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About
Most fertility specialists who publish are co-authors. Alisha Tolani is the principal investigator on a randomized controlled trial testing sperm preparation technologies used before intrauterine insemination — the unglamorous lab step that decides how many motile sperm actually reach the uterine cavity, and one that clinics have standardized more by habit than by evidence. She runs the trial while holding an assistant professorship in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at UCSF.
Her route into that question was not a straight clinic line. She earned her medical degree at Stanford in 2017, completed obstetrics and gynecology residency at UCSF, and took REI fellowship at Stanford. Alongside the training she was a Fulbright Scholar in Honduras, doing public health work outside the US health system, and she came through the ASRM PRIMED advocacy fellowship, the society’s program for physicians working on who does and does not get access to reproductive care. Research recognition followed from ASRM, the Pacific Coast Reproductive Society and the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine.
The credential that surprises patients most is on her résumé without any reference to the laboratory: she is DONA-trained as a doula, certified in continuous physical and emotional support through labor and procedures. In a clinic where patients sit through injections, retrievals and loss, that training is part of how she practices. She sees patients in English and Spanish.
Clinical Expertise
- IVF cycle management: stimulation through trigger, retrieval and transfer, with protocol choices tied to the published evidence where it exists and to individual response where it does not
- IUI, including the lab side: she is studying sperm preparation methods directly, which is unusual for the physician ordering the insemination
- Female infertility of mixed cause: ovulatory disorders, tubal factors, endometriosis and unexplained subfertility
- Male factor infertility: reading the semen analysis, deciding when the partner needs the center’s reproductive urologists rather than another wash-and-inseminate cycle
- PCOS: ovulation induction plus the metabolic management that comes with it
- Fertility preservation: egg and embryo freezing for patients facing gonadotoxic treatment or a delayed family plan
Why Choose Dr. Alisha Tolani
She is the PI, not a name on the paper. A physician running her own randomized trial on IUI sperm preparation means the laboratory decisions in your insemination cycle are ones she has measured, not inherited.
Equity work is on the record. The ASRM PRIMED advocacy fellowship and a Fulbright in Honduras are commitments to access and cross-cultural care, which shows up practically with patients who are navigating fertility treatment in a second language or outside a familiar system.
A doula’s training inside a reproductive endocrinology practice. DONA certification is about supporting a person through a medical event. Very few REI physicians hold it.
Spanish-language visits. Consent, medication instructions and bad news land differently in a patient’s first language.
Professional Affiliations
Board certified in obstetrics and gynecology. Assistant Professor, Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, University of California San Francisco. Member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, with research recognition from ASRM, the Pacific Coast Reproductive Society and the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Stanford University School of Medicine, 2017; UCSF obstetrics and gynecology residency; Stanford REI fellowship.
Suitable For
- IUI patients who want to know why the sample is prepared a certain way: she runs the trial asking that question
- PCOS and ovulatory dysfunction: induction plus metabolic follow-through
- Couples with a male factor finding: workup that routes the partner to reproductive urology instead of repeating inseminations
- Patients facing chemo, radiation or surgery: egg and embryo freezing on an oncology timeline
- Spanish-speaking patients in the Bay Area: care delivered directly in Spanish rather than through an interpreter