Gunner Training

Frank Lau, Founder and Chief Medical Officer

Frank is a resident in the Harvard Combined Plastic Surgery Residency Program and a clinical research fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital. In the lab, he’s directing the differentiation of hepatocytes from induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cells. He’s also investigating the physiology of adipogenesis. One of his greatest passions is teaching, which is a pursuit that’s engaged him since high school. He taught the MCAT during his undergraduate years at Yale, where he graduated in 3 years with a B.S. in Molecular Biochemistry & Biophysics. He also taught undergraduate-level genetics during medical school at the University of Michigan, from which he graduated with research honors. His passion for teaching drives many of the technological innovations at Gunner Training.

John Lin, Co-Founder

John recently completed his Anesthesiology Residency at Harvard Medical School. He grew up in southern California where he juggled time playing poker and studying statistical mechanics as a participant in the Caltech Young Engineering and Science Scholars program. After high school, he graduated magna cum laude at the University of Pennsylvania. While in college, he was awarded a research grant for his work on sequencing a putative XIAP psuedogene. Afterwards, John stayed in Philadelphia and attended Temple Medical School. After residency, he returned home to California and now aspires to own courtside seats to the L.A. Lakers.

George Mundanthanam, Co-Founder

George recently completed his Orthopaedic Hand Fellowship at Harvard Medical School. He spent his formative years in the great state of New Jersey. After winning a state title in the 400 intermediate hurdles, he moved on to the 7-year medical program at Drew University/UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School. In college, he spent 3 weeks in Athens, Greece studying the public transportation system for the 2004 Olympics. He also spent 6 months in Oxford, England where his two biggest accomplishments were a publication in The Lancet, and a 6-week spring break during which he managed to trek through the Sahara desert and ski the Swiss Alps all in the same week. He was an Orthopaedic surgery resident at Baylor College of Medicine. He is joining a private practice in Massachusetts, and is keen on helping medical students “gun down” Step 1.

James Sellman, Senior Editor

James is an experienced medical editor. Originally from the Midwest, he headed out East and earned his PhD at Harvard. He has spent 11 years copyediting, fact-checking, and writing for, among others, Harvard Women’s Health Watch, Harvard Health Letter, Harvard Men’s Health Watch, and About.com’s Health Channel, as well as contributing to several online CME courses. His noteworthy exploits include working as a backpacking instructor, managing a folk music coffeehouse, and serving on staff at a youth hostel in Oslo, Norway. James has also written extensively on jazz, blues, and R&B (and co-authored the liner essay for Quincy Jones’s Q’s Jook Joint).

Hillary Hoffman, Editor

After finishing her B.A. in chemistry and fine arts at Amherst College, Hillary moved across the Atlantic and spent the next five years living in Prague, Czech Republic. She recently received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Charles University in Prague and resettled in the Boston area. During her time in Prague, Hillary proofread and copyedited dozens of manuscripts for her colleagues at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and she decided that she prefers editing and writing to pipetting. Outside of the lab and away from her laptop, Hillary enjoys drawing, yoga, and jogging.

Mike Daly, Lead Student Editor

Prior to becoming an MD candidate at UC Irvine School of Medicine, Mike earned a MS in Physiology and Biophysics at Georgetown University and a BS in Bioinformatics at UC San Diego. Throughout this time he has maintained an active interest in research — at UC San Diego he developed CellCircuits, at Georgetown he reviewed evidence for the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in healing lower extremity diabetic ulcers, and now at UC Irvine he’s focused on organ transplantation. He ran cross country and track for UC San Diego, and continues to balance academics with running, golfing and skiing.

Shannon Prograis, Student Editor

Shannon Prograis is a medical student at Weill Cornell Medical College. He has a strong interest in immunology and is published in the journal of Photodermatology, Photoimmunology & Photomedicine. As an undergrad, he attended Stanford University. He believes Gunner Training to be the best Step 1 preparation utility he’s encountered to date.

Sean Alemi, Student Editor

Sean is a medical student at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine. Prior to beginning his medical education, he graduated from the University of California Berkeley with honors in Molecular and Cell Biology and an emphasis in Cellular and Developmental Biology. Currently, he is completing a one year research fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco focusing on virally mediated gene therapy for inheritable forms of hearing loss. He plans to pursue residency training in otolaryngology-head and neck surgery. In addition to authoring and editing Step 1 content, Sean has also developed an interest in directly teaching medical students, and has been tutoring basic science courses throughout medical school. Outside of medicine, Sean enjoys playing pick-up basketball, football, exercise, learning new cooking techniques and continuing his quest to learn the Chopin nocturnes and Rachmaninoff etudes.