2024 Panelists
Sharon S. Laing, PhD (laings@uw.edu)
Associate Professor, UW Tacoma School of Nursing & Healthcare Leadership
Sharon Laing joined the faculty of the University of Washington Tacoma (UWT) in 2015. She has held postdoctoral fellowships at Rutgers University’s Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute and University of Washington Seattle, Health Promotion Research Center, where she is currently an affiliate research investigator. She is now the Interim Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging at the UW School of Nursing. Dr. Laing is the recipient of several awards and honors including a pre-doctoral award from the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Medical Research program and an American Psychological Association (APA) Dissertation research award for her work in healthcare decision-making and mammography utilization. She later received an American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), Minority Scholar award for this work. Most recently, she was recognized by the American Public Health Association with the Lyndon Haviland Public Health Mentoring Award (2023) and by the UW School of Nursing’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Health Sciences Community Engagement Award (2024). Dr. Laing engages in health services research addressing supportive frameworks and initiatives for patients and healthcare professionals in community health centers. She is committed to community-based health research evaluating the intersection of socio-cultural, psychologic, environmental and patient health status factors.
Kosuke Niitsu, PhD, ARNP, PMHNP-BC (kniitsu@uw.edu)
Assistant Professor, UW Bothell School of Nursing & Health Studies
Dr. Kosuke “Ko” Niitsu received his Bachelor’s degrees in Biological Sciences from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and in Nursing from the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). Upon graduation, he worked as a staff nurse at an inpatient psychiatric hospital in Midwest. While working on his Master’s degree at UNMC, the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Disasters occurred, which led him to study stress and trauma further in the UNMC PhD program. Subsequently, he completed a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship in Precision Psychiatric Mental Health Care at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus (CU Anschutz). He also worked as a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP) at CU Anschutz to provide mental health care for professional learners, including medical residents. He currently works as a PMHNP at the Counseling Center 10 hours a week for students enrolled at UW Bothell.
David Reyes, DNP, MPH, RN, PHNA-BC (djreyes@uw.edu) 
Dean and Associate Professor, UW Tacoma School of Nursing & Healthcare Leadership
David Reyes, DNP, MN/MPH, RN, PHNA-BC is Dean and Associate Professor of Nursing & Health Care Leadership at UW Tacoma. He holds adjunct appointments at UW Seattle School of Nursing in the Department of Child, Family & Population Health Nursing, and School of Public Health in the Department of Health Systems & Population Health. Dr. Reyes joined the faculty at the University of Washington Tacoma (UWT) in 2014, and has held clinical, educational and leadership roles in community and public health, acute care, home health, and perioperative nursing. His primary interests are in in addressing the root causes of health inequity and disparities, building community capacity to improve health, and population health systems. His research uses community-based participatory approaches that focus on equitable relationships with diverse communities to improve health outcomes.
Dr. Reyes has held national level health policy, leadership, and professional roles in the American Public Health Association, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Institute of Medicine’s Standing Committee on Family Planning, and the Washington State Public Health Association. Dr. Reyes received his Doctor of Nursing Practice (2013), and Master of Nursing and Master of Public Health degrees (2002) from the University of Washington. He received his Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Seattle University with a minor in history in 1983; Dr. Reyes is board certified in Advanced Public Health Nursing.
Chandan Chauhan, MS
Co-Founder & CEO at Clocktree Telehealth
Chandan is a healthcare technology entrepreneur and a digital health thought leader. He is pursuing innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) to make healthcare accessible to all. Chandan’s most recent venture, the Clocktree Telehealth platform, facilitated over 1 million telehealth consultations during the pandemic, proving its critical role in expanding healthcare access. As a serial entrepreneur, he has had multiple successful exits. Chandan is a veteran of Microsoft. He was a key member of the Windows Operating System development team, and was the founding manager of CarPoint.com, Microsoft’s first internet application.
He is keenly interested in bringing an industry perspective to academia.