Salar Khaleghzdegan (he/him) is a second-year Ph.D. student at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health. His research aims to understand how barriers to effective communication during clinical encounters contribute to sub-optimal care and explore the pivotal role of patient-centered communication and shared decision-making in enhancing these relationships. Under the mentorship of his advisor, Paul Barr, Ph.D., he is exploring how medical uncertainty is communicated and managed during discussions among patients with dementia, care partners, and clinicians. Salar is particularly passionate about utilizing tools from disciplines such as linguistics and data science to analyze recordings of clinical encounters, aiming to advance the basic science of patient-provider communication. From a policy perspective, he is interested in exploring how the emergence and implementation of new technologies like artificial intelligence and audio recordings of clinical encounters will shape the way patients, families, and clinicians interact.