2026 speakers

  • Jailyn Avila completed medical school in Loma Linda, California, residency in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and an ultrasound fellowship in Lexington, Kentucky.  During residency,  Jailyn and her then ultrasound director Ben Smith started working on and subsequently launched the website 5minsono.com, a website dedicated to ultrasound education that morphed into Core Ultrasound, an ultrasound education repository that includes short (and long) videos, a clip bank and courses. Jailyn is currently Core Faculty for the UHS SoCal MEC Emergency Medicine Residency in Temecula, California where she also functions as the Associate Ultrasound Director, the Director of Faculty Development, and the Co-Fellowship Director for their Advanced Emergency Ultrasound Fellowship Program. Apart from her work on Core Ultrasound, she is a member of the Ultrasound GEL podcast (a podcast that discusses relevant ultrasound literature) and the director of the Ultrasound Leadership Academy and has and continues to collaborate with EMRAP.

    Instagram: @jailyn_avi @coreultrasound

  • Director of POCUS for Maine Health, Co-Director POCUS for MMC ED Residency

    Massachusetts GED, BA, MD, FACEP, Maine Class C Driver’s License, Red Cross White Swim Badge, Maine Fishing & Archery license, Ontario Pleasure Craft Operator, payer of taxes, donator to charity, LOVER AND TEACHER OF ULTRASOUND.

  • Skyler Lentz, MD is a board-certified emergency and critical care physician who speaks locally, regionally and nationally on critical care topics. He is the Division Chief of Resuscitation Science at the University of Vermont Department of Emergency Medicine and works clinically in the surgical and medical intensive care units and the emergency department. Skyler enjoys understanding and explaining the complex physiology of critical care and believes excellent critical care can be initiated in any emergency department. 

  • Dr. Alicia Mattson, PharmD, is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and Pharmacy at Mayo Clinic- Rochester, where she practices as an Emergency Medicine Pharmacist.  She completed her pharmacy education at the University of Minnesota in Duluth. Following that she completed a PGY1 residency at Gundersen Health and a PGY2 Emergency Medicine Residency at Mayo Clinic - Rochester. After completing residency, she has worked as a critical care and ED pharmacist at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Mattson has published research on medications for intubation in the ED and additional topics around the pharmacotherapy for patients in the ED.

  • Dr. Neha Raukar is an Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Faculty Development in Emergency Medicine at Mayo Clinic. A leader in advancing academic emergency medicine, she focuses on innovation, leadership, and the evolving needs of faculty across generations. Her current work explores the integration of AI into medical education and the power of generational communication to strengthen teams and patient care. In sports medicine, she specializes in the prevention and management of life-threatening injuries in athletes, drawing on experience from high school fields to the Olympic stage. Her work—from Olympic sidelines to academic research—reflects her belief that excellence in patient care begins with empowered teams and bold ideas.

  • Dan has a bachelors degree from Northeastern and Masters and DNP in executive leadership from Simmons College.  He is has worked in Boston area hospitals and prior EMT and currently is the Director of Emergency and Patient Care Services at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital- Milton.  Outside his daily work he is a member of the National Disaster Medical System’s Trauma and Critical Care Team and an active member of the Emergency Nurses Association (ENA) and developing ski patrol member.

     

    Dr. Nadworny has a specific interest in emergency preparedness and public policy and advocacy.  As a nurse leader in emergency nursing is his goal to encourage the conversations in every department about advocacy and emergency preparedness. 

     

  • Cam Upchurch, MD is a board-certified emergency medicine and critical care physician. Cam works clinically in the emergency department, medical ICU, cardiovascular ICU, and surgical/trauma ICU at University of Vermont and the emergency department at Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital. He is the Director of Critical Care Education for the Department of Emergency Medicine, and Co-Medical Director of the University of Vermont Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) program. Cam has particular niches and lectures frequently on physiology-driven care, mechanical circulatory support and extracorporeal life support, pulmonary embolism, and refractory respiratory failure. 

     

  • Dr. Caitlin Brown, PharmD, MPH, BCCCP, FCCM is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Pharmacy at Mayo Clinic. She completed her pharmacy education at Thomas Jefferson University and went on to complete a PGY1 residency at Mayo Clinic and a PGY2 Critical Care Residency at Maine Medical Center. After completing residency, she has worked as a critical care and ED pharmacist at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Brown has a Master of Public Health from the University of Minnesota. She was recently awarded EM Pharmacist of the Year from the Academic Emergency Medicine Pharmacist Interest Group within the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine and Early Career Research Achievement Award from the Academy of Geriatric Emergency Medicine. Dr. Brown has over 60 publications on pharmacotherapy for critically and emergently ill patients. 

  • Dr. Jim Whitledge graduated from Tufts University School of Medicine, and subsequently completed a residency in emergency medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and fellowship training at the Harvard Medical Toxicology Fellowship. He is currently an emergency physician and medical toxicologist practicing within the University of Vermont Health Network. He enjoys taking call for the Northern New England Poison Center, and is also a consultant toxicologist for the Nepal Poison Information Center. Jim has a particular interest in drug and antidotal shortages, novel treatments for antimuscarinic delirium, pediatric toxicology, and treatment of substance use disorders. Jim spends his free time skiing, biking, and hiking with his family, and is excited when he finds mushrooms and owls in the woods.

  • Ash Weisman is a plain jane rural emergency doc with an academic side job. She completed her residency in the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency, and fellowship in wilderness medicine and rural health leadership at Massachusetts General Hospital. She loves every sort of emergency medicine practice and has worked in busy community, tertiary academic, rural critical access, and remote arctic village ERs throughout her career. She currently practices rural, community, and academic EM in the University of Vermont Health Network. Her career goal is to improve emergency care by building bidirectional educational and operational bridges between tertiary centers and rural hospitals. Her life goal is to link rural ER shifts with family mountain adventures.

  • After attending Dordt College (University) for undergraduate studies in chemistry and biology and University of Minnesota Twin Cities for my medical degree. I then completed postgraduate training at the University of Vermont in orthopedic surgery and subsequently adult hip and knee reconstruction fellowship at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. I currently practice at Champlain Valley Physician’s Hospital in Plattsburgh New York, a part of the UVM health network. My practice is majority hip and knee arthroplasty and about 25% trauma/call cases. Aside from my clinical interests , I am also involved in practice management as the site leader for CVPH, value in healthcare, and healthcare finance. Pertinent for this group, I take unsupported orthopedic call at a busy level three trauma center. 

  • Katie graduated from the University of Vermont College of Medicine in 2010. She completed her Emergency Medicine residency at Maine Medical Center in 2013 and her fellowship in Primary Care Sports Medicine at the Maine-Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency in 2014. She worked at multiple hospitals in Maine and Colorado before returning to the University of Vermont Medical Center’s Emergency Department in November, 2016.

    Katie’s passions in medicine are twofold. Clinically, her interest lies at the intersection of emergency medicine, sports medicine, wilderness medicine, and pre-hospital medicine/EMS. Her second area of interest is medical education, both at the undergraduate and graduate medical levels, and in particular in the advising of medical students around the transition to residency.

    Katie is the Assistant Dean for Students at the Larner College of Medicine and former course director for the emergency medicine course and the sports medicine elective. She is the Medical Director for the Vermont City Marathon and an annual medical volunteer for Ironman Lake Placid.

    In her free time, Katie enjoys running, cycling, alpine and cross country skiing, and spending time with her husband and two children.

  • Amy Cameron graduated from the Tufts School of Medicine PA program in 2015. She then joined the Emergency Department APP group at Massachusetts General Hospital. During her 7 year tenure at MGH, she obtained her Diploma in Mountain Medicine, worked in rural clinics in Kotzebue, Alaska, and was deployed to Florida for hurricane relief with the global health and disaster medicine division.

    Amy joined the UVM ED in 2021. In the spring of 2024, she became the Lead Ultrasound APP and has been involved with training residents and APPs across the network. She has also traveled to St. Lucia with the Ultrasound Division, teaching at local clinics. 

    When she's not in the hospital, she can be found adventuring in the Green Mountains.

  • Capricia started her career in rural VT EMS. Starting as a volunteer in 2012 working her way up the ladder to NRAEMT. During this time you may have heard her voice in the communication center at UVMMC.  After 10 years her husband encouraged her to return to school and obtain a nursing degree, Capricia obtained her LPN in 2023 and her RN in 2024. She works in  Ticonderoga Emergency Department working with a small team of nurses providing care to rural communities surrounding Ticonderoga. 

  • Alia Aunchman MD, FACS is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, where she also attended medical school. She completed her general surgery residency at the University of Vermont Medical Center and fellowship in Surgical Critical Care at the Medical University of South Carolina. She is Interim Division Chief of Acute Care Surgery at UVMMC,  Associate Vice Chair of Clinical Operations in the Department of Surgery, and Vice Chair of Quality in the Department of Surgery. She is also in negotiations to be the next Queen of England. She is actively involved in her college as a member of the working groups for the Surgical Critical Care EPA’s and the Mastery of General Surgery Fellowship.  In addition to collecting accolades, she has also collected four children, most of whom have the same father (#4 she adopted from Haiti with her husband). She will tell you that her greatest achievement is her family, but it’s really the fact that she has seen Taylor Swift in concert four times.

  • Gita Pensa, M.D., FAAEM, is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Brown University, and is widely recognized as one of the nation's leading experts on malpractice litigation stress and physician litigation support. Her open access podcast curriculum, "Doctors and Litigation: The L Word" is an introduction to the practical and psychological preparation necessary for malpractice litigation defendants, and is now used as a teaching tool in medicine, law, and the malpractice insurance industry. She works as a consultant to medical malpractice insurance companies, hospital systems and defense attorneys, and also has a busy practice as a well-being and performance coach for medical defendants in litigation. Dr. Pensa was the editor of the Academic Emergency Medicine journal’s monthly research podcast through 2024 and remains a managing editor at Emergency Medicine Reviews and Perspectives (EM:RAP).  She was named the EMRA (Emergency Medicine Residents' Association) National Faculty Mentor of the Year in 2018, and in 2019 she was awarded a Special Service Recognition Award from Rhode Island ACEP for “courageous public advocacy of Rhode Island Emergency Medicine Colleagues.” In 2020 she won the Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award at the School of Medicine of Brown University.  Dr. Pensa has been featured in forums such as Time magazine, The SXSW Festival, NPR, and the new PBS documentary "A World of Hurt: How Medical Malpractice Fails Everyone.” You can find more about her at https://doctorsandlitigation.com/ .

     

  • David Mackenzie, MDCM is medical director at Maine Medical Center in Portland, and an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. He co-directs the MMC and MaineHealth ultrasound programs.

  • 30 years of academic EM, UMass Chan- Baystate Prof of EM, UMass Chan- Joy McCann Prof of Women in Medicine and Science, extensive speaking, writing and podcasting experience- Source expertise in Women and Leadership and how biological sex and sociocultural factors influence health outcomes.

    Dr. Nadworny has a specific interest in emergency preparedness and public policy and advocacy.  As a nurse leader in emergency nursing is his goal to encourage the conversations in every department about advocacy and emergency preparedness. 

  • Graduate of the University of Vermont College of Medicine. 

    Pediatric Residency in San Diego.  Pediatric Emergency Fellowship at Brown University, Providence, RI.  Dr Nelson practiced Pediatric Emergency medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Nevada in Las Vegas for 20 years.  He is now a faculty member at the University of Vermont and the chief of our new section of Peds EM.   He lectures regionally, nationally and internationally.  His community and research interests include EMS education and Emergency Preparedness and Response. 

  • US fellowship, University of Utah, Board certified, critical care echocardiogaphy. Previous lectures on this topic.

  • Dr. Shields currently holds the positions of Professor and Maternal-Fetal Medicine Fellowship Program Director in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Connecticut Health. Additionally, she serves as the Chair for the Committee on Practice Bulletins – Obstetrics and is a member of the Governance Committee for the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists. Dr. Shields is actively involved as a specialty and subspecialty Board Examiner for the American Board of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

    She is the co-creator of Obstetric Life Support (OBLS), a comprehensive, evidence-based curriculum designed to train healthcare providers in preventing and managing maternal medical emergencies and cardiac arrest, thereby addressing the urgent issue of maternal mortality and morbidity and improving patient outcomes. Dr. Shields is also the CEO of Varda5, LLC, a mission-driven company dedicated to transforming maternal emergency readiness through scalable simulation training, interdisciplinary collaboration, and innovative education.

    In addition to her interest in reducing maternal mortality, Dr. Shields is a nationally recognized expert in maternal sepsis and cervical insufficiency and specializes in surgical procedures to assist with mid-pregnancy cervical shortening and dilatation (cerclage).

  • Dr. Freeman is a physician scientist in emergency medicine whose research aims to improve outcomes for victims of trauma. He launched his laboratory at the University of Vermont in 2007 and has maintained continuous NIH funding since 2013. Dr. Freeman leads an active research program focused on one of the most urgent challenges in acute critical care: the acute endotheliopathy that underlies multiorgan failure in trauma and shock. With more than 60 peer-reviewed publications and over 2,100 citations, his research has had a major impact on the field of vascular biology. Seminal work from the laboratory showed that circulating factors activate endothelial cells to drive thrombo-inflammation and microvascular dysfunction in severe trauma. His team has also been internationally recognized in the field for providing pivotal early-stage evidence that led to the development of modern diagnostic tools and resuscitation protocols for trauma-induced coagulopathy.

  • Dr. Julie Vieth is an Associate Professor at the Larner College of Medicine, University of Vermont for the department of Emergency Medicine. She is also the Division Chief of Clinical Operations and Medical Director of Emergency Medicine at the University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMMC), where she leads operational strategy and quality initiatives for one of New England’s busiest tertiary care emergency departments. She also practices clinically at several critical access sites within the network. 

    Nationally, Dr. Vieth is a recognized leader in obstetrical emergencies within emergency medicine. She has chaired multiple committees for the American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM), served as faculty and chair for its Scientific Assembly and leads simulation labs for obstetrical emergencies nationally and regionally. 

  • Dr. Pellet is an Assistant Professor at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine. Dr. Pellet works clinically in the Emergency Department, Cardiovascular ICU and Surgical ICU at the University of Vermont Medical Center. He is a graduate of the Jacob’s School of Medicine at the University at Buffalo. He completed his residency in Emergency Medicine and a fellowship in Ultrasound at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania followed by a fellowship in Anesthesia Critical Care Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. His academic interests include mechanical circulatory support, ventilator management, medical education and point-of-care echocardiography, particularly as they pertain to the management of the critically ill.

  • Sameer Sethi, MD, FAWM, DiMM is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and graduate of the Wilderness Medicine fellowship at the University of Vermont. He currently works as an attending physician in multiple emergency departments in the University of Vermont Health Network, with a focus on rural and critical access sites. He grew up in Toronto, Canada, and discovered his love for the outdoors over time while moving around the world for school. He enjoys the highs (mountaineering) and lows (scuba diving) equally and jumps at the opportunity to learn any new skill that involves being outside. Highlights from his fellowship include working as an expedition physician for the Juneau Icefield Research Program in Alaska and a high altitude physician on Mount Aconcagua in Argentina. He currently teaches wilderness medicine CME with Wild Med Adventures, volunteers as a physician at Sugarbush’s Three Peaks Medical Clinic, and is a member of Camel’s Hump Backcountry Rescue.

  • Matt Roginski is an emergency and critical care physician who practices in Dartmouth Hitchcock’s ED, MICU, and SICU. He serves as Dartmouth's critical care transport team's associate medical director. He is passionate about bringing critical care interventions outside of the ICU.

  • Dr. Sergey Motov is an emergency medicine attending physician and research director practicing in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from the Medical Academy of Latvia and completed his EM residency at Maimonides Medical Center. Dr. Motov is a professor of emergency medicine at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine who is very passionate about safe and effective pain management in the ED. His primary focus is a patient-specific, pain syndrome-targeted approach to pain relief by utilizing a combination of non-pharmacologic, opioid, and non-opioid therapeutic modalities. His primary interests include non-opioid analgesic modalities and a qualitative approach to opioid prescribing. Dr. Motov has been growing and researching his body of work both nationally and globally and has given multiple presentations, workshops, and roundtable discussions on the subject of ED pain management across the globe. Dr. Motov has over 70 peer-reviewed pain-related publications in the most prestigious emergency medicine journals.

    Twitter: @painfreeED

  • Daniel Wolfson is an Associate Professor and Division Chief of Prehospital Medicine for the Larner College of Medicine Department of Emergency Medicine and the State of Vermont EMS Medical Director. He is the physician leader for Start Treatment and Recovery (STAR), an emergency department-based program to initiate patients with Opioid Use Disorder onto treatment with buprenorphine or methadone. 

  • I am a recent addition to the MMC faculty, having moved to Portland in 2024 after completing training plus a few extra years at Massachusetts General Hospital and staffing some affiliate community hospitals. I am on the academic faculty at MMC and one community affiliate in Southern Maine. I am the current co-author of the Rosen's chapter on Urologic Disorders, having overseen the revision, editing, and submission of the chapter for the forthcoming 11th edition, covering topics including UTI (including in vulnerable subpopulations), nephrolithiasis, prostate conditions, and testicular emergencies. I have also prepared talks on these additional topics however feeling that testicular emergencies are a less-covered topic, meriting our focused attention at this year's STOWE-EM. Also, I am hoping to resurrect the recently-dormant Maine Medical Center Winter Symposium, a similar but smaller conference to STOWE-EM, and look forward to the chance to become mutually supportive collaborators in the regional EM conference space.

  • I am an attending at UVMMC and do most of the resident ECG teaching and am involved in quality review for ECG cases. I regularly communicate with other ECG experts and am part of the advisory group for the Queen of Hearts coronary occlusion identification deep neural network model.

  • Ryan Mason, MD FAAEM is a Board-Certified Emergency Physician in the University of Vermont Health Network and Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Vermont. He works clinically in Northern New York at Champlain Valley Physicians' Hospital in Plattsburgh and Elizabethtown Ticonderoga ED. He has a particular interest in Rural Emergency Care ignited by his early career in the Indian Health Service.

  • Taylor Brown is an Emergency Physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center dedicated to integrating trauma-informed care (TIC) into clinical care and medical education. She completed her undergraduate studies at Stanford University and medical school at Harvard Medical School. She completed residency and Medical Education Fellowship at BIDMC. She is already an important innovator in TIC space, having developed a novel framework applying trauma-informed care to medical education published as a scholarly perspective, "Trauma-Informed Medical Education (TIME): Advancing Curricular Content and Educational Context." She has developed numerous TIC curricula and the first ever trauma-informed care faculty development curricula describing a trauma-informed approach to precepting medical students. She has presented her work locally, nationally, and internationally across medical specialties.

  • Maurice (Moe) Paquette, PA-C is a board-certified Physician Assistant with a Certificate of Advanced Qualification (CAQ) in Emergency Medicine. He completed both his PA training and an APP residency in Emergency Medicine at Duke University. Moe currently practices clinically in the Emergency Department at Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital, where he also serves as the Lead Advanced Practice Provider (APP). He developed and now directs the institution-wide Transition of Practice APP Program, which supports early-career providers as they enter clinical practice. In addition to these roles, Moe is actively engaged in efforts to improve Emergency Department throughput and operational efficiency, and is passionate about healthcare access, community emergency medicine, and APP training and onboarding.

  • Olivia Serigano is an assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and Critical Care at the University of Vermont. She completed her residency training at Denver Health in Denver, CO, followed by her fellowship in anesthesia critical care at Stanford University Hospital in Palo Alto, CA. Her academic interests include medical education, mechanical circulatory support, and advanced airway management. 

  • Kacey Boyle received her nursing degree from New York University and Masters of Science in Palliative Care from the University of Colorado Denver. She has practiced nursing in hospice, inpatient palliative care, and the Emergency Department at the University of Vermont Medical Center. 

     

    In her role as Associate Director at TalkVermont, she facilitates serious illness communication training for students and clinicians throughout the UVM Health Network.  Kacey teaches nationally as a Senior Faculty member with VitalTalk, and has worked on curriculum  development projects with the Center to Advance Palliative Care, ACGME, and Dana Farber. 

     

    Kacey is driven to empower clinicians with communication tools and is passionate about comprehensive and values-based advance care planning that can guide critical bedside decisions.