FACULTY

Chester Choi, M.D., F.A.C.P.
Program Director & Academic Chief of Medicine

Chester Choi, Program Director, was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. He received his MD from the University of California, Davis School of Medicine and completed his Internal Medicine residency at St. Mary Medical Center in 1976.  Following a fellowship in Infectious Disease at Harbor - UCLA, he returned to join the faculty at St. Mary's in 1980. He is currently a Professor of Medicine at the UCLA School of Medicine and serves as the Southern California Region I Governor for the American College of Physicians. Areas of expertise include the rational use of antibiotics, meningitis, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted diseases, community acquired pneumonia, urinary tract infections and infections in the elderly.  Other professional activities include serving as a consultant in the Division of Infectious Disease at Harbor - UCLA Medical Center, directing the St. Mary Medical Center Travelers' Clinic and serving as Chief Proctor for the American Board of Internal Medicine.   His hobbies include woodworking, computers, and  gardening.  He enjoys traveling and hiking in Yosemite with his wife Lynn.

Huan C. Guu, M.D.
Director of Continuing Medical Education

Huan Guu was born in Taiwan and emigrated to the US to attend high school in Long Beach and college at UC Riverside.  He completed his medical school training at the Medical College of Pennsylvania and his internal medicine residency and Chief Residency at St. Mary's. Upon joining the faculty of our program, Huan has been very active in organizing educational conferences for both the housestaff and the attending staff.  He was appointed the Director of Continuing Medical Education in 2002.  He participated in the Stanford Faculty Development Course to facilitate his skills in teaching, particularly in geriatric education for primary care physicians. Huan's versatility in teaching, genuine enthusiasm for medicine, and strong support for housestaff make him one of our most popular attendings.  His ever-present smile is particularly noticeable at the housestaff retreat, on the basketball court, on the golf course, or especially when he is thinking about the newest  addition to his family.  He and his wife, Teresa, have two young children, Lanaki and Kytan.

Alexander Shen, M.D.
Academic Staff Physician

Alexander Shen, M.D. is originally from close-by Palos Verdes, California.  He traveled eastward to attend the University of Pennsylvania for undergraduate training in Bioengineering.  He then returned to Southern California to conduct research at the Harbor-UCLA Research and Education Institute, Division of Infectious Diseases.  There he worked on the discovery of novel anti-microbial peptides and specialized in protein purification.  He has served as co-investigator on  numerous publications focused on pathogenesis of endocarditis.  Thereafter, Dr. Shen lived in Washington, D.C. where he attended the George Washington University School of Medicine.  He, again, returned to Southern California to complete his residency training at St. Mary Medical Center.  Among his many roles at St. Mary, he directs the St. Mary Medicine Clinic and leads Journal Club.  Dr. Shen lives with his wife, Allyson, in Palos Verdes where he enjoys watching the sunset during long leisurely walks on the beach.  He also enjoys playing golf and tennis in his free time.

Angela Tang, M.D., F.A.C.P.
Academic Staff Physician

Angela Tang, MD was born and raised in Maryland. She attended Johns Hopkins University and then received her medical training at Columbia University in Manhattan. She completed a year of obstetrics and gynecology training at UCLA followed by a residency in Internal Medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Angela served as chief resident at St. Mary Medical Center in 1996, and later joined the staff at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center to head the teaching department for their Family Medicine residence program.  Since returning to St. Mary as faculty, Dr.  Tang oversees the Women’s Health curriculum and enjoys caring for patients with medically complicated pregnancies.  Angela’s enthusiasm for life in general and medicine in particular is infectious, and she gets rave reviews from the residents for her teaching rounds as well as effective & well-organized noon conference presentations.  She lives in Palos Verdes with her husband and three sons, and enjoys hiking and various other outdoor activities.  She plays piano & Hawaiian slack key guitar.  Her performance during the talent show was one of the highlights of last year’s retreat.

Joyce Yeh, M.D.
Academic Staff Physician

Joyce Yeh, MD grew up in Houston, Texas.  She received a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, graduating cum laude. Dr. Yeh obtained her MD from the prestigious University of California, San Francisco.  She moved to Los Angeles for her residency training in Internal Medicine at Harbor UCLA Medical Center.  Her diverse research interests include hypercalcemia in coccidioidomycosis infections, osteoporosis, preventive medicine, and liver cancer.  She enjoys practicing medicine in the culturally diverse setting of Long Beach and finds many opportunities at St. Mary to utilize her multilingual skills in Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. When not practicing medicine, she enjoys bowling, reading, and taking stroller rides to the Farmers’ Market with her husband and two young daughters.

Maged Tanios, M.D., M.P.H., F.C.C.P.
Director, Intensive Care Unit Teaching Service

Tieu O. Phung, M.D.
Chief Resident 2005-06

Medical School: New York Medical College

Tieu O. Phung, M.D.  grew up in San Diego. He attended UCLA, and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry.  Dr. Phung then moved to the east coast to study medicine at New York Medical College.  The next phase of his life took him back to sunny southern California, home of 75 degree winters, where he completed an internal medicine residency at St. Mary Medical Center.  One of Dr. Phung's accomplishments during residency included co-authoring a New England Journal of Medicine article on necrotizing fasciitis caused by community-associated MRSA in Los Angeles.

Dr. Phung lives with his wife, Thu (same pronunciation), in Anaheim.  His hobbies include playing with his newly acquired Apple Powermac G5, his Flying V electric guitar, as well as traveling and learning ballroom dancing.  He also enjoys having people ponder why he has a "Swedish" accent.

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