Alina Popa, M.D., is a clinical professor of internal medicine at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine and the Program director of the Riverside Community Hospital/UCR School of Medicine Internal Medicine Residency Program.

She received her M.D. from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy Timisoara in Romania and followed that with her residency in neurology at the County Hospital Timisoara. Upon coming to the United States, she completed an internship and residency at St. John's Episcopal Hospital/SUNY Brooklyn in New York. She later earned a certificate in clinical research and completed a fellowship in internal medicine at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota.

Prior to coming to UC Riverside, Popa was director for medical education at the University of California, San Diego Division of Hospital Medicine and a core faculty member of the internal medicine residency program. She was responsible for developing the curriculum for the UCSD Graduate Medical Education Committee's patient safety and quality improvement programs as well as the neurology curriculum for the UCSD internal medicine residency program.

She is a diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine, a fellow in hospital medicine if the Society of Hospital Medicine, and a member of the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine. She has served as a journal reviewer for the Journal of Hospital Medicine.

Popa's interests include medical education, faculty development, leadership in medicine, evidence-based medicine, quality improvement and patient-centered rounding. She served as the site leader for the UCSD Institutional Handoff Improvement Project (I-PASS), a national multicenter study on the implementation of a handoff curriculum for internal medicine residents and is a site mentor of the CRICO-IPASS implementation project in Boston.