Meet the Team
Our team is made up of experienced and dedicated researchers from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds. What unites them is an undying passion for learning and discovery. Meet them below.
Michael Donnino, MD
Dr. Donnino is the principal investigator leading the study. He is the Director of the Mind Body Research Group at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Director of Faculty Research Development. He is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Donnino is author of over 280 manuscripts with over 60 senior author publications in high impact journals including the NEJM, JAMA, the British Medical Journal, and Circulation.
Patricia Howard, BS
Patricia left the corporate world in the mid 90s to study healing through a holistic mind-body approach, obtaining training across a number of domains including through programs at the University Of Massachusetts Medical Center. She joined the Mind Body Research Group in 2018 with a wealth of experience and was the lead instructor for previous trials conducted by the team. She is currently the lead mind-body instructor on multiple trials concerning mind body interventions for pain.
Jeannine Schroder, BS
Jeannine joins the team as a Mind Body Instructor. In addition to her work with the research team, she teaches mindfulness-based and mind-body programs serving corporate, academic, and healthcare communities. Jeannine customizes programs to meet the communities’ unique needs to promote positive impact on the health and wellbeing of its participants. She is a graduate of The Mindfulness Center at Brown University, and certified through UMASS Medical Center and Mindful Schools.
Lily Jenzeh
Lily is a Clinical Research Student Intern at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She is a rising senior undergraduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she is majoring in Nutrition on the Health Sciences track and minoring in Business. Lily’s interests lie in holistic approaches to medicine, and she hopes to combine her passion for nutrition and medicine in her future career.
Jeremy Silverman , BA
Jeremy is a clinical research assistant at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He graduated from Tufts University in May 2021 with a BA in Community Health and a minor in Chinese. At Tufts, Jeremy taught English language and health education lessons to students of diverse ages in the Boston area and worked on Emergency Medicine and Orthopedic Surgery clinical research teams at NYU Langone Health. Intrigued by the intersection of public health and clinical medicine, he hopes to become an empathetic and informed emergency medicine/critical care physician working alongside medically underserved communities.​
Alan Berkovitz, BS
Alan joined the Mind Body team as a clinical research assistant in 2023. He graduated with honors from Boston University in 2020 with a BS in Human Physiology. While in school, he served his community as an emergency medical technician, later using his experiences to become an emergency medical services Instructor to train the next classes of EMTs. Additionally, he was employed by the school to teach classes in both General Chemistry and Biochemistry. Through the pandemic, he has worked as a frontline healthcare worker in the Mount Auburn Hospital Emergency Department in Cambridge, MA, treating patients experiencing COVID-19 and other emergencies. He feels strongly about providing empathetic and understanding care to patients in marginalized communities going through crisis situations.
Maria Cabrera, BA
Maria is a clinical research assistant at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She graduated from the University of Connecticut in 2019 with a BA in Psychology and a minor in Sociology. She is currently in her second semester of Northeastern’s Pre-Medical Post-Baccalaureate Program. She has previously worked as a medical scribe, an EMT and biology TA. Passionate about bioethics, equitable health care and preventive medicine, Maria's long term goal is to be a health care provider and researcher.
Samuel Kukler, BS
Sam is a clinical research assistant at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He graduated from Northeastern University in 2023 with a BS in Biology and a minor in Psychology. During his time at Northeastern, Sam worked as an EMT in the Greater Boston Area, and as a PCT at Beth Israel. He currently works as a home hospice volunteer, and hopes to one day become a family medicine physician, with a focus on compassionate end of life care
Iris Stammberger, MSEE, MED,PHD
Iris is an instructor with the Mind Body group. She has extensive experience in team and organizational performance as well as a project manager. In 2007, Iris graduated from Tufts University with a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies. She also holds a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology from Cambridge College and a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from Universidad Central de Venezuela. Outside work, Iris loves coaching and mentoring women at the Healthcare Business Women Association (HBA), the association of Women in Engineering, Science, and Technology (WEST), and other professional groups in the Boston area