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.

  • 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.

  • 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.