Main Content

Cardiothoracic surgeon, tech transfer director, emergency medicine resident join faculty

Medical Center leadership is proud to announce the following additions to its faculty and leadership staff.

Hannah Copeland, M.D.

Dr. Hannah Copeland, a cardiothoracic surgeon, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an assistant professor of surgery (cardiothoracic).

She attended the University of Missouri Kansas City, a six-year combined B.A./M.D. program, and graduated in 2006 with a B.A. in Spanish and her M.D. During her general surgery training at the University of Arizona from 2006-10, she did a one-year research fellowship in cardiothoracic transplantation and mechanical circulatory support.

From 2010-12, she completed general surgery at the University of California San Diego. From 2012-15, she was a cardiothoracic surgery fellow at Loma Linda University. She then completed a heart and lung transplantation and mechanical circulatory support fellowship from 2015-16 at Indiana University. Before coming to UMMC, she served as a cardiothoracic surgeon at the VA McGuire Medical Center from 2016-17.

An active member of several professional organizations, including the Association of Academic Surgery, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the American College of Surgeons and the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplant, Copeland serves as a journal reviewer for six scientific publications and an abstract reviewer for the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplant and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

She has authored or coauthored more than 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has written five book chapters. She has been the primary presenter of 36 research presentations at scientific meetings nationally and internationally. Most of her research has focused on cardiac transplantation.

James K. Petell, Ph.D.

Dr. James K. Petell, a former technology transfer office director at the Masdar Institute/MIT Cooperation, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an instructor in cell and molecular biology and as technology transfer office director.

After receiving his B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, in 1976, Petell earned his Ph.D. in chemistry/biochemistry at the University of California at San Diego in 1981. He also had an NIH fellowship at the Roswell Park Memorial Institute, Buffalo, New York, in 1984.

Petell joined the State University of New York at Buffalo faculty in 1984 as an assistant professor in a joint position in pediatrics and biological sciences. He worked in several positions at Dow Agrosciences for 12 years, lastly serving as global director of input agricultural discovery, Indianapolis and San Diego. After he was co-founded and served as president of FemtoLink Biotechnologies, Auburn, California, he later served as intellectual property and regulatory affairs manager for Profigen, Nashville, where he became a UPSTO-registered patent agent.

He served as associate vice president of intellectual property and economic development at the University of North Dakota and executive director of the UND Research Foundation, Grand Forks, from 2004-10, then served the University of Rhode Island, Kingston, as associate vice president of intellectual property and economic development and executive director of the URI Research Foundation from 2011-14 before joining the Madar Institute.

Jennerfer Tiscareno, M.D.

Dr. Jennerfer Tiscareno, recently chief resident in the Department of Emergency Medicine at UMMC, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an assistant professor of emergency medicine.

After receiving her B.S. in biology from Georgetown University in 2005, Tiscareno earned her M.D. with high honors at the Ross University School of Medicine in 2010. She had a family medicine residency from 2011-14 at Natividad Medical Center, where she was chief resident from 2013-14, and an emergency medicine residency from 2014-17 at UMMC, where she was chief resident.

Tiscareno has provided health care to residents of rural Mexico and the island of Dominica.