Thanks to the diligent, thoughtful work our faculty, residents, and staff have done to help attract the best and brightest residents to our department, for yet another year, we have matched our top candidates. We will have four very impressive future neurological surgeons joining us at the end of June. Three of these future neurological surgeons were sub-interns in our department and one was discovered during the interview process. Our next class of R-1 residents is truly promising!
Malek Bashti will graduate from the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine. Prior to medical school, he represented UCSD for four years as a member of the NCAA men’s soccer team. As co-captain in his junior and senior years, he led the team to the Final Four of the national championship for the first time in school history. After graduating, he made his debut as a semi-professional soccer player, the culmination of his lifelong dedication to the sport. Also, while at UCSD Malek worked at a rural hospital in Kenya where he gained valuable experience in practicing medicine in a resource-limited country. Further, he has a diverse research background, having worked in a CAR T-cell lab at Stanford University, leading to publications in Nature, Science, and Cancer Cell. While at Miami, Malek has grown his research portfolio with a wide range of topics studied in great depth. He refined invaluable microsurgical techniques through the study of stroke on murine models of Alzheimer’s disease, led a bioengineering team to develop a novel wearable accelerometer for monitoring peri-operative gait changes, and contributed to 20+ published clinical research manuscripts, with many more in the pipeline. The primary focus of Malek’s neurosurgical research interests is peri-operative outcomes. His passion for this area inspired him to start Algia LLC, where his team is developing an application to characterize the evolution of peri-operative symptoms.
Meredith Costello will also graduate from the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine. An avid athlete, as an undergraduate at the University of Miami Meredith was a member of the women’s Division I rowing team. As a part of this team, she went on to receive multiple University of Miami and Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) honors and awards. Throughout her time in medical school, Meredith has been involved in the Neurosurgery Student Interest Group (NSIG) as a leader on the executive board and mentor to younger students. The mission of the University of Miami Chapter of NSIG is to expose medical students to the field of neurosurgery as well as foster the professional growth of students aiming to pursue a career neurosurgery. Meredith has had significant and longitudinal leadership with this group serving previously as the education coordinator and vice president and now elected by her peers to serve as president for the upcoming year. Meredith strives to continue to grow the chapter and foster mentorship between the department and the chapter as well as between the older and younger medical students. Meredith is an aspiring researcher dedicated to studying various aspects of neurosurgery both clinically and in a traditional lab setting. Throughout medical school, she has published research in multiple neurosurgical subspecialty areas including neuro-oncology, skull base, vascular, and peripheral nerve. Currently Meredith has over twenty publications to her name and continues to maintain productivity within her research groups focusing on longitudinal projects.
Anthony Maxin will graduate from Creighton University School of Medicine. At Creighton he has received numerous scholarships and awards including the Arthur Laughlin and Esther Johnson Barr Scholarship 2023 Merit-based scholarship for academic achievement, multiple Medical Student Research Travel Awards and the Medical Dean’s Magi’s Scholarship for achievement in leadership or community service. Prior to medical school he received his Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry at the University of Washington. Anthony was an excellent sub-intern on our service. He demonstrated an extensive fund of neurosurgical knowledge as well as intelligence, focus, attention to detail, diligence and professionalism. In regard to research, Anthony has an incredible work ethic and productivity to show for it. Anthony has written and submitted several R43 grants and Department of Defense grants including to the Combat Readiness Medical Research Program and Traumatic Brain Injury Psychological Health Research Program. Anthony has had two fully funded grants: the Astral Codex Ten (ACX) technology industry grant on which he is Co-principal investigator with former resident Dr. Lynn McGrath and the University of Washington Population Health Initiative Healthcare AI Award on which he is Co-investigator with Principal Investigator Dr. Michael Levitt. Further Anthony is a co-inventor with Dr. Lynn McGrath on patent application “Pupillary Curve Morphology and Diagnosis Management” which was filed in November 2023. Anthony has ten well-focused publications, many as first author, and centered on this technology and its integration into neurosurgery in addition to multiple additional studies under review, and 23 podium presentations and abstracts at national meetings.
Logan Muzyka joins us from the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School. Prior to medical school, Logan attended Trinity University in San Antonio where she graduated with a degree in neuroscience and English. While an undergraduate, Logan co-founded and directed TigerThon, an annual fundraising campaign for The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio. Under her leadership, fundraising efforts grew from just over $6,000 in her first year to over $25,000 by her senior year. During her third year of medical school, she spent a year conducting research at MGH under Dr. Cahill, optimizing the sensitivity of IDH mutant astrocytomas to radiation therapy where she designed and performed experiments using IDH and CDK 4/6 inhibition in combination with radiation on patient-derived cells, assessing viability via Cell-Titer Glo, cell cycle via flow cytometry, and protein expression via Western blot. This work earned her the Distinction in Research and resulted in over a dozen publications in peer reviewed journals, plus multiple abstracts and posters. Because Logan missed doing regular community service work while in medical school, she sought out the opportunity to collaborate with the Children's Brain Tumor Foundation. She began as a facilitator for a friends and family support group and later helped lead the survivorship group. She also led sessions to educate and mentor survivors and their families on the pursuit of careers in healthcare. In addition to being an amazing self-starter, Logan is a trained dancer and competed at a pre-professional level throughout junior high and high school. In In college, she expanded her repertoire by joining hip hop, bhangra, and Bollywood crews and choreographing pieces for the annual professional showcase, Momentum. During her research year in Boston, she performed with a hip hop dance crew under Zay Beasley, participating in local shows and master classes.