Haig A. Yenikomshian, MD
Haig Yenikomshian, MD, is the project director for the Southern California Burn Model System. He is an assistant professor of plastic surgery of the University of Southern California. He is chief of plastic surgery at the Los Angeles County / University of Southern California Medical Center and is the program director for the USC Plastic Surgery residency. Dr. Yenikomshian’s clinical and research focuses on improving functional, cosmetic, and psychosocial outcomes in burn recovery.
Justin Gillenwater, MD, MS
Justin Gillenwater, MD, MS, takes a long-term approach to burn care, burn reconstruction, wound healing and scar management, following each patient from the initial trauma through the healing process. He is board certified in both surgical critical care, and plastic and reconstruction surgery.
Trevor Pickering, PhD
Trevor Pickering, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine and faculty in the CTSI BERD biostatistics core. He has over 15 years of experience with study design and analysis and has worked on projects in areas including community health assessment, nutrition and exercise interventions, tobacco and drug evaluation, suicide prevention, and improving the effectiveness of health-related interventions. He frequently collaborates with investigators on aspects of research ranging from study design to grant and manuscript completion. He has experience in regression methods, longitudinal analysis, social network analysis, and latent variable methods such as factor analysis and structural equation modeling.
Elizabeth Flores, BA
Elizabeth Flores is the Program Coordinator with the Southern California Burn Model System (SCBMS). She attended the University of California, Santa Barbara where she received a Degree of Bachelor of Arts in Spanish with a minor in Education and Applied Psychology. As a Los Angeles native with the desire to give back to the community, her professional focus has been to be part of organizations that have the same goal and make a difference. As a result, Elizabeth’s professional background includes local non-profits, community based organizations, and subsidized housing programs. She has over 8 years of experience working as a Case Manager, Program Specialist, and Youth Development Specialist. As the Mother of a Burn Survivor, Elizabeth has a profound understanding of burns and the many challenges burn survivors face. She is excited to be part of the new Southern California Burn Model System Center and the positive impacts that it will make in the lives of burn survivors.
Marientina Gotsis, MFA
Marientina Gotsis, MFA is a Professor of Cinematic Practice at the Interactive Media & Games at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. She has a broad background in arts, design, and engineering with a special interest in interactive entertainment applications for health, happiness, and rehabilitation. She is co-founder and director of the Creative Media & Behavioral Health Center (CMBHC), an organized research unit between the School of Cinematic Arts and the Keck School of Medicine.
Gotsis and her teams have developed interactive experiences and products to help increase literacy and public awareness, change behavior, and improve assessment and treatment techniques with funding from the National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Palix Foundation, Department of Education, Department of Defense, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the Craig Neilsen Foundation. She founded and leads USC’s Games for Health Initiative since 2007, connecting health professionals with innovation in various forms of interactive media. Gotsis is a co-director of the USC SMART-VR Center, advisor and founding faculty to the USC mHealth Collaboratory, and advisor to the Community Scholars Collaborative on Health Equity Solutions (CHES). Gotsis developed and directs the first graduate degree in the world focused on Media Arts, Games and Health (est. 2015).
Her award-winning students have received recognition in festivals and prizes from the Apps for Healthy Kids challenge sponsored by the Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move Initiative, the GE Healthymagination Student Award, Indiecade, Alt.Ctrl.GDC, ACM SIGGRAPH, Serious Games Showcase and Challenge, Unity Unite Awards, Cornell Cup USA, Vilcek Foundation, and the Conference of the Entertainment Software and Cognitive Neurotherapeutics Society.
Elizabeth Mojarro Huang
I am a research coordinator that has been working with patients in the greater Los Angeles area for over eight years. My interest in health is connected to my belief in social justice. Access to health and healthier living is something that I believe that we as a society have to work towards together. I see research as an important piece of a much larger mission to improve treatment and service for the burn community. Investing efforts to better understand the needs of this community with the purpose of improving recovery is something that drives me. I am grateful to be part of a group of people who are so committed and motivated to do just this. I see the work that I do as an important not only for the burn community but for the greater good of us all.
Sarah Stoycos, PhD
Dr. Sarah A. Stoycos, is the dedicated Clinical Psychologist for the LAC+USC Burn Unit and an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at USC, Keck School of Medicine. Dr. Stoycos specializes in rehabilitation and trauma psychology and is passionate about serving the burn and traumatic injury community through research, teaching, and clinical practice. Their research focuses on treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder and associated problems, as well as developing screening and intervention tools for identifying and reducing psychological distress in burn survivors and their family members during hospitalization. Her clinical expertise is in pediatric, adult, and couple/family adjustment to injury, hospitalization, and disability and evidence-based assessment and intervention for PTSD and related problems. Dr. Stoycos completed their M.A. and Ph.D. in Clinical-Science Psychology at the University of Southern California, internship in rehabilitation and trauma psychology at VA Boston Healthcare System in affiliation with Harvard Medical School and Boston University School of Medicine, and NIMH fellowship in traumatic stress disorders at VA National Center for PTSD, Behavioral Science Division.
Paul Won, BS
Paul Won is a current medical student at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. Between his third and fourth year of medical school, he became a Dean’s Research Scholar to pursue clinical research with Dr. Yenikomshian. His research focuses on burn and reconstructive surgery outcomes and disparities faced by various patient populations. Before starting medical school, Paul completed a research year at the Boston Children’s Hospital conducting racial and ethnic disparities outcome research in pediatric patients. Paul completed his B.S in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University.