V-FIT Speaker Bios

Dr. Karina Torralba is a Professor of Medicine at Loma Linda University School of Medicine, Loma Linda, California. She is the lead faculty for Rheumatologic Ultrasound for her division, and serves as director of the Arthritis Center and the Sjogren’s Syndrome Center. 

She obtained a Masters in Academic Medicine from the Keck School of Medicine at University of Southern California. She is on the boards of the Ultrasound School of North American Rheumatologists, and Southern California Rheumatology Society. She received the Clinician Educator Award from the Rheumatology Research Foundation for her work on team-based learning for medical resident teaching. She is a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Society. She is very active with the American College of Rheumatology having participated in the committee in Training and Workforce, the Strategic Planning committee, the Global Task Force, the Telehealth Competencies committee, and the committee on Corporate Relations. She was part of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education committee that formulated the Rheumatology Milestones version 2. 

Dr. Torralba received her medical degree from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines, did her residency in internal medicine at Bassett Healthcare (Columbia University affiliate) in Cooperstown, New York, and fellowship in Rheumatology at Los Angeles County-University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California.

Dr. Katherine Silver specializes in the fields of adult and pediatric rheumatology. She attended medical school at the Medical University of South Carolina and graduated in 2009. She went on to complete residencies in both internal medicine and pediatrics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 2013, she returned to MUSC for additional training in rheumatology. Dr. Silver completed a combined fellowship in adult and pediatric rheumatology in 2017. During this time, she also obtained a masters degree in the area of clinical research. After completing her training, she joined the faculty at MUSC.Dr. Silver’s clinical interests include scleroderma and connective tissue diseases, juvenile scleroderma, and juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). Scleroderma is a rare and often poorly understood disease. Dr. Silver is passionate about providing comprehensive care to patients with this condition as well as having the opportunity to participate in clinical research in an effort to learn more about this disease.Another one of Dr. Silver’s interests is transition medicine. Being trained in both adult and pediatric rheumatology, she is uniquely suited to help young adults with rheumatologic conditions transition from the world of pediatric rheumatology to that of adult rheumatology.

Kathryn Milks, MD, specializes in pediatric musculoskeletal ultrasound and MRI with subspecialty training in image-guided interventions at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. She completed radiology residency at Wake Forest Medical Center in North Carolina in 2015 and returned to her home state of Ohio for a diagnostic pediatric radiology fellowship at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. She also finished a second year of training in pediatric musculoskeletal radiology with a focus on image-guided musculoskeletal interventions. She spent the last two months of fellowship training with leaders in the field of pediatric musculoskeletal radiology at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. She started as faculty radiologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in 2017.

Dr. Ardalan is a Pediatric Rheumatologist and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Duke University School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics. Dr. Ardalan's clinical interests are in juvenile myositis, lupus, and scleroderma and he is co-director of the Duke-Cure JM Center of Excellence in Juvenile Idiopathic Inflammatory Myopathies. His research interests encompass health-related quality of life, patient-reported outcomes, mental health, psychological stress, adverse childhood experiences, cardiovascular health and outcomes research, psychometrics, and qualitative/mixed methods research. His most recent work, funded by the Rheumatology Research Foundation Investigator Award, focuses on the relationships between psychological stress, inflammation, and cardiovascular health in juvenile lupus and dermatomyositis.

Kelly Wise, PharmD, BCACP is a clinical pharmacist for the Division of Rheumatology at Nationwide Children's Hospital. She works directly with providers and patients to manage biologic therapies and helps families navigate the complex environment of high-cost medicines. Her research and QI efforts span a variety of pharmacy topics including: biosimilars, transition readiness, safe use of teratogenic medicines, and vaccines in immunocompromised patients.

Dr. Saag is Professor of Medicine and holds the Water's Endowed Chair in the Division and the Department of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He became Division Director of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology in July 2020. His research focuses on comparative effectiveness and safety of therapeutics as well as methods to improve quality of care in gout and osteoporosis. He is also Director of the UAB Comprehensive Arthritis, Musculoskeletal, Bone, and Autoimmunity Center. He has been a practicing physician with UAB Medicine and a researcher in the UAB School of Medicine since 1998. Dr. Saag is the immediate Past President of ACR and past President of the National Osteoporosis Foundation Board of Trustees, the only rheumatologist to hold that position. He directs the Center of Research Translation in Gout and Hyperuricemia and was the founding Director of the UAB AHRQ-funded Center for Education and Research on Musculoskeletal Disorders. An elected member of the American Association of Physicians, he has first-authored three original articles in The New England Journal of Medicine on treatment of glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis (GIOP) and on fracture prevention in women with osteoporosis, as well as over 400 other original articles. Trained as an engineer at the University of Michigan, he received his MD from Northwestern University and MSc in epidemiology from the University of Iowa. As a medical resident at Evanston Hospital, he was recognized as Outstanding Intern of the Year and as Chief Resident. He completed his fellowship in rheumatology at the University of Iowa. He served as Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa before joining UAB.

Since 2017 in private practice in Portland, Maine where he currently serves as rheumatology Division Director at Maine Medical Center, and is the coordinator for rheumatology education to the Internal Medicine Residency Program, affiliated with Tufts School of Medicine. Prior to that was Professor of Medicine and Program Director of the rheumatology fellowship at Wake Forest School of Medicine. Has served on numerous ACR committees, including the Committee on Education and most recently the Committee on Training and Workforce. Is a prior recipient of the ACR Clinician Scholar Educator Award, founding member of the Carolinas Fellows Collaborative, and has been a member of working groups to create the 2015 update to the ACR Core Curriculum Outline for Rheumatology Fellowship Programs, the ACR Rheumatology Curricular Milestones and most recently the ACGME Rheumatology Subspecialty Milestones 2.0. He currently is Chair of the ABIM Rheumatology Certification and MOC Exam Approval Committee.

Dr. Kevin Byram is the Co-Director of the Vanderbilt Vasculitis Clinic and the Vanderbilt Undiagnosed Disease Program in Nashville, TN.

Dr. Loupasakis earned his medical degree at the University of Crete in Greece where he graduated magna cum laude. He completed his internal medicine residency at St Elizabeth's Medical Center, Tufts University in Boston, MA, and his fellowship in rheumatology at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, NY, where he also pursued a research fellowship in translational research on rheumatoid arthritis pathogenesis, supported by a Scientist Development Award. He also participated in clinical research related to the occurrence of autoimmune diseases and sarcoidosis in firefighters who were first responders at the 9/11 terrorist attack sites. 

In 2016, Dr Loupasakis joined MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC, and was appointed Assistant Professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine. He subsequently joined Montefiore Medical Center in 2020 and he is currently Assistant Professor of Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Rheumatology Fellowship Program Director. His special interests include medical education, clinical immunology, multisystem sarcoidosis, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

Dr. Highland is fellowship trained in both pulmonary/critical care and rheumatology and has a dual appointment in the Respiratory Institute and the Orthopedics and Rheumatology Institute. Prior to coming to the Cleveland Clinic, she was an Associate Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina where she was director of the pulmonary hypertension program, interim director of the sarcoidosis center, and ran a very busy rheumatic lung disease clinic. Her clinical practice continues to be composed of complex patients with interstitial lung disease, pulmonary hypertension, sarcoidosis and the pulmonary complications of the rheumatic diseases (scleroderma, polymyositis/dermatomyositis, mixed connective tissue disease, systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis and vasculitis). Her combined training has given her a unique perspective and expertise in caring for the patient with rheumatic lung disease and sarcoidosis. 

Dr. Highland also has a Masters of Science in Clinical Research. Her research interests have been concentrated in interstitial lung disease and pulmonary hypertension with an emphasis on scleroderma