Medical Education
Committed to Teaching Future Generations of Physicians for our Community
Medical Education
Committed to Teaching Future Generations of Physicians for our Community
Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach offers a fully ACGME-accredited urology residency program, founded in 2011. We offer a five-year residency program. The new first year schedule includes 6 months of urology and urology electives, and 6 months of general surgery and critical care. The following four years are dedicated entirely to clinical urology. We are now also accredited for two resident positions each year.
The Division of Urology at Mount Sinai Medical Center is affiliated with Columbia University in New York, led by Chairman Dr. James McKiernan. We have twelve full-time faculty, all of whom are faculty members at Columbia University.
Our primary focus is on resident education, and urology residents will be expected to participate in several didactic sessions weekly to provide them with a complete exposure to all areas of urology. Our goal is to prepare residents to consistently perform well in urology in-service exams and easily pass American Board of Urology exams upon graduation.
Several of our conferences are hosted in conjunction with the Columbia University Department of Urology. This is achieved through state-of-the-art teleconferencing equipment from our departmental conference room. Our current conference schedule includes the following conferences.
Conferences are “protected time” for residents and each resident is expected to fully prepare and participate in each conference. As a result of our affiliation with Columbia University, our residents will also have the opportunity to participate in various visiting professorships organized by Columbia University in New York City.
Based on our faculty’s clinical practices and interests, we expect that our residents will be exposed to all facets of urology. Our department is clinically very busy and between our academic and voluntary faculty, we expect that each resident will gain significant clinical exposure and, upon graduation, will have far surpassed the Residency Review Committee requirements for minimum operative cases.
Specifically, our residents will graduate with expertise in:
Our residents each spend on average at least one day a week in the Departmental office seeing patients along-side faculty members. This allows the residents the ability to learn to manage all aspects of outpatient urology in a concise and directed manner. During assigned clinic hours, residents will be expected to evaluate and work-up new patients; perform office procedures (i.e., cystoscopy, prostate biopsy and MRI-fusion biopsy, video-urodynamics and vasectomy), schedule operative procedures, and see and follow patients postoperatively.
Our academic faculty is very active in clinical research. Mount Sinai Medical Center’s Comprehensive Cancer Center runs clinical trials that are funded by the National Cancer Institute. Our faculty are co-investigators on several of these projects. Residents will have the opportunity to be involved in numerous clinical research projects, and we expect each resident to initiate and complete a research project of their choice during each year of their training. We expect residents to present their research at various regional and national urologic meetings, including the American Urologic Association Annual Meeting, Southeast Section of the AUA, Florida Urologic Association, Society of Urologic Oncology and others.
We offer a sub internship rotation for students to get a first-hand experience at Mount Sinai Medical Center. Rotating students will have the opportunity to spend one month with the team at our main clinical center in Miami Beach. Students will participate in all aspects of urologic care including operative procedures, managing post-operative patients, assessing inpatient consults, and attending specialty clinics. Students will also participate in our academic conference schedule and be expected to give a lecture at grand rounds at the conclusion of their rotation. We aim to incorporate our rotating students into the team and work flow, enabling them to broaden their urologic knowledge while also experiencing our team culture and what it is like to live in our community of Miami Beach.
We encourage all fourth-year medical students with an interest in rotating with us to directly email the program director, (Alan.Nieder@msmc.com) and the program coordinator (Antoinette.Barrett@msmc.com).
Mount Sinai Medical Center participates and accepts applications only through the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS). Candidates must contact their medical school to request delivery of their application, transcripts, Dean’s letter and faculty recommendations to our program via the internet.
Please note that the deadline for receiving all applications is October 1.
Upon receipt of the completed application, our selection committee will review all materials. Invitations for interviews with other details of the interview process will be offered via e-mail from our Residency Program Coordinator, Antoinette Barrett.
Alon Weizer, MD
Chief Medical Officer
Alan Nieder, MD
Program Director
Co-Chief, Columbia University Division of Urology at Mount Sinai Medical Center
Akshay Bhandari, MD
Co-Chief, Columbia University Division of Urology at Mount Sinai Medical Center
Scott Polackwich, MD
Assistant Program Director
In addition, there are multiple part-time voluntary faculty that are also actively involved in the residency training program. Our residents will also be rotating with a group of pediatric urologists at Miami Children’s Hospital. The pediatric urologists are extremely busy both clinically and academically, as they are the only full-time pediatric urologists in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
The clinical rotations occur mainly at Mount Sinai Medical Center located in Miami Beach and Miami Children’s Hospital. Mount Sinai Medical Center is a 550-bed multi-specialty hospital with multiple active residency training programs, including general surgery, internal medicine, emergency medicine, cardiology anesthesiology, radiology, pathology, ob-gyn, and psychiatry.
Joaquin Michel, PGY-5
Hometown: Watsonville, CA
Undergraduate: UC Davis
Medical School: UCLA
Hobbies: traveling, finance, hiking, soccer
Spencer Liem, PGY-5
Hometown: Walnut, CA
Undergraduate: University of California, Berkeley
Medical School: Sidney Kimmel Medical College
Hobbies: competitive gaming, weightlifting, basketball, cooking
Andres Elovic, PGY-4
Hometown: Miami, FL
Undergraduate: FSU
Medical School: George Washington University SMHS
Hobbies: running around Wynwood, tennis, reading, and hanging out at the beach
Elias Atri, PGY-4
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Undergraduate: Yeshiva University
Medical School: FIU
Hobbies: peloton, dogs, legos
Nicole Carpio, PGY-3
Hometown: Miami, FL
Undergraduate: Wake Forest University
Medical School: University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine
Hobbies: Running, traveling, hiking, going on boats, cinema, reading, scuba diving, spending time with friends/family/my dog
Nicole Matluck, PGY-3
Hometown: Ardsley, NY
Undergraduate: Northeastern University
Grad School: George Washington University
Medical School: New York Medical College
Hobbies: F1, baking, crocheting
Dhaval Jivanji, PGY-2
Hometown: Lakeland, FL
Undergraduate: University of Florida
Med School: Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine at FIU
Hobbies: Tennis, Scuba Diving, Gaming, F1, Trying new restaurants
Sarah Silver, PGY-2
Hometown: Clayton, North Carolina
Undergraduate: of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Grad School: George Washington University
Med School: University of North Carolina School of Medicine
Hobbies Cycling, playing Nintendo, watching movies, spending time with friends
Christopher McNeill, PGY-1
Hometown: Patchogue, NY
Undergraduate: New York University
Med School: New York Medical College
Hobbies: surfing, running, traveling, reading
Priscilla Rodriguez, PGY-1
Hometown: Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Undergraduate: Rutgers University
Med School: Albany Medical College
Hobbies: cooking, baking, lifting
Rafael Yanes, MD
Fellowship: Endourology & Stone Disease, Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Current employment: Assistant Professor, Mount Sinai Medical Center, Miami FL
Joan Delto, MD
Fellowship: Minimally Invasive Urologic Surgery & Robotics, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Current employment: Associate Professor of Urology, Creighton University Medical Center, Omaha NE
Ajaydeep Sidhu, MD
Fellowship: Pelvic Reconstruction & Voiding Dysfunction, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Current employment: Private Practice Urologist, Wake Med Physician Practices, Raleigh NC
Maurilio Garcia, MD
Fellowship: Endourology & Minimally Invasive Surgery, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
Current employment: Private Practice Urologist, San Antonio TX
George Wayne, MD
Fellowship: Andrology & Prosthetic Urology, Columbia University Irving Medical Center
Current employment: Assistant Professor, Mount Sinai Medical Center, Miami FL
Juan Cedeno, MD
Fellowship: Genito-Reconstructive Urology, University of Illinois Chicago
Current Employment: Baptist Hospital of Miami, Miami FL
Elizabeth Nagoda, MD
Fellowship: Robotic Oncology and Reconstruction, Temple Iniversity Philadelphia, PA
Current Employment: Private Practice, Salt Lake City, Utah
Diana Lopategui, MD
Fellowship: University of Miami – Desai Sethi Urology Institute Endourology Fellowship
Alejandra Perez, MD
Current Employment: Leon Medical Center
Anthony Bui, MD
Fellowship: Andrology, University of Washington
Adam Nolte, MD
Fellowship: Robotic Surgery and Minimally Invasive Urologic Oncology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
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