Meet the New UA College of Medicine – Tucson, Sarver Heart Center Cardiology Fellows

The University of Arizona Sarver Heart Center welcomed new Cardiovascular Disease and Interventional Cardiology fellows who started their programs July 1, 2019.

Mahesh Balakrishnan, MBBS, Emily Cendrowski, MD, Ignacio Zepeda, MD, Nancy K. Sweitzer, MD, PhD, Adriana Martin, MD, PhD, Nanda Pullela, MBBS, Juliya Cress, MD, PharmD, and Michael Kendall, MD, MSc

Cardiovascular disease fellows beginning their first year of the three-year training program are:

  • Mahesh Balakrishnan, MBBS, completed internal medicine residency at UA College of Medicine – Tucson, South Campus. He obtained his medical degree from Coimbatore Medical College in Coimbatore, India.
  • Emily Cendrowski, MD, completed internal medicine residency at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill. She obtained her medical degree from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine in Odessa.
  • Juliya Cress, MD, PharmD, completed internal medicine residency at Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, NY. Before obtaining her medical degree from Drexel University, she graduated from Temple University College of Pharmacy in Philadelphia.
  • Michael Kendall, MD, MSc, completed internal medicine residency at University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Before obtaining his medical degree from Keck School of Medicine at USC, he graduated from the University of California, Irvine, with a master of science degree in biomedical engineering.
  • Adriana Martin, MD, PhD, completed internal medicine residency at UA College of Medicine – Tucson. She was a dual MD/PhD student at Rutgers University in New Jersey in the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the pharmacology and biomedical engineering program.
  • Nanda Pullela, MBBS, has been an inpatient hospitalist at Banner – University Medical Center Tucson, before joining the Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship Program. He completed internal medicine residency at Bronx Lebanon Hospital Center in New York. Prior to that he completed a cardiology fellowship, general medicine residency and medical school in India.
  • Ignacio Zepeda, MD, completed internal medicine residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Jacobi Medical Center in Bronx, NY. A graduate of Unversidad Autonoma de Baja California Tijuana Facultad de Medicine y Psicologia in Mexico, he was a general medicine physician for underserved populations before moving to New York.
  • Ibrahim Barry, MD, will join the fellowship program October 1, 2019. Currently, a hospitalist with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, he completed his medicine residency at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, part of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He obtained his medical degree at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

UA Sarver Heart Center also welcomed Muhammad Ajmal, MBBS, who transferred to the program as a second-year fellow from Creighton University School of Medicine in Phoenix. Dr. Ajmal completed internal medicine residency at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and medical school in Pakistan.

Kapil Lotun, MD, Mark Friedman, MD, J.R. "Keng" Pineda, MD, PhD, Sridhar Reddy, MD, Ranjith Shetty, MD, Tom Lassar, MD

Two graduates of the Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship Program are continuing at the UA as interventional cardiology fellows: J.R. “Keng” Pineda, MD, PhD, and Sridhar Reddy, MD.