Program Director
Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine
Dr. Alyson Michener is a geriatrician and medical educator at the University of Pennsylvania, where she leads initiatives to advance aging-related care and education across medical training and clinical practice.
She earned her medical degree from New York Medical College and completed her internal medicine residency at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, where she also received a Certificate in Leadership in Medical Education from the Weatherhead School of Management. She then completed her Geriatrics Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by the Measey Fellowship in Medical Education.
Dr. Michener currently serves as Program Director of the Geriatrics Fellowship at Penn, overseeing the training of future geriatricians and leading strategic efforts to enhance fellowship education. She also directs the Aging Theme at the Perelman School of Medicine, integrating geriatrics throughout the undergraduate medical curriculum. Passionate about mentorship and interdisciplinary engagement, she founded GrANDMAS (Geriatrics, Aging, and Neurodegenerative Disease in Medicine and Society), a student interest group she continues to advise.
Her clinical work spans multiple care settings, with a current focus on home-based primary care. She serves as Medical Director of the Truman Schnabel Geriatrics Home-Based Primary Care Program and attends on the Acute Care for Elders (ACE) Unit. Her previous roles include medical director of a hospital-based subacute rehabilitation facility and consultant on Penn Presbyterian’s Ortho Surgical Co-Management service.
Originally from Rochester, NY, Dr. Michener moved to Philadelphia for fellowship training and now calls the city home. She enjoys its walkability, vibrant culinary scene, and proximity to the beach for summer getaways.
Associate Program Director
Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine
Dr. Szymanski is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine Division of Geriatrics. Originally from Northern Virginia, she has slowly moved north, completing medical school at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, then coming to Penn for Internal Medicine-Primary Care Residency. During residency, she completed the Medical Education Leadership Track and solidified her interest in geriatrics. She stayed at Penn for Geriatrics Fellowship, drawn by the breadth of clinical sites, scholarship opportunities in medical education, and amazing mentorship.
Now as faculty, she clinically works at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center seeing older veterans for geriatrics primary care and outpatient geriatrics consults. One of her clinics is a multidisciplinary memory evaluation clinic with neuropsychology, nursing, and social work (fellows rotate here!). She also precepts the fellows in VA longitudinal clinic and attends on the Penn Presbyterian ACE unit. In addition to her work with the fellows, she is co-director of the Internal Medicine Residency’s Aging and Transitions curriculum, and completed a Masters of Medical Education through the Penn Graduate School of Education. She loves being part of the division, surrounded by passionate, inspiring, collaborative, and kind colleagues.
Vice Chief of Education, Division of Geriatrics
Professor of Clinical Medicine
Dr. Miller is a Professor of Clinical Medicine and Vice Chief of Education for the University of Pennsylvania Division of Geriatrics. She is also a home care medicine physician at the Philadelphia CMC-VA Home Based Primary Care program for over fifteen years. Her medical education career focuses on curricula development in aging, home care medicine, transitions of care, and interprofessional education. She serves on multiple national committees focused on aging and home care medicine, delivers workshops yearly at national conferences, and has published education articles in high impact journals. She is a prior Geriatric Academic Career Award (GACA) awardee and current co-director of AGE SMART, the HRSA funded Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP) grant at the University of Pennsylvania.