Fellow Spotlight: Soumya Banna, MD

Soumya Banna, MD, grew up in San Jose, then earned her bachelor’s degree in public health and her medical degree through the Saint Louis University Medical Scholars Program in St. Louis, Mo. She completed her internal medicine residency and chief residency at Yale New Haven Health, becoming interested in critical care cardiology. “This field is so new, making it very rewarding to pursue research questions to inform care,” she said. She conducted research on optimizing care for cardiac ICU (CICU) patients, including stress ulcer prophylaxis, sedation strategies, management of respiratory failure, and identifying ECG findings to risk-stratify cardiac arrest patients.

She appreciates UCSF’s prominence in critical care cardiology and its outstanding faculty. “Everyone is so committed to education and invests time and energy into explaining things, which motivates me to push myself even further,” said Dr. Banna. She hopes to do the same for future trainees as a critical care cardiologist in academic medicine. Outside of medicine, she enjoys learning tennis, hiking, and traveling with her husband, Theja Kudaravalli, MD, a chronic pain fellow at UCSF.