Sandra Shi MD, MPH, Named 2025 STAT Wunderkind

Sandra Shi MD, MPH, has been named a 2025 STAT Wunderkind. Dr. Shi is a geriatrician, instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School, and assistant scientist at the Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife. 

STAT Wunderkinds is a chance to celebrate early-career researchers who are not yet independent scientists or program leaders. It honors postdoctoral researchers, interns, and fellows — those who have terminal degrees in hand, but aren’t running their own research programs yet.

Dr. Shi joins Amir Baniassadi, PhD, an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an assistant scientist at the  Marcus Institute, who was named a 2023 STAT Wunderkind.

Dr. Sandra Shi’s STAT Profile
Sandra Shi hadn’t heard the term geriatrics before she started volunteering at a nursing home in college. She helped older adults do stretches and leg lifts while they recovered from injuries or hip replacements. Watching them progress and regain their ability to live independently ignited a passion that altered the course of her career.

Geriatrics, the specialty focused on providing high-quality care to older adults, is practiced in the way that medicine should be, Shi said. Geriatricians sometimes go into people’s homes. They meet their families, hear their stories. “At the end of the day, I like that it comes down to you and that patient and what their priorities are and what matters to them,” Shi said.

As a researcher, Shi is focused on using data to improve people’s lives. Her work was the first to use national Medicare claims to create a frailty index — a tool that uses grip strength, gait speed, and other factors to measure the health status of older adults in a given population — for older adults in the U.S. today. Now, she’s trying to take that to the next level by encouraging federal health programs and health care providers to use it to predict how people will respond to surgeries, medications, and other interventions and tailor their treatment based on the results. 

Shi still spends a good chunk of her time doing rehabilitation with older adults in nursing homes, work that she finds meaningful and that helps her understand how her research will actually help people in the real world. “I really love that I have that feedback,” Shi said.

About Sandra Shi
Dr. Shi completed her medical degree and residency in internal medicine at the University of Chicago. She pursued specialized training in geriatrics at the Harvard Medical School Multi-Campus Fellowship in Geriatric Medicine and a T32 post-doctoral fellowship. Dr. Shi’s research revolves around frailty and post-acute care rehabilitation in skilled nursing facilities. She leverages large-scale databases, including national surveys and Medicare claims data, to delve into frailty and its influence on recovery for older adults. Her ultimate goal is to improve recovery for frail older adults after hospitalization with novel interventions that meld geriatrics and rehabilitation science. Her research has been published in high-impact journals, including JAMA Internal Medicine and JAMA Network Open.

Most recently, Dr. Shi was awarded a $1.2 Million NIA K76 Beeson award to study intrinsic capacity in post-acute rehabilitation. In 2024, she was also honored with the Health in Aging Foundation New Investigator Award from the American Geriatrics Society for her impactful frailty and post-acute care research. Her multidimensional approach to aging research continues to shape the future of geriatric care, emphasizing personalized, patient-centered outcomes that empower older adults and their families in decision-making processes.

About STAT
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About Hebrew SeniorLife
Hebrew SeniorLife, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, is a national senior services leader uniquely dedicated to rethinking, researching, and redefining the possibilities of aging. Hebrew SeniorLife cares for more than 4,500 seniors a day across seven campuses throughout Greater Boston. Locations include: Hebrew Rehabilitation Center-Boston and Hebrew Rehabilitation Center-NewBridge in Dedham; NewBridge on the Charles, Dedham; Orchard Cove, Canton; Simon C. Fireman Community, Randolph; Center Communities of Brookline, Brookline; Jack Satter House, Revere; and Leyland Community, Dorchester. Founded in 1903, Hebrew SeniorLife also conducts influential research into aging at the Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research, which has a portfolio of more than $98 million, making it one of the largest gerontological research facilities in the U.S. in a clinical setting. It also trains more than 500 geriatric care providers each year. For more information about Hebrew SeniorLife, follow us on our blog, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn.

About the Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research
Scientists at the Marcus Institute seek to transform the human experience of aging by conducting research that will ensure a life of health, dignity, and productivity into advanced age. The Marcus Institute carries out rigorous studies that discover the mechanisms of age-related disease and disability; lead to the prevention, treatment, and cure of disease; advance the standard of care for older people; and inform public decision-making.