high profile forums and leading universities around the globe. Dr. Burke is a senior faculty of the Harvard University Center for African Studies and an active member of the Harvard Medical School Admissions Committee. On June 3, 2019, in a joint UK and India government ceremony in the House of Lords, Dr. Burke was bestowed the title Lord of the Planet in Medical Sciences. Dr. Burke has opened film festivals and has been profiled for his work by BBC, NPR, FOX Television, ABC, CBS, the London Financial Times, the New Yorker, the Seattle Times, and the Boston Globe, among other news outlets.

Faculty and Director of Operations: Moytrayee Guha, MPH

Moytrayee Guha, MPH is the Director of Operations and Finance for the Global Health Innovation Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital. Ms. Guha is a public health and healthcare management professional with 7+ years of experience in global health, program development, program management, quantitative and qualitative research, epidemiology, grant management, operations and strategy development. She has traveled extensively to resource-limited countries including Kenya, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, India and Thailand for global health and humanitarian work. Prior to her role at Mass General, Ms. Guha served as a Maternal and Child Health Consultant for the United Nations and HIV/AIDS Research Fellow for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She was also a Program Officer for Columbia University’s International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs (ICAP). Additionally, she has held various research and healthcare management positions at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Brown University. Ms. Guha earned her Master of Public Health degree from Columbia University.

Research Scientist: Moshood (Lanre) Omotayo, MBBS, MPH, PhD

Senior Maternal Health Advisor: Melody Eckardt

Melody Eckardt, MD, MPH, is currently the Senior Maternal Health Advisor for the Division. She is a leader in advancing the science of saving the lives of mothers and newborns, traveling extensively as a speaker, educator, and leading researcher. Most recently, Melody’s work has focused on training, research and implementation of the postpartum hemorrhage bundle. She has been a leader in research and innovation around uterine balloon tamponade for postpartum hemorrhage, making cesarean section available when needed for every woman, and understanding and preventing fistula. As an obstetrician/gynecologist, Melody served for several years as the Founding Director of Global Health for the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Boston University Medical Center, the Director of Women’s Refugee Health in the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights and taught at both Boston University School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School. She also previously served as the Director of Programs for the Division and was a Director of the Global Health Leadership and Innovations fellowship.

Senior Advisor: Lorraine Freed Garg, MD, MPH

Lori Freed Garg, MD, MPH is a Senior Advisor in the Global Health Innovation Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital.  Prior to joining the Division, she was the Director of Maternal and Child Health Services in the Division of Family Health Services at the New Jersey Department of Health.  In this role, she oversaw Perinatal and Reproductive Health Services, Maternal and Child Health Epidemiology, Child and Adolescent Health and Children’s Oral Health Programs.  Before that, she served as the Medical Director of Newborn Screening and Genetic Services for the State of New Jersey, where she led the first statewide implementation of newborn critical congenital heart disease screening in the United States.   Dr. Garg attended medical school at the University of California, San Francisco; trained in pediatrics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and then completed a fellowship in adolescent medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.  While at Johns Hopkins, she also completed the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, a research fellowship, and earned a Masters in Public Health Degree.  Upon completion of training, she spent 7 years on the faculty of Boston Children’s Hospital in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine where she provided medical care to adolescent patients, conducted research in adolescent health-related issues, and taught adolescent medicine to students and residents.

Senior Project Specialist: Alicia Lightbourne, MPH

Alicia Lightbourne, MPH is the Senior Project Specialist and has been with the Global Health Innovation Laboratory since 2016. Her current focus is in strategy, management, and sustainability of global health programs. She previously worked in research promotion, knowledge translation, and capacity building with the Pan American Health Organization in Washington, DC. She also has experience in monitoring and evaluation and qualitative and quantitative research in sexual and reproductive health. Alicia is from Nassau, Bahamas and has a Master of Public Health from Tulane University (with an emphasis in maternal and child health) and a Bachelor of Arts in Human Evolutionary Biology from Harvard College.

Associate Program Officer: Stephanie Hansel

Stephanie M. Hansel, MSc joined the Division in June 2018 as an Associate Program Officer working on the postpartum emergency care program. She is a public health and international development professional with over 15 years of experience planning, implementing and managing complex public health and social development initiatives in low and middle-income countries. For more than 12 years of her career, she held senior management and technical positions in international and local non-governmental organizations in Armenia and West Bank/Gaza. She also has significant experience managing USAID-funded projects in vocational education, infrastructure and community development, and capacity enhancement of health care workers. As Director of the Continuous Professional Development unit at Juzoor for Health and Social Development, a leading national NGO in Palestine, she designed and implemented several innovative health service and education models for healthcare professionals in maternal and child health, mental health, primary health care and emergency care, and was the Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics (ALSO) Program Coordinator in Palestine and the region. She also contributed to public health policy and health systems strengthening efforts at the national level in Palestine. Prior to joining the Division, she was seconded to a USAID funded project as a Technical Advisor where she led efforts to revise the Palestinian General Surgery residency program syllabus, improving the quality of training and positively impacting patient outcomes. Stephanie holds a Master of Science in Public Health with a concentration in Health Services Management from the University of London, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Fellowship Director: Hiren Patel, MD, MPH, FACEP

Dr. Patel is an American board-certified emergency medicine physician who has had widespread training in public health, global health and international emergency medicine development, systems building, as well as relief management and implementation around the globe. This includes emergency medicine pre-hospital systems development in Accra, Ghana; emergency first aid response management in Atlantis, South Africa; emergency medicine education, training and systems building in Siaya county, Kenya; emergency disaster response and trauma stabilization in Mosul, Iraq; and sex trafficking abolition work in Delhi, India; as well as numerous other global health and humanitarian work in the Dominican Republic, Zambia, India, Canada and the US. He completed his Masters in Public Health focusing on clinical effectiveness at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, his Fellowship in Global Health and Leadership at the Global Health Innovation Laboratory and Human Rights at Massachusetts General Hospital, his residency in Emergency Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, and his medical school in Manipal University, India. Dr. Patel is currently the Associate Investigator for the Ketamine Projects and Director of Fellowships and Senior Advisor for the Global Health Innovation Laboratory s at Mass General.

OB/GYN Fellow: Anderson Borovac Pinheiro, MD, PhD

OB/GYN Fellow: Sevgi Sipahi, MD

Sevgi Sipahi, MD is an Obstetrician-Gynecologist who completed her medical training at Chicago Medical School and her residency at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, IL. Prior to joining our Division, Sevgi worked in Uganda and Tanzania, where she focused on medical education and developing international global health rotations for medical students and resident physicians. She is currently working on the Division’s Postpartum Hemorrhage bundle in Kenya. Sevgi lives in Chicago and splits her time working clinically with the Advocate Medical Group at Lutheran General Hospital and working in Boston with the Mass General Division of Global Innovation while pursuing her MPH in Clinical Effectiveness through the Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health. 

Postdoctoral Research Fellow: Kamyar Mollazadeh-Moghaddam, Pharm D

Kamyar received his Pharmacy Doctorate degree from Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2011. In 2015, he completed a stellar year at BWH/Harvard Med School as a postdoc. His research focuses on delivery systems for medical therapies. He joins us at Mass General on 2016 to research on designing devices specifically for global health issues.

Senior Research Coordinator: Daniela Suarez-Rebling

Daniela is from Mexico City, but grew up in New York. She graduated from Harvard University in 2016 where she majored in History of Science with a minor in Global Health and Health Policy. While she was in school, she interned with Partners in Health, the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Secours Catholique, Crimson Care Collaborative, and attended the Division’s summer program in Kisumu, Kenya. She plans on attending medical school and continuing to work in global health as a physician.

Program Coordinator: Sabrina Marzouki

Sabrina is from Boston, MA and graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2018 where she majored in Public Health Sciences with a concentration in Global Epidemiology and a certificate of Public Policy and Administration. Her past experience includes working with multiple mobile health applications on maternal health content creation that is accessible for all women to better engage in awareness of their reproductive health. She has also had research fieldwork experience in India, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama working on various global health initiatives. She is particularly interested in how empathy, ethnography, and design thinking converge to inspire innovation and communication in addressing challenging problems in healthcare.