The Tinker Project

Stella Lee, M.D.

Division of Otolaryngology

Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Director, Section of Rhinology and Skull Base Surgery

Physician, rhinologist, and clinical scientist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dr. Lee has a primary interest in developing innovative teams and treatments for CRS. She is also interested in better treatments for smell loss and and understanding the underlying cause of inflammation of the paranasal sinuses.

John Moore

Clinical Research Coordinator, Department of Otolaryngology

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

Director of Operations, The Tinker Project

John Moore is a clinical research coordinator at the University of Pittsburgh where he oversees the operations of all clinical research conducted under the Director of the Division of Sinonasal Disorders and Allergy. John directs the operational needs of the current clinical research initiatives undertaken by The Tinker Project.

John’s research interests include developing novel innovations to objectively measure sense of smell using electric & magnetic signaling, coordinating efficacy & safety studies of novel treatments for sinonasal disorders, and working in the lab to translate bench research into new clinical therapeutics .

Nathalia Velasquez, M.D.

Chief Resident, Department of Otolaryngology

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

Dr. Nathalia Velasquez is originally from Bogota, Colombia where she completed her undergraduate, medical school, and residency training in Otolaryngology at the National University in Colombia. She then joined the Rhinology department at Stanford university as a visitor scholar where she conducted basic science and clinical research, focusing on outcomes and quality of life research. In 2016 she received the Clinical Science Research Award by the American Rhinologic Society.

Dr. Velasquez is currently completing her last year of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck surgery residency at UPMC. During her time as a resident, she has actively participated in research, with a special interest in Rhinology and Skull Base surgery and has published numerous articles in the area including the effects of occupational and environmental exposure in chronic rhinosinusitis and the Utility of a nasal access guide in endoscopic endonasal skull base surgery. 

Michael A. Belsky, M.S.

Medical Student

Clinical Research Assistant

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

Michael is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He received a Master of Science in Clinical Research through the Clinical Scientist Training Program at the Institute for Clinical Research Education at Pitt. His work focuses on the role of mast cells and T-cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain-3 (TIM-3) in chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps.

Deesha Desai, B.S.

Medical Student

Clinical Research Assistant

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

Deesha is a first-year medical student at the University of Pittsburgh. As part of our team, Deesha has been working to test if smell loss is a reliable indicator of long-term neurological outcomes of the SARS-CoV-2 infection. She is helping to investigate whether betadine can be used as a topical mitigator of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

Andrea Schilling, M.S. 

PhD Candidate

Department of Chemical Engineering

University of Pittsburgh

Andrea is a chemical engineering graduate student in Dr. Steve Little’s laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. Her thesis on “Engineering a Temperature-Responsive, Local and Sustained Release System for the Paranasal Sinuses” is a collaborative project with Drs. Lee and Wang from the Department of Otolaryngology to develop a novel delivery system for the treatment of chronic rhinosinusitis. Before graduate school, Andrea worked as a process development engineer at Celgene Cellular Therapeutics on GMP manufacturing of placental and cord blood-based cell therapies. She completed her M.S. in chemical engineering at Rutgers University and B.S. in biomedical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Tolani F. Olonisakin, PhD

Medical Student

Clinical Research Assistant

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Carnegie Mellon University

Tolani is an MD/PhD student in the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. Her projects aim to characterize cytokine expression in chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) and correlate this data with clinical outcomes in order to (1) define new subtypes of CRS and (2) delineate distinct pathophysiological mechanisms that drive various subtypes of CRS.

BaDoi Phan, B.S.

Biomedical Data Analyst

Pitt-CMU Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP)

CMU-Pitt Computational Biology (CPCB) PhD Program 

BaDoi’s goal is to understand biology through the lens of and using tools of computation, algorithms, and analyses. In the post-genome era, the data and computational resources makes it possible by marrying technical fields of engineering, computer science, and bioinformatics to address questions of biology. He is continually amazed by the complexity and questions still yet unanswered in neuroscience, specifically those about neuropscyhiatric disorders. His work to present has explored the genomic processes underlying some important questions in neuroscience.

Jymirah Morris, B.S.

Medical Student

Dean’s Research Fellow

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

Jymirah is currently a Dean's Research Year Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. She works with the SolveCRS team to identify whether novel therapies can prevent disease recurrence in patients with chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps following functional endoscopic sinus surgery. She is identifying new inflammatory cytokine expression patterns that characterize disease progression or remission. Furthermore, the goal is to use patient characteristics and clinical outcomes to identify endotypes of CRSwNP in order to personalize patient treatment.