Faculty

Sivasenthil Arumugam, MD, is in private practice with Woodland Anesthesiology Associates in Hartford, CT. He is also an associate clinical professor at the University of Connecticut and residency site director at the St. Francis Hospital & Medical Center. Dr. Arumugam is an examiner at the American Board of Anesthesiology. He continues to serve in various positions and is currently the president of the Connecticut State Society of Anesthesiologists. His special interests include regional anesthesia, point of care ultrasound, perioperative medicine, teaching, and clinical research.

Layne M Bettini, MD, JD, is an assistant professor of anesthesiology at the Harvard Medical School and director of the regional anesthesiology program at Boston Children's Hospital. He completed medical school in Northwestern and residency at NYU with a fellowship at Boston Children's.  He has a special interest in the use of ultrasound in the perioperative care of pediatric and young adult patients. He has published widely in these fields and lectured at conferences nationally and internationally.  He also loves to innovate in the field and to share those with physicians taking care of children.

Ria Dancel, MD, is a professor of medicine and pediatrics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. She created and has directed the medicine procedure service since its inception in 2014 and also created and directs the point of care ultrasound (POCUS) elective curriculum and required intern longitudinal curriculum for the department of medicine. She is on the steering committee for the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) - American College of Chest Physicians POCUS certificate of completion program.

Rachel Douglas, DO, completed her anesthesiology residency at the University of Washington, was in private practice for a few years in New York, and then returned to academics completing fellowships at both the Mayo Clinic and Toronto Western Hospital.  She is currently on faculty at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.  She has recently published in both JAMA Network and the BJA.  Her interests are medical education with an emphasis in regional anesthesia and POCUS.

Omar Durra, MD, is a clinical professor at the Department of Anesthesiology, University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine. He completed his residency at Rush Presbyterian St Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago; he did his fellowship in Cardio-thoracic Anesthesiology at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.

He is a diplomate of the national board of echocardiography in the advanced PTEeXAM and has fulfilled the requirement for the POCUS diagnostic certification program provided by the ASA, where he serves as a local mentor to help other anesthesiologists complete their certification. He previously served as director of point of care ultrasound service at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. In addition to the clinical responsibility, he is involved in resident, fellow, and faculty education in Point of Care Ultrasound. He helped organize and place a curriculum for POCUS residents’ rotation and develop workshops annually for cardiac and regional fellows using hands-on skill stations and simulation lab education. He is a faculty member of the Basic POCUS and TEE workshop for critically ill patients at the annual ASA conference.

Renuka George, MD, was born in India and grew up surrounded by medicine. Two physician parents, residence on a medical campus and a congenital heart defect hardly left her a choice. Dr. George used these various roles to grow her perspective and appreciation of medicine ultimately leading her to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Along the way, she graduated with a Bachelor of Sciences in Business Administration from Trinity University in San Antonio, TX, got her Medical Degree from Ross University School of Medicine, and completed her anesthesiology residency including a chief position at the McGovern Medical School UT Health in Houston, TX. She went on to pursue a regional anesthesia and acute pain medicine fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, and remained as faculty there. She has since served in several leadership roles including the associate program director for the anesthesiology residency, the Medical Director for Rutledge Tower Operating Room and now Director for the Regional Anesthesiology Fellowship. In all these roles, she has sought to grow her understanding of anesthesia, the operating room, and medical education. In her training and clinical practice, she has sought to remove the guesswork from clinical decision making. She attended ASRA Pain Medicine’s Basic Point of Care Ultrasound Course in 2018 and has been a tireless advocate for the utilization of ultrasound in medical management since.

Hari Kalagara, MD, is passionate about regional anesthesia and has completed a regional anesthesia fellowship at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, OH. He has attained European Diploma in Regional Anesthesia (EDRA) by the European Society of Regional Anaesthesia and Pain Therapy and was awarded the ASRA Resident/Fellow of the Year Award in 2017. Dr. Kalagara served as Point-of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) Director at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Dr. Kalagara holds certifications in perioperative echocardiography and critical care echocardiography by the National Board of Echocardiography (NBE). Dr. Kalagara is currently working as an assistant professor in Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at the Mayo Clinic with special interest in regional anesthesia and POCUS. He is currently the Chair of ASRA Pain Medicine POCUS courses.

Andrzej Kwater, MD, is an assistant professor in the department of anesthesiology and perioperative medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He completed fellowship training in regional anesthesiology and acute pain medicine at UT Health-McGovern. He currently works in the neuroanesthesia, pediatric anesthesia, and acute pain/regional sections within his department. Dr. Kwater also serves as the associate program director for the regional anesthesia and acute pain medicine fellowship at MD Anderson. His clinical interests include regional anesthesia, POCUS, and education.     

Suryakumar Narayanasamy, MD, is a pediatric anesthesiologist and POCUS enthusiast who is been teaching and learning POCUS for the past five years. His focus area of interest is gastric ultrasound primarily for NPO violations and patients on GLP-1 receptor agonists.

Theresa Northern, DO, MPH, is an anesthesiologist practicing in Colorado Springs at UC Health. She is an adjunct faculty at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine. Previously she was an assistant professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where she completed a fellowship in regional anesthesia and acute pain medicine. She is a Diplomate in Basic Perioperative Transesophageal Echocardiography certified from the National Board of Echocardiography and has completed the Diagnostic POCUS Certificate Program by the American Society of Anesthesiologists. During her residency in anesthesiology at Ochsner in New Orleans, she was selected as a Society for Education in Anesthesia Health Volunteers Overseas (SEA-HVO) Traveling Fellowship Recipient. Recognizing the increasing availability of ultrasound globally and its utility across multiple clinical realms, her dream is to teach POCUS in resource-challenged environments where its impact is exponential.

Stephanie Pan, MD, is a clinical assistant professor of pediatric anesthesiology at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital (LPCH) Stanford. Board-certified in pediatric anesthesiology, she completed a fellowship in regional anesthesia and acute pain medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). Dr. Pan is a local mentor for the ASA Diagnostic POCUS Certificate Program and recipient of the ASRA Pain Medicine Early-Stage Investigator Grant. Her clinical interests include pediatric regional anesthesia, pediatric POCUS, and pediatric orthopedic spine surgeries.

Govind Panda, MD, RDCS, is an intensivist at Mayo Clinic Florida. Dr. Panda’s training was in internal medicine at UMKC Missouri 2013-2016, critical care fellowship in Rochester MN 2016-2018, and also a registered diagnostic cardiac sonographer (RDCS). His focus is integrating POCUS and echocardiography into critical care medicine in patient care, research and education.

Oliver Panzer, MD, completed his critical care fellowship at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). After that, Dr. Panzer joined the faculty in the divisions of regional anesthesia and critical care in 2006. Early on he was fascinated by the impact of perioperative ultrasound on their clinical practice. He created and led perioperative ultrasound workshops and lectures for multiple classes of residents and critical care fellows at CUMC. Dr. Panzer became the director of perioperative ultrasonography in 2010 and led the departmental perioperative ultrasound curriculum committee. He has taught courses nationally at the ASA meetings since 2010, the PGA meetings in New York since 2014, and the FATE course since 2016.

Jennifer Potter, MD, is an anesthesiologist at Aspen Valley Hospital in Aspen, CO. After finishing undergrad and medical school at Duke University, she completed residency training at the University of Utah and Stanford University. She then completed a regional anesthesiology fellowship at the University of Virginia (UVA) and practiced for UVA for 5 years before moving to Colorado. Dr. Potter is a Testamur in the National Board of Echocardiography Examination of Special Competence in Advanced Perioperative Transesophageal Echocardiography (PTEeXAM).

Rakesh Sondekoppam, MD, is the division director of regional anesthesia and acute pain medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City. He heads the acute pain and regional anesthesia services at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (UIHC) and continues to be involved in resident and fellowship training at the UIHC. He is also the founding member and current vice chair of the ASRA Pain Medicine Green Anesthesia special interest group.