One podcast episode at time, Margaret Duncan, MD ’21, is striking a balance between creative pursuits and her medical practice as a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospital.

As a pediatric neurosurgeon, S. Hassan A. Akbari, MD ’12, improves the lives of children with cerebral palsy and other muscle spasticity disorders. His areas of expertise include selective dorsal rhizotomy, a procedure he learned at WashU Medicine from the late T.S. Park, MD, who pioneered the mobility-enhancing surgery.

While earning her medical degree, Dani Wilder, MD ’26, co-founded nCase Technologies. After losing a friend to an opioid overdose, she and her now husband designed and produced a small, insulated carrying case that holds naloxone nasal spray for rapid recovery. To date, the technology has saved 40+ lives.

Erica Barnell, MD ’23, PhD ’23, is leading the next era of cancer detection as co-founder and chief medical and science officer of Geneoscopy. In her story, discover how she and her brother created ColoSense®, the first FDA-approved, noninvasive colorectal cancer screening home test that detects signs of cancer from RNA.

As a cardiologist and scientist, Kory Lavine, MD ’08, PhD ’08, is pioneering therapies that move beyond managing symptoms of heart disease to actively curing it. His research is transforming how we understand heart failure by revealing an unexpected player in the process: the immune system.