Assistant Professor-in-Residence, UCLA Health
Dr. Kita attended the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA after graduating Magna Cum Laude in Engineering from the University of California Berkeley. She chose to study medicine with dreams of translating engineering innovation from the bench to the bedside. While obtaining stellar clinical training during residency at UCLA, she was able to collaborate with numerous colleagues to develop some exciting technologies. She helped create and validate a point-of-care test for cerebrospinal fluid during her first year of residency. In doing so, her team obtained an American Academy of Otolaryngology Resident Research Award, an NIH R21 grant, and won both UCLA's MedTech Challenge and Innovation Challenge in 2019. She also has interests in nerve regeneration and hearing preservation. She received a grant from the American Hearing Research Foundation in 2018 to fund the development of a novel method of reducing the hearing loss associated with platinum-based chemotherapeutics.
Currently, as an Assistant Professor-in-Residence, she is devoted to providing excellent, evidence-based care for patients with general problems of the head and neck while continuing to work innovating the technologies that will improve Otolaryngology in the future. She is also one of the 2020-2021 UCLA Biodesign Fellows.
