The class notes you see in the Rush MD alumni newsletter and on this website are driven by alumni submissions. We'd love to let fellow Rush alumni know about your practice and help you facilitate professional connections or reconnect with former classmates.

Please send your news to the Office of Alumni Relations at alumni@rush.edu, by phone at (312) 942-2569, or by mail at 1700 W. Van Buren St., Suite 250, Chicago, IL 60612.  

The class notes below were received between January and October 2011.

 RAMON MONCADA, MD 1973, has retired. Moncada was a founding board member of the Infectious Disease Association of California, received the Clinician Award from the Infectious Disease Society of America and served as president of the California Hispanic American Medical Association. Elected president of the medical staff in four hospitals, he also served on the board of directors of the San Diego County Medical Society and the Centers for Disease Control Hospital Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee and lectured nationally and internationally.

LARRY JOHNSON, MD 1974, received a 2010 Delnor Hospital Distinguished Physician Award. The humanitarian award recognizes Johnson’s work as chairman of the St. Patrick Church Respect Life Committee in St. Charles, Ill., for which he oversees fundraisers benefitting the Fox Valley Pregnancy Center. Johnson completed a fellowship at Rush and has been on the medical staff of Delnor Hospital in Geneva, Ill., since 1979.

KENNETH MILLER, MD 1975, writes that his first grandson arrived last year. Miller is still in private rheumatology practice in Danbury, Conn., and happily married to his wife of 36 years, Randi.

THOMAS BAIER, MD 1980, writes that he has joined the Army reserve, has been deployed twice, once to Iraq and once to Afghanistan, and expects to deploy again for three months next year. When he isn’t serving overseas, Baier is in full-time orthopedic practice in Gurnee, Ill.

MICHAEL WOLFSON, MD 1980, works in general internal medicine at Park Nicollet Clinic in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

STEVE PETERSEN, MD 1981, is an associate professor of orthopaedic surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. There, he is also co-director of the Division of Shoulder Surgery and the Johns Hopkins Shoulder Fellowship Program. He and his wife, Gail, have been married for 35 years; their son, Brian, is in the MD/PhD program at the University of Michigan, and their daughter, Becky, is a graduate of Washington University.

GRAF HILGENHURST, MD 1983, recently testified before the Tennessee Senate Subcommittee on Welfare, Health and Human Resources in support of SB #1935, which would require physician supervision of mid-level providers performing pain management procedures. Hilgenhurst is president of the Tennessee Society of Interventional Pain Physicians and medical director of Precision Pain Care in Smyrna, Tenn.

LINDA BRUBAKER, MD 1984, has been named interim dean of Loyola University’s Stritch School of Medicine. Brubaker has served as the school’s senior associate dean of clinical and translational research and vice-chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

JEFFREY ROYCE, MD 1985, is a headache specialist with SwedishAmerican Hospital’s Nerve & Headache Center in Rockford, Ill. He is a board-certified fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

MARK STEVEN DWORKIN, MD 1989, is an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he teaches outbreak investigation and field epidemiology. He is editor and contributor for a new book, Cases in Field Epidemiology, A Global Perspective (Jones and Bartlett Learning), published earlier this year.

SAPNA SINGH RATHI, MD 1991, is in private practice in neurology in Elk Grove Village, Ill. Her older son is a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, her daughter is a sophomore in high school, and her younger son is in the eighth grade. She writes that she still loves to travel and went on her third African safari this summer.

ERIC CHASSIN, MD 1992, former Rush resident and fellow in joint replacement, has joined the medical staff of Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital. Chassin practices in Lombard, Ill., and is board-certified in orthopedic surgery.

ANDREW SMITH, MD 1995, is practicing general surgery and trauma in Phoenix and Scottsdale, Ariz. He writes that he and his wife have three children, with a fourth on the way.

SHARON LYNN CLINE, MD 1996, is a practicing cardiologist in Naperville, Ill. She is married with one son.

ANGELIQUE COHEN, MD 1996, is in private practice in Lake County, Ill. She specializes in ENT.

STEVEN COKER Jr., MD 1996, received the 2010 Oustanding Service to Delnor Health System Award. Coker was recognized for his work to form a Patient Care Evaluation Committee, which has made process improvements to impact patient safety and quality at Geneva, Ill.-based Delnor Hospital, where he has been on the medical staff since 1998.

JONATHAN SONG, MD 1998, received a 2010 Outstanding Service Award from Delnor Hospital in Geneva, Ill. He is credited with bringing the latest da Vinci surgical technology to Delnor and has led the hospital’s Robotics Committee. Song joined Delnor’s medical staff in 2003.

MELISSA LARSON, MD 2000, is director of The Coleman Foundation Comprehensive Leukemia Clinic at Rush University Medical Center. The clinic recently opened as part of the new Rush University Cancer Center.

BRIAN GANTWERKER, MD 2001, opened his own neurosurgical practice in Los Angeles: the Craniospinal Center of Los Angeles. Gantwerker is a member of the medical staff at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, Providence Tarzana Medical Center and St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif.