The Office of Faculty Affairs and Faculty Development is pleased to continue its quarterly series highlighting new School of Medicine faculty hires. This sixth article includes new clinical and research faculty hired in November and December 2025, and January 2026.
To promote collaboration and connectivity among our new faculty and within the UVA Health community, we’ve included a description of each new faculty member’s clinical and/or research interests. The included table is searchable by name, department, or other keywords.
The next article in the series will feature newly hired faculty arriving in February through April, 2026. The story will be published in Medicine in Motion this May.
Please join us in welcoming our new faculty to the School of Medicine and UVA Health!
| PHOTO | NAME | RANK | DEPARTMENT | STATEMENT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Echo Buffalo-Ellison, MD | Assistant Professor | Family Medicine | Dr. Echo Buffalo-Ellison, MD, is a family medicine physician committed to access for all patients, with an interest in undergraduate medical education, including focused mentorship and scholarship. |
 | Tin Yi Chu, PhD | Assistant Professor | Genome Sciences | Dr. Tin Yi Chu’s research focuses on developing statistical and machine learning methods for single-cell and spatial omics, as well as liquid biopsy data, to better understand disease mechanisms and improve disease prognosis prediction. |
 | Ziqiao Wang, PhD | Assistant Professor | Genome Sciences | Dr. Ziqiao Wang is a biostatistician specializing in statistical genetics and genomics who develops and applies advanced computational methods for disease risk prediction through polygenic scores and gene-environment interactions, and integrates multi-omics data to elucidate complex disease mechanisms using diverse large-scale datasets and biobanks. |
 | Michelle Tran, MD | Assistant Professor | Medicine | Dr. Michelle Tran is a nephrologist with prior research in cancer screening and mortality among patients with end-stage kidney disease on dialysis, now dedicated to nephrology education for medical learners while providing comprehensive, patient-centered care. |
 | Bradford Hilson, MD | Assistant Professor | Medicine | Dr. Hilson is a hospitalist whose professional interests include medical education, procedural medicine, and point-of-care ultrasound use. |
 | Adam VanRegenmorter, MD | Associate Professor | Pathology | Dr. VanRegenmorter is a gynecologic and breast pathologist and a cytopathologist. He is interested in group dynamics and medical student and resident education. |
 | Steven Smith, MD, PhD | Professor | Pathology | Dr. Smith is a GU pathologist with additional interests in bone and soft tissue. He studies the molecular underpinnings of malignancies in these areas. |
 | Leon Straub, PhD | Research Assistant Professor | Pharmacology | Dr. Straub is a Research Assistant Professor in the Pharmacology Department. His research focuses on understanding how adipose tissue dysfunction, metabolic signaling, and immune-stromal interactions drive human disease, and on developing targeted therapeutic strategies that directly address these mechanisms. His work combines mechanistic physiology, transcriptomics, and gene-therapy approaches to define disease pathways with a level of resolution that supports both biological insight and clinical translation. |
 | David Loy, MD, PhD | Associate Professor | Radiology and Medical Imaging | Dr. Loy’s academic interests include advanced neurovascular imaging, interventions, and pulsatile tinnitus. |
 | Richard Lussier, DO | Assistant Professor | Radiology and Medical Imaging | Dr. Lussier’s focus is on advanced body imaging techniques and emerging technologies to improve patient care and train the next generation of body imagers. |
Filed Under: Faculty