SPEAKERS
Hillary Irons, MD, PHd
Hillary Irons, MD, PhD, FACEP, is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Massachusetts. She completed a Wilderness Medicine Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, during which she worked with the Himalayan Rescue Association in the Everest Region of Nepal, served as a trip physician to the Siberian Arctic, and conducted multiple research projects on altitude illness.
Hillary has taught wilderness medicine for many years, delivering lectures, hands-on courses, including AWLS, and leading simulation-based instruction. She is also the Expansion Race Coordinator for MedWAR (Medical Wilderness Adventure Races), which has been teaching and testing wilderness medicine through scenario-based adventure races since 2003. She has held national leadership roles in the wilderness medicine interest groups of SAEM and ACEP.
Her current research focuses on cognitive deficits in hypoxic brain states, particularly acute mountain illness and traumatic brain injury.
Stanley Chartoff, MD
Dr. Stan Chartoff is an attending physician at Hartford Hospital and Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the UConn School of Medicine. He serves as Director of the Wilderness Medicine Track for the Emergency Medicine residency and is the Emergency Medicine representative for the program. Dr. Chartoff is the medical lead for Team Rubicon, a disaster response NGO, and a retired U.S. Air Force physician with deployment experience in critical care transport. He also teaches as an instructor for the Uniformed Services University’s Bushmaster field exercise and serves as Chief Medical Officer of the Jamboree Health Center for the National Scout Jamboree.
Nathaniel Oz, MD
Dr. Nathaniel Oz is faculty at Brown University Health and serves as co-Director of the Wellness and Environmental Medicine course at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. They have been involved in wilderness medicine for many years, both personally and professionally.
CJ Chang, MD
Dr. Yeu-Shin Cindy “CJ” Chang is a Board-Certified Emergency Medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. She is an expert on austere and rural medicine and has worked on all seven continents as a physician, researcher, and data scientist to improve healthcare delivery in some of the most remote locations around the world, with recent long-term roles in the US, Africa, Middle East, and Antarctica. Dr. Chang has served as a leader and consultant for many international and multidisciplinary teams, including the World Bank, NASA, IBM, US Indian Health Service, and the US Antarctic Program, and has published extensively in high impact journals including Nature, PNAS, JAMA Network Open, Annals of Emergency Medicine, among others. She is also a Guinness World Record holder for the most southerly game of musical chairs, which she spearheaded during her deployment to the South Pole.
Dr. Chang completed her undergraduate and Master of Engineering degrees at Cornell University; M.D. and Master of Public Health (MPH) degrees at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and Case Western Reserve University; and Emergency Medicine residency at Harvard at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Chang is a native speaker of English, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Taiwanese.
Mike Decarolis, MD
My name is Mike Decarolis, and I am an EM physician in the western mountains of Maine. I am a FAWM and DiMM graduate, and I completed my Wilderness Medicine fellowship at Yale University. My focus is on medical education, toxicology, and mountain medicine.
Matthew Piechnik, MD
Matthew Piechnik, MD, is an Emergency Medicine resident at UMass Chan Medical School and a commissioned officer in the United States Navy, having entered service through the Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP). He is a Fellow of the Academy of Wilderness Medicine (FAWM) and has held leadership roles including Chair of the Mid-Atlantic Student Wilderness Medicine Conference Committee. Actively engaged with the Wilderness Medical Society (WMS), he has authored educational articles and led the development of presentations. His work also extends to global health and medical education development in the Caribbean and African countries, with a focus on creating practical, field-ready training that bridges evidence-based medicine with the realities of austere environments.
Gayle Galletta, MD
I am a Professor of Emergency Medicine at UMass Chan. I am passionate about the environment in a champion of decreasing healthcare’s carbon footprint. I have been involved in advocacy at both the international and national levels. I was a lead author on the International Federation for Emergency Medicine white paper on Climate Change and have spearheaded writing climate-related resolutions for the American College of Emergency Physicians. I am an avid cyclist and try to commute to work by bicycle as often as possible. I also enjoy scuba diving, and I’ve recently climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and hope to climb Machu Picchu in October.
Karishma Patel, MD
Sarah UHRANOWSKY, MD
Sarah is an Emergency Medicine Resident at Brown University. She is passionate about combining her interests in the outdoors with her career in emergency medicine and was one of the founding members and former race director of the Massachusetts Medical Wilderness Adventure Race. When she isn’t working you can find her on the ski slopes, biking, hiking, and trying to locate the best farmer’s market in town.
She’s excited to be joining you as a simulation leader this year and is always happy to connect with others interested in wilderness medicine!
Heather Pol, MD
Dr. Heather Pol is a third-year Emergency Medicine resident at Yale New Haven Hospital, where she serves as the Resident Director of Wilderness Medicine. She plans to pursue a Wilderness Medicine fellowship following graduation. Prior to residency, Dr. Pol worked for eight years as a supervising pharmacist, developing leadership and problem-solving skills that inform her practice in resource-limited and austere environments. She has also served as Chair of the Advocacy Committee for the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, contributing to national initiatives in resident education.
Zohdi Cooperrider Young, MD
Dr. Youn is a first-year Emergency Medicine resident at Yale New Haven Hospital. Prior to medical school, they completed Wilderness First Responder and EMS training, and during medical school pursued a Wilderness Medicine fellowship pathway while serving as president of the Wilderness Medicine Club. They have attended multiple wilderness medicine conferences and events, and have particular interests in tropical diseases, snake envenomations, and tick-borne illnesses.
Andrew Milsten, MD
Dr. Milsten is a Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School and Program Director of the UMass Disaster Medicine Fellowship. He completed the University of Maryland EMS and Disaster Medicine Fellowship in 2000, during which he also served as the Medical Director for the Baltimore Ravens’ stadium events. Dr. Milsten is an advocate for disaster medicine as a boarded specialty through the American College of Emergency Physicians and conducts research on disaster response and event medicine. He teaches disaster medicine to medical students, residents, and fellows, and has deployed internationally with the Massachusetts-2 Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT).
Bridget Lee, MD
Dr. Lee is an emergency physician with a focus on sustainability in healthcare. Their work centers on educating clinicians about the need to reduce plastic use in medicine, recognizing both its necessity in patient care and its toxic impact on the environment. They aim to highlight strategies for reducing unnecessary plastic use so that healthcare can be part of the solution rather than the problem.
Madi Battersby, MD
My name is Madi, and I am a PGY-1 Emergency Medicine resident at UMass. I am originally from South Carolina and completed my medical school education at VCOM-Carolinas. I enjoy hiking, biking, backpacking, and skiing, and am passionate about wilderness medicine, including topics of search and rescue and altitude medicine. I look forward to learning more about avalanche medicine as I move forward in my training!
Gregory Banner
My first career was in the Army where I spent a lot of time “in the woods” with a rucksack on my back - lots of hot places but also some very cold places. Among other things I did a tour as an instructor at the Army Northern Warfare Training Center in Alaska. While there I was the officer-in-charge of the Army’s High Altitude Rescue Team and I started doing expedition mountaineering there, including a climb of Mt. McKinley. I have been in the National Ski Patrol now for over 30 years, specializing in the Avalanche and Mountain, Travel and Rescue programs which are the back-country part of the ski patrol. So I have been teaching in those areas for many years and typically get out on one or two courses a year in New England now. I am also an instructor in the ski patrol first aid program which is an EMT-B (wilderness) equivalent.
Matt is currently a second-year medical student at UMass Chan, where he brings a passion for education, community-building, and interdisciplinary learning to the table. A veteran Math and Science educator, Matt draws on years of classroom experience to inform his approach to medicine and patient care. Outside of academics, he enjoys hiking, drinking coffee, and spending quality time with friends and family.
Matt Segil, ms2
Co-DirectoR
Cyruss Cho, ms2
Co-DirectoR
I’m a second-year medical student with an interest in emergency and cardiac medicine. Before starting medical school, I worked as an EMT. My experience treating patients in the pre-hospital setting has grown my interest in emergency and wilderness medicine. In my first year of medical school, I was a part of the Wilderness Medicine Adventure Race (MedWAR) in Massachusetts.
I’m particularly interested in exploring the innovative solutions and problem-solving skills required to deal with resource limited situations. This will be my first time joining the New England Wilderness Medicine conference, and I’m very excited to meet with everyone and learn more about this field!
AVERY PULLMAN, MS4
Founder and Co-Director
I’m a fourth-year medical student and director of the New England Wilderness Medicine Conference. From the start of medical school, I was drawn to Emergency and Wilderness Medicine. Early in my first year, I joined a team at UMass to help launch the first Wilderness Medicine Adventure Race (MedWAR) in Massachusetts, with special thanks to fellow speakers Karishma and Sarah.
After that event, I was hooked and began brainstorming more ways to unite people who share a passion for both medicine and the outdoors. Attending a Wilderness Medicine conference hosted by Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia further inspired me to bring that same energy to the Northeast. We’re excited about this event and can’t wait to connect with others who are passionate about this unique field!