Meet the 2026 StARR Grant Recipients

The J. Willis Hurst Internal Medicine Residency Program has named first-year resident Evan Czulada, MD (Division of Infectious Diseases mentor Jessica Fairley, MD, MPH), and second-year resident Anastasia Kolousek, MD (Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine mentors Carmen Polito, MD, MSc, Annette Esper, MD, MSc, and Greg Martin, MD, MSc) as the 2026 recipients of the “Stimulating Access to Research in Residency” (StARR) grant.

Emory was initially selected to receive the highly competitive StARR award in 2018 and is currently one of 11 NIAID-funded R38 programs. The initiative was created by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to address a nationwide shortage of physician-scientists. From the Division of Infectious Diseases, Nadine Rouphael, MD, serves as the Principal Investigator, and Shannon Walker, PhD, MPH, serves as the Program Director of this program.

Evan Czulada, MD, is driven by a commitment to strengthening cardiovascular care for underserved and immigrant communities. His path toward this work began during college, where he served as a Spanish medical interpreter for migrant agricultural workers and first witnessed how language, poverty, and limited access to care shape health outcomes. During medical school, that awareness deepened while establishing Chagas cardiomyopathy research cohorts in Bolivia and working with Latino communities in the United States. “I saw how delayed diagnosis and fragmented healthcare delivery can translate directly into preventable heart failure and arrhythmias, and this emboldened me to confront the systemic issues responsible,” he reflects. 

In the StARR program, Dr. Czulada will lead CHASM (Chagas disease Health Assessment and Screening gaps in Management), a project focused on identifying screening gaps and improving early detection efforts within Atlanta health systems. Under the mentorship of Dr. Jessica Fairley and other multi-institutional collaborators, he aims to deepen his training in epidemiology, implementation science, and health systems research. As a Global Health Distinction Scholar, he will also engage in structured global health training and international clinical experiences focused on infectious diseases affecting the heart. “My early experience with research revealed its power to expand access to care for vulnerable populations, and StARR provides the protected time and mentorship to build a rigorous research foundation early in residency to develop scalable strategies that strengthen equitable cardiovascular outcomes both locally and globally,” he says.

Upon graduation, he plans to pursue fellowship training in cardiology and build a career as an academic physician-scientist focused on cardiovascular infectious diseases while working to close persistent gaps in care across diverse populations.

Anastasia Kolousek, MD, first decided to become a physician while working as a clinical research coordinator. “For the first time, I was part of a multi-disciplinary team where everyone had the same goal: improving patient outcomes, and that feeling was incredible.” She built on this admiration of research and patient care throughout her medical education, cultivating a diverse research background spanning retrospective clinical studies, quality improvement initiatives, and translational basic science. However, it was the hospital, Grady Memorial (Grady), where she spent much of her time, that had the biggest impact on her career goals. She shares that, “Working at one of the largest safety net hospitals in the country changed the way I viewed medical innovation. When caring for the sickest patients-especially those underserved by our healthcare system-the choices that matter most are often those that are made before the patient arrives at our doors.” 

As a StARR R38 recipient, she turns this insight towards one of the leading causes of in-hospital mortality, sepsis. Under the mentorship of Dr. Carmen Polito, Dr. Annette Esper, and Dr. Greg Martin, she aims to examine prehospital identification of sepsis within Grady’s mobile integrated health program. She hopes to use this time to deepen her understanding of system-based innovation and protocol design while gaining core research skills she will build throughout her career.

On graduation, Dr. Kolousek plans to pursue a fellowship in pulmonary and critical care with the intention of pursuing a career as an academic physician focused on improving sepsis outcomes. “I’m so grateful the StARR program has allowed me to focus on a topic I care so deeply about-improving health equity and outcomes for critically ill patients.”

The StARR program’s approach includes a structured research-training program that offers in-depth training in the fundamentals of clinical and translational research, as well as an Emory R38-specific mentoring program that is tailored to the training needs of resident physicians. 

The program’s preceptors have mentoring experience and federally-funded research projects in the program’s target areas, including transmission, prevention, basic and applied immunology and microbiology, end-organ complications, disease management, therapeutics, pharmacology, and vaccinology. Information regarding the 2027 StARR program application process will be available soon.