Tamar worked with LDI Senior Fellow Katrina Armstrong, M.D., MSCE, on a project that looked at ways to facilitate understanding of barriers to breast cancer prevention among high risk, low income women. While at Penn, she was president of the engineering honor society, Tau Beta Pi, and received a Hugo Otto Wolf Memorial Prize.

Tamar graduated from Penn's School of Medicine in 2005, and working as a Surgical Resident at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Melissa T. Pelaez
University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2001
Major: Psychology and Spanish

Melissa worked with LDI Senior Fellow Judy Shea, Ph.D., to develop and administer a patient satisfaction survey aimed at the Spanish-speaking population at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center She is currently a Graduate Research Assistant in the Consortium for Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN) at the Child & Adolescent Services Research Center (CASRC) in San Diego, CA.

In May 2008, Melissa received her PhD in Clinical Psychology. She is now working as a post-doc fellow at the Mailman Center for Child Development at the University of Miami School of Medicine.

Duare Valanzuela
University of Illinois, Class of 2001
Major: Biology

Duare worked with LDI Senior Fellow Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A., former Director of the Institute on Aging, on a study of the Acute Care of Elders (ACE) Unit at Presbyterian Hospital. While at Penn, Duare was a Benjamin Franklin Scholar, and received a Howard R. Swearer Student Humanitarian Award.