Faculty
Adam Leventhal, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
Director of the Institute for Addiction Science
adam.leventhal@usc.edu
https://heal.usc.edu
https://eosresearch.usc.edu
https://www.facebook.com/USCHEAL
@USC_HEAL
Adam Leventhal, Ph.D., Professor of Preventive Medicine and Psychology at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, is an addiction psychologist and public health scientist. Dr. Leventhal is the Founding Director of the USC Health, Emotion, & Addiction Laboratory (USC-HEAL; heal.usc.edu), a group of six faculty investigators and 30 staff and trainees who study the causes, consequences, treatment, and prevention of addiction and mental illness across the lifespan. Having been awarded more than $40M in grant funding from the NIH and other agencies, USC-HEAL’s current areas of focus are: (1) adolescent and young adult use of tobacco, cannabis, and opioids; (2) the co-occurrence of addiction and mental illness; (3) the development of new medications to promote smoking cessation; (4) science to inform public policies for regulating tobacco and other consumer products; and (5) cancer and cardiovascular disease prevention.\n\nDr. Leventhal is also the Founding Director of the USC Institute for Addiction Science (USC-IAS; ias.usc.edu), a university-wide initiative that supports transdisciplinary science and education for a network of 40+ faculty addiction experts across 5 schools and colleges at USC.\n\nDr. Leventhal has authored over 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles, including publications in JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, and other journals. His work has been covered by the Associated Press, NBC Nightly News, New York Times, and other media outlets. Dr. Leventhal is active in policy arenas, having served on expert panels on the health effects of e-cigarettes and tobacco products for the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the US Surgeon General. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Health Behavior and American Psychological Association and recipient of awards for early and mid-career contributions to science and mentoring. His personal interests include running, playing guitar, watching football, and spending time with friends and family.
Jessica Barrington-Trimis, PhD, MS, MA
Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
jtrimis@usc.edu
@Doctor_BT
https://eosresearch.usc.edu
Dr. Barrington-Trimis is an epidemiologist and Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California. She directs the USC Epidemiology of Substance Use Research Group and is a faculty member in the USC Institute for Addiction Science and the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Barrington-Trimis’ research focuses on investigation of the rapidly changing tobacco and alternative tobacco landscape. Her work aims to identify intra-individual psychological, behavioral, and social processes associated with nicotine use in adolescence and early adulthood, and to elucidate the behavioral consequences (e.g., transition to more harmful patterns of substance use) and physiological consequences (e.g., adverse respiratory health effects of e-cigarette use) of varying patterns of nicotine product use in adolescence, with the goal of informing regulatory efforts to protect adolescents and young adults.
Alayna Tackett, PhD
Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
alaynata@usc.edu
Dr. Tackett is a pediatric psychologist and Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California, and faculty member in the USC Health, Emotion, and Addiction Laboratory and the USC Institute for Addiction Science. She is also a current Pediatric Research NIH Loan Repayment recipient. After receiving her BA in Honor’s Studies and Psychology from Northern Kentucky University (2009), Dr. Tackett worked as a research coordinator at the Center for Adherence and Self-Management at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (2008-2012). Dr. Tackett received her MS and PhD in Clinical Psychology from Oklahoma State University (2012-2017) under the mentorship of Drs. Larry L. Mullins and Theodore L. Wagener. Dr. Tackett completed her clinical psychology internship/residency and postdoctoral fellowship training (2016-2018) in pediatric asthma and allergic disorders under the primary mentorship of Elizabeth L. McQuaid, PhD, ABPP at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University.
Dr. Tackett’s research follows a team-science model to examine the respiratory effects of e-cigarettes and other electronic nicotine/cannabis delivery devices (e.g., heat not burn, cannabis) among youth and young adults. Dr. Tackett is also interested in developing and testing novel methods to a) incorporate objective measurements of respiratory health and symptoms; b) reduce children’s exposure to secondhand aerosol from non-combustible tobacco products; and c) contribute scientific evidence to regulate tobacco products to protect public health.
Lorraine Kelley-Quon, PhD
Assistant Professor of Surgery and Preventive Medicine
lkquon@chla.usc.edu
Dr. Lorraine Kelley-Quon is an Assistant Professor of Surgery and Population and Public Health Sciences at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) and the University of Southern California. She obtained her B.S. in Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the University of California, San Diego and completed her M.D. and General Surgery training at the University of California, Los Angeles followed by a fellowship in Pediatric Surgery at Nationwide Children’s Hospital at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. During residency, she completed the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and obtained a Master’s in Health Services Research from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
Dr. Kelley-Quon’s research interests include identifying and eliminating health care disparities for children, optimizing pediatric surgical health care delivery and translating health services research into health policy. In partnership with HEAL, she is developing a pilot project to explore postoperative opioid use in adolescents and identify predictors of use, abuse, diversion, and conversion to chronic use. Her goal is to create physician decision support tools to optimize opioid prescribing for children and to inform policy makers of prudent initiatives regarding pediatric opioid legislation.
Methodology and Statistics Core
Junhan Cho, PhD
Assistant Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
junhanch@usc.edu
Dr. Junhan Cho is an Assistant Professor of Research in the Department of Preventive Medicine in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. He is the Director of Methodology and Statistics for the USC-Health, Emotion, & Addiction Laboratory (USC-HEAL), which conducts interdisciplinary research on mental health problems and health-related behaviors. With a strong interest to develop advanced research methodologies, Dr. Cho’s research aims to address how diverse social contexts and psychological vulnerabilities intersect to increase risk of addictive behaviors. Based on his research background on Human Development and Family Science throughout master and doctoral programs, his studies incorporate both theoretical and methodological frameworks necessary to conducting longitudinal and prevention studies on youth health risk behaviors with a focus on the psychosocial processes influenced by family and community contexts. His current studies include: 1) developmental patterns of conjoint multiple health risk behaviors; 2) longitudinal risk and protective pathways linking early contextual stressors to mental health problems in adolescence; and 3) interaction of social contexts and biological factors influencing psychological vulnerability to addictive behaviors including substance use across adolescence and young adulthood.
Melissa Wong
Statistician I
mwong237@usc.edu
Melissa received her MS in Biostatistics from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a BA in Applied Mathematics. As a graduate student, Melissa gained extensive skills and knowledge involving the application of statistical methods in public health research. For her graduate thesis, she developed an application that allows users to dynamically implement and analyze substance use models. In her role as the statistician for HEAL, Melissa is responsible for data analysis for several projects.
Senior Research Associates
Erin Vogel
Research Associate, Senior
erinvoge@usc.edu
Erin Vogel, PhD, is a social psychologist and senior research associate in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences of the Keck School of Medicine. She holds a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Toledo (2017). She completed postdoctoral fellowships at UC San Francisco (2017-2019) and Stanford University (2019-2021) prior to joining USC.
Erin’s research interests include youth tobacco use, social media use, and digital health interventions. Her recently completed postdoctoral fellowship, funded by the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, explored the effects of vaping-related social media content on teenagers’ thoughts and intentions around vaping. She has contributed to clinical trials testing LGBTQ-tailored, social media-delivered smoking cessation interventions and testing a chatbot for reducing problematic substance use.
Erin regularly speaks with parents, youth, and media outlets about social media, well-being, vaping, and other substance use. She also enjoys cooking, hiking, and exploring all that Southern California has to offer.
Postdoctoral Scholars
Alyssa Harlow
Postdoctoral Scholar – Research Associate
afharlow@usc.edu
Dr. Harlow is an epidemiologist and Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California and the USC Health, Emotion, and Addiction Laboratory. After receiving her BA in Biocultural Anthropology from the University of Washington (2011), Dr. Harlow moved to Cairns, Australia to conduct research on mental health and addiction among remote Indigenous communities in the Cape York Peninsula with James Cook University. She earned her MPH in Social and Behavioral Sciences and Epidemiology (2016), and her PhD in Epidemiology (2021) from the Boston University School of Public Health. During her doctoral program, Dr. Harlow received funding for her dissertation as a competitively funded fellow with the American Heart Association’s Tobacco Center for Regulatory Science (A-TRAC 2.0).
Dr. Harlow’s research applies novel epidemiologic methods and causal inference to better understand the determinants and health effects of tobacco-product and substance use behaviors and inform policy. She has extensive experience conducting longitudinal analyses with the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH), a large national cohort study on tobacco product use. Her research primarily falls under three domains, including (a) documenting disparities and identifying fundamental causes of disparities in tobacco use among vulnerable populations; (b) identifying determinants of product transitions (e.g., initiation, progression, cessation), including the impact of product characteristics on substance use behaviors; and (c) examining the physical health effects of tobacco-product and cannabis use, including cardiopulmonary and reproductive health outcomes.
Doctoral Students
Saida Coreas
Research Assistant
scoreas@usc.edu
Saida Coreas is a PhD Student in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She graduated from California State University, Los Angeles in 2018 with a B.S in Public Health. She completed a 3-year (2018-2021) post-baccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA) fellowship at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland where she worked on research projects looking at racial/ethnic differences in tobacco product use patterns among U.S. adults, as well as relationships between cigarette smoking susceptibility and smoking initiation among U.S. youth. Other work includes investigating the relationship between acculturation and cardiometabolic risk factors among U.S. Latinos. Her research focuses on understanding how factors relating to social determinants of health influence tobacco use among minority populations. In her free time, Saida enjoys gardening, going on road trips, and spending time with friends and family.
Samantha Cwalina
cwalina@usc.edu
Sam graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2014 with a B.S. in Psychology, where she conducted high-impact research on nicotine reduction paradigms in rodent and human subjects. Currently in her third year at USC, she works with fellow tobacco regulatory scientists to inform tobacco-related policy decisions that will reduce the number of preventable deaths, diseases, and addictions attributable to tobacco use in the United States.
Holly Lung
hlung@usc.edu
Holly is a first-year doctoral student in the Health Behavior Research program at USC’s Keck School of Medicine. She graduated from the University of California, San Diego in 2021 with a B.S. in Public Health, where she worked on multiple Tobacco-Related Disparities Research Program grant projects. Under these projects, she worked as research assistant on a pilot study investigating the feasibility of integrating tobacco cessation into HIV care, and as an author for manuscripts related to the association between e-cigarette use and cigarette initiation and cessation across racial/ethnic groups. Holly is primarily interested in tobacco and cannabis use patterns among adolescent and minority populations, and hopes to contribute to high-impact tobacco regulatory research that will reduce health disparities.
Kelsey Simpson
Doctoral Student
kasimpso@usc.edu
Kelsey Simpson is a 2nd year doctoral student in the Health Behavior Research Ph.D. program at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Prior to entering her Ph.D. program, Kelsey received an MA in Clinical Psychology from California State University, Northridge (Spring 2016). There, she worked as Lab Coordinator of a neuropsychology lab that focused on the neuropsychological, cognitive, and psychosocial consequences of HIV infection. Prior to her enrollment at USC, Kelsey worked as an Interventionist on a community-based RCT testing the efficacy of a behavioral intervention on reducing injection initiation risk behaviors among people who inject drugs. Kelsey's primary research interests are grounded in investigating the underlying mechanisms of addictions in diverse and marginalized populations. Additionally, she is interested in program evaluation and intervention development to address health-related disparities and prevention from further risk behaviors in substance using populations.
Research Staff
Population Studies
Faisal Aboul-Enein, DrPH, MSN, RN, FNP-BC, FRSPH, FACHE
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
aboulene@usc.edu
Hooman Allayee, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
hallayee@usc.edu
Dr. Allayee is a Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences and Biochemistry & Molecular Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. His research program is focused on using multi-disciplinary genetics/genomics approaches to understand complex disorders, with an emphasis on cardiovascular, metabolic, and inflammatory diseases. In particular, his laboratory employs systems genetics strategies to dissect the architecture of complex diseases where a variety of intermediate phenotypes at the molecular, epigenetic, proteomic, and metabolomic levels are integrated into the genetic analyses. Current projects involve large-scale population studies in humans, gene-environment interactions, functional experiments using molecular genetics techniques, and the generation and characterization of mouse models. Dr. Allayee received his Ph.D. in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics in 1999 from the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to joining USC, Dr. Allayee completed NIH Postdoctoral Fellowships at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and the David Geffen School of Medicine UCLA.
Jon Allem, PhD, MA
Assistant Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
allem@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonpatrickallem/
https://somalab.usc.edu
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zAFlXaQAAAAJ
https://twitter.com/SomaLabUsc
Jon-Patrick Allem is an Assistant Professor of Research at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Dr. Allem’s research harnesses digital data sources and cutting-edge methodologies to improve population health surveillance and policy. His multidisciplinary expertise in behavioral science, preventive medicine, and data science has led to data-driven public health insights featured in prominent media and scholarly outlets such as Nature, Scientific American, CNN, and the American Journal of Public Health. With the use of data from online platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Google Web Search, Dr. Allem’s research has included studies on the effectiveness of mass media campaigns, use and appeal of tobacco products, HIV education, the marketing practices of micromobility companies, and the sources and content of online misinformation. He has successfully competed for close to 4 million dollars in government contracts and grants, with current projects focused on identifying sources of exposure to tobacco marketing among adolescents and young adults. He recently became the principal investigator for the California Tobacco Control Program’s Tobacco Industry Monitoring Evaluation. The main goal of the project is to inform comprehensive tobacco control policy efforts by monitoring core tobacco industry practices related to electronic cigarettes and other new and emerging non-combustible nicotine products, and little cigars and cigarillos in three core tobacco industry practices: advertising and marketing on social media platforms, direct marketing, and underage online sales.
Todd Alonzo, PhD
Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
Group Statistician for Children’s Oncology Group
talonzo@childrensoncologygroup.org
Todd Alonzo is a Professor of Research in the Department of Preventive Medicine, University of Southern California. He received his undergraduate degree at the California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, California in Statistics in 1994 and received both his MS and his PhD in Biostatistics in 1997 and 2000 from the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Alonzo’s main areas of research interest are the statistical methods for analysis of biomarkers and medical diagnostic and screening tests, clinical trials, and the design and analysis of pediatric acute myelogenous leukemia studies. He has published over 245 peer-reviewed articles.
Dr. Alonzo has been member of the Editorial Board for Biometrics, Pediatric Blood Cancer, and Biometrical Journal and has acted as a reviewer for 30 scientific journals. He is a member of several Data Safety and Monitoring Boards. Dr. Alonzo was the President of the International Biometric Society Western Northern America Region (WNAR) in 2009. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.
Yasser Aman, DrPH, MPH
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
yaman@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasseraman
Limari Archuleta
Population and Public Health Sciences Student Worker
limariar@usc.edu
Max Aung, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
maxaung@usc.edu
Dr. Max Aung is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Environmental Health at the University of Southern California. Dr. Aung is an alumnus of the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice Fellowship as well as the RWJF Health Policy Research Scholars Fellowship. His research focuses on applying data science frameworks to understand potential mechanisms linking chemical mixtures to health across the life course and pursue environmental justice. He specifically integrates multiple hierarchies of exogenous and endogenous biomarkers, including biomonitored toxicant exposures, targeted bioactive lipids, and untargeted lipidomics and metabolomics. His current funded projects focus on integrating these biomarkers in diverse prospective cohorts to better understand mechanisms linking the human exposome to maternal health outcomes, child neurodevelopment, and cancer outcomes.
Allyn Auslander, PhD, MPH
Adjunct Research Assistant Professor
allyn.auslander@gmail.com
Edward Avol, MS
Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
Division Chief, Environmental Health
avol@usc.edu
Ed Avol is Professor of Clinical Preventive Medicine, specializing in exposure assessment and acute/chronic cardio-respiratory effects of airborne pollutants in populations at risk (including children, athletes, and those with compromised lung function). He was a founding member and Deputy Director of the Children’s Health Study and is a contributing investigator in multiple investigations of the effects of environmental exposures on human health. He co-directs the Exposure Factors Core (EFC, formerly the Spatial Exposure and Analytics Core [SEAC]) in the NIEHS-supported Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center. Professor Avol both teaches in and leads the undergraduate Environmental Health (EH) teaching track in the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (HP) program at USC and is the co-Principal Investigator on a NIEHS-funded training grant to include more students from environmental injustice communities into advanced EH training and potential EH career opportunities. He is also actively involved in several community partnership and engagement efforts, particularly with health and air quality issues associated with Los Angeles/Long Beach seaport operations.
Erika Azpeitia
Project Specialist
eazpeiti@usc.edu
Erika joined the USC HEAL team in April 2021. She received a B.S. degree in Molecular Environmental Biology from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master’s in Public Health degree from the University of Southern California. Prior to joining the HEAL team, Erika worked closely with adolescents at USC Student Health and a Federally Qualified Health Center before that. Her public health interests lie in adolescent health and addressing health disparities among disadvantaged youth and minority groups through healthcare access and health equity. As Project Specialist, Erika supports project operations, assists with data collection and study procedures for cohort studies focused on young adults, substance use, and emotional well-being. In her free time, she enjoys working out, hiking, reading, and sharing meals with friends and family.
Chibuzor Babalola, MBBS, MPH
Postdoctoral Scholar – Research Associate
babalool@usc.edu
Chibuzor (Chibz) Babalola is a Postdoctoral Research Associate. She manages international research projects in South Africa and Botswana, centered around investigating and mitigating STIs in pregnancy. Prior to this, she was an Epidemiologist and Analyst with the Detroit Health Department on a team that actively surveilled, monitored, and reported on the status of COVID-19 in the city; ultimately informing evidence-based decision making by a myriad of stakeholders. Chibz was a general physician in Nigeria after receiving her Medical Degree in 2014. She also holds an MPH degree from Emory University to pursue population health research. She is quite passionate about sustainable public health initiatives in developing countries. In her short stint, Chibz has been privileged to lead, learn and innovate on vaccine development and neglected tropical disease studies in West Africa.
Lourdes Baez Conde, PhD, MPH
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
Associate Dean for Community Initiatives
Associate Director for Community Outreach and Engagement
baezcond@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/lourdes-baezconde-garbanati/42/526/a44
TeamLab|https://teamlab.usc.edu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s4fm1DaAG0
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=IxA7uIUAAAAJ
Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati, PhD, MPH, is Associate Dean for Community Initiatives at KSOM and a tenured professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences (PPHS) at the Keck School of Medicine (KSOM) of the University of Southern California. She has a Courtesy Appointment at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati is Associate Director for Community Outreach and Engagement at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. At Norris she also provides oversight of the Patient Education and Community Outreach Center and is coleader of the Engagement Optimization Unit of a Moonshot NIH award on genomics and colorectal Latino cancer patients. She also is coPI of the Community Outreach Core of CaRE2 a bicoastal program to reduce lung, pancreatic, and prostate cancer disparities. She oversees the NIH funded National Outreach Network Community Health Educator, and manages various community initiatives to reduce financial toxicity, increase participation in clinical trials, develop and test cancer related culturally specific educational materials and toolkits, as well as produce videos and films to reduce cancer health inequities. She oversees the Citizen Scientists program training patient advocates in cancer research and engages a cadre of promotores de salud and community health workers, and is responsible for instituting at Norris the Lazarex Foundation Cancer Wellness Hubs, with a series of pop up hubs in African American, Latino and Korean communities. She is co producer of Tamale Lesson. Tamale Lesson is a film to increase HPV vaccinations and cervical cancer screening. It’s the the product of a prestigious transformative RO1 from the NCI to look at the role of narrative in the delivery of cancer messages to African-American, Hispanic/Latino and Korean audiences. This work was done in collaboration with the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and the USC School of Cinema, as well as Hollywood Health and Society. She also coproduced the Es Tiempo campaign, one of the most stunningly beautiful and effective campaigns to increase cervical cancer screening among Latinas reducing large disparities in screening found at baseline. Es Tiempo utilizes tge blooming of the purple jacaranda tree as an environmental cue to remind women to go in for screening or vaccinate themselves and their children against HPV. It was developed in collaboration with the Art Center College of Design, Designmatters program, and the Annenberg School for Comminication and Journalism, and is a key program of the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.
In joint community initiatives w Children’s Hospital Los Angeles with a focus on children and their families, She is Associate Director and coinvestigator of the Southern California Center on Latino Health and Chronic Diseases and of Vaccinate LA. VaxLA is one of the most impactful community based Covid-19 multimedia interventions to increase vaccinations in diverse Black and Latino communities.
In the Department of PPHS she is in the division of Health Behavior. She is Director of the Center for Health Equity in the Americas and a member of the Institute for Prevention Research (IPR) and the USC Institute for Addiction Sciences. She is a founding member of the Immigrant Health Initiative and the creator and founding Director of the Community Scholars Collaborative on Health Equity Solutions (CHES) bringing over 10 different schools and departments together at USC to work on common health problems impacting USC’s neighbors and beyond. She also serves as co investigator in the Office of Community Engagement of the Southern California Clinical Translation Institute (CTSI). She is in the leadership team of the Coronavirus Pandemic Research Center overseeing the health behavior committee, and supporting a prestigious community advisory committee. She was the creator of and oversees Stay Connected Los Angeles, an innovative community intervention to enhance mitigation behaviors on Covid-19 with a cadre of Latino artists and muralists from The East area of Los Angeles. Further As director of a HRSA/Alliance (NAHH) grant she trainined over 400 community health workers on Covid-19 in 34 cities across the U.S. contributing to 400,333 shots in arms.
Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati is also Project co-Leader on one of the main R01s in the USC Tobacco Center for Regulatory Sciences Examining vape shops and other retail environments. She focuses on multi unit housing exposure to secondhand smoke in her research and oversees the Hispanic/Latino Tobacco Coordinating Center at USC generating a policy platform for statewide implementation.
Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati has a solid reputation as a widely recognized national and international community engaged scholar in the areas of culture and community health, with an emphasis on reducing health disparities at the community level. Her work is known for its creativity, and transdisciplinary nature, where academic disciplines and community talent converge with ingenuity to produce unique interventions that advance science while fulfilling community needs. She develops and tests innovative interventions that help modify cultural and lifestyle risk factors for cancer, obesity and tobacco control at the community level. She teaches on gender and ethnic minority health, health promotion and disease prevention, culture, and on community organizing and mobilization for health locally and globally. She has mentored well over 200 students in research from undergraduates to doctoral and postdoctoral fellows and is widely sought out as a mentor among Junior Faculty. She is strongly engaged in community participatory and population-based research and promotes bidirectional efforts between academic and community scientists. Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati has been instrumental in developing and testing effective interventions, that utilize innovative communication strategies, outreach activities, community engagement to enhance community health to find community based solutions to persistent and emerging public health challenges facing our society today.
She has a tract record of extensive community services spanding over two decades. She is Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, is a member of the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine, chairing the clinical trials.gov modernization task force; and serves on the White House Office of Public Engagement Covid-19 Community Corps, and on the Keck Medicine Community Benefits Office. At USC she is an internal advisory committee member to the Center for Environmental Health Community Outreach Core, and sits on high level university committees advising the Provost on faculty searches and tenure. For 18 years she was a member of the Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee (TEROC) advising the California legislature on tobacco research, education and public health programs.
She has a strong record of extramural funding from the National Institutes of Health, including the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati has received multiple awards and recognition for her work, and is well published in a variety of relevant topics. She received the NIH 10 Year Common Fund Award and the American Public Health Association Health Education and Health Promotion Award for her video Tamale Lesson. She has been a member of 7 NIH funded centers, including several for which she has been Co-lead.
Dr. Baezconde-Garbanati holds five academic degrees obtained in the U.S., Europe and Latin America and she speaks multiple languages. She earned an MPH and a PhD in public health with an emphasis in Community Health Sciences from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She holds a master’s degree in medical psychology from the Universite Catholique de Louvain, where she graduated with Distinction. She conducted her undergraduate studies obtaining a dual degree in clinical and industrial psychology at the Universidad Nacional Pedro H. Urena in Dominican Republic. She can be reached at baezcond@usc.edu.
Neil Bahroos, MS, MBA
Associate Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
Chief Research Informatics Officer of the Keck School of Medicine and Keck Medicine of USC
neil.bahroos@med.usc.edu
Neil earned a BS, with honors, in Human Biology and an MS in Computer Science and Software Engineering from the University of Toronto. He received an MBA in Data Analytics from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.
Donald Barkauskas, PhD
Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
barkausk@usc.edu
I have been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, Biostatistics Division, since 2011. I am also a Senior Statistician at the Children’s Oncology Group, working in sarcoma biology, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and the COG Phase II developmental program.
Jessica Barrington-Trimis, PhD, MS, MA
Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
jtrimis@usc.edu
@Doctor_BT
https://eosresearch.usc.edu
Dr. Barrington-Trimis is an epidemiologist and Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California. She directs the USC Epidemiology of Substance Use Research Group and is a faculty member in the USC Institute for Addiction Science and the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Barrington-Trimis’ research focuses on investigation of the rapidly changing tobacco and alternative tobacco landscape. Her work aims to identify intra-individual psychological, behavioral, and social processes associated with nicotine use in adolescence and early adulthood, and to elucidate the behavioral consequences (e.g., transition to more harmful patterns of substance use) and physiological consequences (e.g., adverse respiratory health effects of e-cigarette use) of varying patterns of nicotine product use in adolescence, with the goal of informing regulatory efforts to protect adolescents and young adults.
Morteza Bashash, PhD
Adjunct Research Assistant Professor
morteza.bashash@gmail.com
Theresa Bastain, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
P50 Center Director
Program Director of ECHO
bastain@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracy-bastain-660b515/
https://twitter.com/TracyBastain
Theresa (Tracy) Bastain is an Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences. Dr. Bastain attended Princeton University for her undergraduate studies and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for her MPH. Prior to attending Hopkins, she spent two years as a Pre-doctoral Intramural Research Training Award (Pre-IRTA) Fellow in the Child Psychiatry Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Bastain returned to her native California to work with Drs. Frank Gilliland and John Peters at USC as the project administrator of the Children’s Environmental Health Center and Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center and she later completed her doctoral and postdoctoral studies in Epidemiology at USC. Dr. Bastain co-directs the Maternal and Developmental Risks from Environmental and Social Stressors (MADRES) Center for Environmental Health Disparities, a P50 Center of Excellence in Environmental Health Disparities supported by NIMHD and NIEHS. The MADRES Center supports three research projects, an administrative core, an investigator development core and a community engagement and dissemination core. A particular emphasis in the MADRES Center is to support and mentor early stage investigators from underrepresented backgrounds from the undergraduate level to junior faculty. Dr. Bastain also co-directs the USC site for the NIH Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program. Dr. Bastain’s research interests include understanding the roles of environmental exposures and psychosocial stress in early life and during critical periods of development on childhood neurolodevelopment, lung growth, asthma, obesity, metabolic outcomes and childhood growth. Dr. Bastain is also interested in the role of environmental exposures during pregnancy and their effects on maternal health outcomes, including depression, metabolic disease and cardiovascular health, during and after pregnancy. The work of the MADRES Center broadly aims to elimate health disparities and
Britni Belcher, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
bbelcher@usc.edu
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0aQnGoUAAAAJ
Britni Belcher, Ph.D, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California. She earned both her Masters of Public Health with an emphasis in Biostatistics/Epidemiology and her doctorate in Health Behavior Research from the University of Southern California. Dr. Belcher received post-doctoral training in pediatric energy balance, sedentary behavior, and cancer prevention from the Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program at the National Cancer Institute, where she worked in the Applied Research and Behavioral Research Programs. In addition, Dr. Belcher was a Special Volunteer in the Section on Growth and Obesity at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, where she conducted a randomized cross-over pilot study investigating the metabolic, cognitive, and mood effects of interrupting sedentary behavior in children. Dr. Belcher’s research interests include measurement of physical activity and sedentary behavior, pediatric energy balance, and the multiple physiological and behavioral factors that influence the adolescent energy balance transition.
Mariel Bello
Research Assistant
marielbe@usc.edu
Mariel Bello is a doctoral student in the USC Clinical Science program and a current National Science Foundation predoctoral fellow. She received her B.S. in Psychology cum laude at the University of California, Riverside in June 2013. During her undergraduate career, she became the Founder and former President of a nationally-recognized student organization called Healing Highlanders at UCR, which was dedicated to providing students in recovery from addictive behaviors and disorders with emotional support and a wide range of campus and community services. Before starting graduate school, she worked as a Project Specialist at USC-HEAL for 3 years, where she led the Southern California Tobacco Addiction Phenotype Project (SC-TAPP).
Her research interests include investigating the etiology and underlying mechanisms of substance use disorders among underserved populations and the development of novel, culturally-tailored evidence-based treatment programs to effectively treat substance use and psychiatric disorders in disadvantaged, minority groups. She is also particularly interested in examining prescription drug abuse, cultural factors, as well as racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, mental health, and gender-related health disparities implicated in the progression across the substance use trajectory (i.e., initiation, escalation/progression, maintenance, and cessation/relapse). She is currently being funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. Aside from research, she enjoys reading, sketching, arts & crafts, hiking, and spending time with her friends and family.
Ahmad Besaratinia, MPH, PhD
Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
besarati@med.usc.edu
Dr. Besaratinia has a long-standing interest in research on the underlying causes of human cancer. His research focuses on the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of carcinogenesis with a special emphasis on DNA damage and repair, mutagenesis, DNA methylation, and histone modifications. Utilizing a combination of classic molecular biology techniques and state-of-the-art next-generation sequencing-based technologies, including in-house developed/refined methodologies, Dr. Besaratinia’s laboratory is characterizing the genetic and epigenetic aberrancies that occur during the initiation and progression of human cancer. Of particular interest is the re-shaping of genome and epigenome in malignancies with modifiable risk factors (e.g., environment, diet, and lifestyle). To elucidate the interplay of genetics, epigenetics, and environment/lifestyle factors in the genesis and progression of human cancer, his group is investigating sunlight ultraviolet (UV) -associated melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers, and tobacco-related lung- and bladder cancers. These investigations are expected to identify functionally important genetic and epigenetic alterations ? dependent on or independently of environment or lifestyle ? that can determine cancer development. Increasing the mechanistic knowledge of cancer initiation and progression is critical to developing innovative strategies for prevention, early detection, treatment, and prognosis of this disease.
Manan Biyani
mbiyani@usc.edu
Manan Biyani is a graduate student studying computer science with a specialization in data science at USC Viterbi School of Engineering. He earned his B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from SRM Institute of Science and Technology. He has experience in the domains of natural language processing and marketing analytics. Currently, he is a Research Assistant at SOMA Lab, assisting on projects using data from social media platforms like Twitter to understand the perceptions and opinions about modern oral nicotine products.
David Black, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
davidbla@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-black-phd-mph-2b9637a0/
campus (mindful.usc.edu)|https://mindful.usc.edu
global (goAMRA.org)|https://goAMRA.org
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9QIzyCwAAAAJ&hl=en
Dr. Black an Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He is also a member of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and Associate Director of Education for the USC Center for Mindfulness Science. His research had been funded by university, private, and federal grants for over 17 years. He as authored and co-authored over 75 peer-reviewed articles in journals including JAMA Internal Medicine, JAMA Pediatrics, Cancer, Pediatrics, American Journal of Public Health, Behaviour Research and Therapy, and Psychosomatic Medicine. Dr. Black began his early career in the health sciences and earned a Master of Public Health degree and directed his first grant-funded human subjects research study prior to finishing his masters thesis. He trained as a NIH National Cancer Institute predoctoral fellow for five years at the USC Institute for Prevention Research, where he latter earned his Ph.D. The focus of his doctoral training was in substance misuse prevention and addictions research. He had self-studied contemplative theory and practices over the previous decade, and realized an opportunity to merge his passion for the contemplative studies with his training in the health sciences. He continued advanced training as a NIH National Institute on Aging postdoctoral fellow at the University of California at Los Angeles Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology. He focused his research effort on conducting a randomized controlled trial to test the impact of mindfulness training on sleep and inflammation in older adults with sleep problems. He went on to articulate a novel conceptual model to illustrate how mindfulness training exerts biological influence from brain to body using a genomic signal transduction framework with downstream biological impact on sympathetic nervous system activity, release of norepinephrine at nerve terminals, activation of b-adrenergic receptors on adjacent cells, and the cAMP/PKA signaling pathway that ultimately regulates gene expression by stimulating transcription factors, particularly those associated with the propagation of inflammation in peripheral blood. He recently completed a NIH NIDA R01 randomized controlled trial testing mindfulness training added to residential treatment for substance use disorder. He is currently co-PI of a clinical trial testing an app-based mindfulness training for smoking cessation that recruits smokers from across the state of California. He enjoys mentoring undergraduate and graduate students, was awarded the 2015 USC Mentoring Award for graduate students from the Center for Excellence in Teaching. He enjoys spending time with his family in nature, fly fishing, camping, and reading.
Brittnie Bloom, PhD, MS
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
brittnie@usc.edu
Nala Blue
Project Assistant
nalablue@usc.edu
Nala graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a B.A. in Psychology. As an undergraduate, Nala volunteered at Venice Family Clinic and was involved in data collection for Medication Assisted Treatment for Opioid Use Disorders. Nala developed a passion for working with data and solving health issues faced by populations through programming, intervening, and designing studies. Nala plans to pursue a graduate degree in biostatistics and hopes to study the interaction of mental and physical health and how the interplay of these two factors impacts cure rates and treatment length. Ultimately, Nala intends to work with the queer, non-cisgender male, population because their needs as sexual minorities have not been examined, researched, and acknowledged. Nala enjoys dancing, weightlifting, painting, and going on walks in the neighborhood to catch up and chat with neighbors.
Ricky Bluthenthal, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
Associate Dean for Social Justice
rbluthen@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/ricky-bluthenthal/5/469/967
@DrPtw
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NJ3VmlYAAAAJ&hl=en
Ricky N. Bluthenthal, Ph.D. is the Associate Dean for Social Justice and a Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and the Institute for Prevention Research at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. He received a BA in History and Sociology from the University of California Santa Cruz and a PhD in sociology from the University of California Berkeley. His research has established the effectiveness of syringe exchange programs, tested novel interventions and strategies to reduce HIV risk and improve HIV testing among injection drug users and men who have sex with men, documented how community conditions contribute to health disparities, and examined health policy implementation. His current studies include an observational cohort study of how cannabis legalization impacts use patterns and health outcomes of cannabis and opioids among people who inject drugs and a randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of a single session intervention to reduce injection initiation risk behaviors among established people who inject drugs. Dr. Bluthenthal has authored or co-authored over 160 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals such as the American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, The Lancet, Addiction, and Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research among others.
Tess Boley Cruz, PhD
Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
tesscruz@usc.edu
Tess Boley Cruz, PhD, MPH, CHES, is a clinical associate professor in preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. For the past 20 years, she has been involved in research projects and teaching at the master’s and undergraduate levels in health education, communications and health disparities. She serves as the co-lead of the Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science project, funded by NIH, on effects of social media marketing on tobacco use and transitions, and is an investigator on projects using health communication to reduce COVID, and vape pod prevention.\n\nShe served as the first director of the new Master of Public Health Program (MPH) at USC and currently serves as director of the Health Promotion Track in the online MPH program. Dr. Cruz provides the core MPH course on health promotion theory, and a course on public health communications with an emphasis on tailoring strategies and materials to help priority populations. In her undergraduate teaching, her course focuses on race and gender disparities in public health.\n\nHer research focuses on health communication, disparities, and tobacco control, with projects on countering tobacco marketing, and reducing menthol smoking among African-Americans.\n\nDr. Cruz earned her MPH from California State University and her PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Katherine Bottenhorn
Postdoctoral Scholar – Research Associate
bottenho@usc.edu
Michael Bowdish, MD
Associate Professor of Surgery (Clinical Scholar)
michael.bowdish@med.usc.edu
Carrie Breton, ScD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
breton@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrie-breton-15308b2/
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ivAk1B4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
https://madres.usc.edu
https://www.nih.gov/research-training/environmental-influences-child-health-outcomes-echo-program
As an environmental epidemiologist, I lead an interdisciplinary program of research focused on understanding the long-term health risks for cardiovascular, respiratory and metabolic diseases resulting from the interplay between prenatal or early-life environmental exposures and psychosocial stressors. The overarching goals of my research program are to: (1) determine the health effects of early-life exposures to air pollutants, metals and chemicals, (2) identify factors that make certain individuals more susceptible to environmental exposures or health effects; and (3) understand the role for epigenetic mechanisms in mediating observed environmental health effects.
I direct the Maternal And Developmental Risks from Environmental and Social Stressors (MADRES) Center for Environmental Health Disparities as well as the USC site for the Environmental Influences of Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program, both of which are housed in the Environmental Health Division in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences. I am also the Director of the Integrated Health Sciences Facility Core (IHSFC) for the Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center. My work in the MADRES Center examines whether pre- and postpartum environmental exposures to air pollutants and heavy metals, coupled with exposures to psychosocial and built environment stressors, affect maternal and child cardiometabolic health outcomes, including perturbed infant growth trajectories and increased childhood obesity risk. My work in ECHO takes a multigenerational life course approach to studying the contribution of the environment to the developmental origins of childhood and emerging adult respiratory and metabolic health. I have conducted several studies investigating how environmental exposures, such as air pollution and tobacco smoke, alter epigenetic profiles in newborns and young children, and what roles those changes play in underlying disease risk. I am also actively investigating intergenerational effects of environmental exposures on epigenetic mechanisms including DNA methylation and extracellular vesicle miRNA.
Jonathan Buckley, PhD
Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
jbuckley@usc.edu
Dr. Buckley’s primary expertise is in the epidemiology of cancer, particularly childhood cancers. Other interests and skills relate to biostatistics (with emphasis on techniques required for clinical trials), software development, and molecular epidemiology.
Marigrace Buendia
Jumpstart Preschool Reading Tutor – Fall 2021
mbuendia@usc.edu
Rita Burke, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
rita.burke@med.usc.edu
Dr. Burke’s research focuses pediatric disaster preparedness and injury prevention. Her work includes evaluating gaps and identifying barriers in health and school systems to meet the needs of children, particularly those with access and functional needs, in a disaster. She is co-author of the book Landesman’s Public Health Management of Disasters and Associate Editor of Disaster Management and Public Health Preparedness. She is also the co-chair of the Los Angeles Children in Disasters Working Group and member of the Scientific Advisory Council for the American Red Cross.
Carlos Cardenas-Iniguez
Postdoctoral Scholar – Research Associate
carlosc2@usc.edu
Rachel Ceasar
Postdoctoral Scholar – Research Associate
rceasar@usc.edu
http://linkedin.com/in/rachelceasar/
Rachel Ceasar, PhD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
rceasar@usc.edu
http://linkedin.com/in/rachelceasar/
Vaia Chatzi, MD, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
chatzi@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/leda-chatzi-9049a121/
https://chatzilab.usc.edu
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=hEg9tF8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Dr Chatzi is a physician-environmental epidemiologist with expertise in birth cohort research. Her research focuses on the influence of nutrition and obesogenic chemical exposures during pregnancy and early childhood on long-term maternal and child health, especially obesity, asthma and cognitive development. She has published widely on the effects of early life exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals on obesity and metabolic outcomes in children. In support of this work, she has led studies examining maternal and infant diet and their associations with the risk of adiposity and asthma in childhood. She is the principal investigator and co-leader of the ?Rhea? pregnancy cohort in Greece and she has had significant leadership roles in major cohort studies studying environmental exposures early in life.
Jiu-Chiuan Chen, MD, ScD
Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
jcchen@usc.edu
Jiu-Chiuan (JC) Chen is an Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine. Dr. Chen is a physician-epidemiologist with formal training in Internal Medicine, Environmental and Occupational Medicine, Environmental Health Sciences, and Epidemiology (Clinical, Environmental, and Occupational). Chen brings extensive knowledge in medicine and toxicology together with sophisticated skills in quantitative methods to study environments and chronic disease epidemiology and elucidate the biological underpinnings of environmental influences on human health, in order to reduce the resulting environmental health disparities especially among the vulnerable populations. \n\nAt USC, Chen developed the AirPollBrain Network (Co-PIs: Finch & Chen), with its mission to create a research and education program in environmental neurosciences of brain health during development and aging in urban environments. To study how ambient air pollution exposures affect brain aging including Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Dr. Chen’s research team and their collaborators take the team-sciences approach that integrates state-of-the-art knowledge and tools in neurobiology of AD, population & clinical neuroimaging, mouse brain imaging, neuroinformatics and high-dimensional data analyses, brain vascular biology, inhalation exposure assessment and neurotoxicology, clinical neurology and neurosurgery, cognitive neurosciences and neuropsychology, quantitative psychology, epidemiology of AD, spatial statistics, and air pollution epidemiology. \n\nThese powerful approaches had been expanded to study how urban environmental adversities shape the neurodevelopmental and behavioral trajectories during vulnerable time periods. Chen’s team also pioneers the emerging field of environmental health disparities in AD and related dementias, investigating how environmental stressors and resilience factors interact to shape the socio-geographic disparities in dementia.
Zhanghua Chen, PhD
Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
zhanghuc@usc.edu
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=x1Er8GoAAAAJ
Dr. Zhanghua Chen is an environmental epidemiologist and biostatistician with multidisciplinary expertise in environmental health, biostatistics, epidemiology, clinical medicine, obesity and diabetes pathophysiology, genomics, metabolomics, and data science. She has a strong track record in environmental health research with particular interests in the health effects of early-life environmental exposures in children and adults, the epidemiology of diabetes and obesity, and methods of multi-omics studies. \n\nDr. Chen aims to contribute her research to early prevention and treatment of complex diseases. She is creative, collaborative and highly productive. She is establishing a novel research area in environmental epidemiology by leveraging the advanced metabolomics and multi-omics approaches. Dr. Chen is the principal investigator on the NIEHS-supported K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award: ?Metabolomic Signatures Linking Air Pollution, Obesity and Diabetes?. She has also published many papers in well-received medical journals such as Diabetes Care and American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Her accomplishments in environmental health research have received wide media attention from national and international news agencies, e.g., Reuters and Xinhua News Agency.
Charleston Chiang, PhD
Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
charleston.chiang@med.usc.edu
@CharlestonCWKC
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qYy0_YwAAAAJ&hl=en
http://chianglab.usc.edu
Charleston Chiang is Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine at USC. He is a medical population geneticist focused on understanding how the evolutionary forces, specifically demographic history and natural selection, shaped the genetic architecture of complex traits within and between human populations. To this end, he has led a number of large-scale genomic studies in humans to characterize the fine-scale population structure, to investigate signals of natural selection and adaptation, and to leverage these evolutionary insights to map the genetic loci underlying human complex traits. He is most interested in studying diverse populations with a unique history; he has worked with populations from Finland, China, Sardinia, as well as with cohorts of Latino Americans and Native Hawaiians. Prior to his position at Center for Genetic Epidemiology, Dr. Chiang received his B.S. in Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Ph.D. in Genetics from Harvard University, and completed his postdoctoral training in Population Genetics and Human Genetics at UCLA. His current lab website can be found at http://chianglab.usc.edu
Junhan Cho, PhD
Assistant Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
junhanch@usc.edu
Dr. Junhan Cho is an Assistant Professor of Research in the Department of Preventive Medicine in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. He is the Director of Methodology and Statistics for the USC-Health, Emotion, & Addiction Laboratory (USC-HEAL), which conducts interdisciplinary research on mental health problems and health-related behaviors. With a strong interest to develop advanced research methodologies, Dr. Cho’s research aims to address how diverse social contexts and psychological vulnerabilities intersect to increase risk of addictive behaviors. Based on his research background on Human Development and Family Science throughout master and doctoral programs, his studies incorporate both theoretical and methodological frameworks necessary to conducting longitudinal and prevention studies on youth health risk behaviors with a focus on the psychosocial processes influenced by family and community contexts. His current studies include: 1) developmental patterns of conjoint multiple health risk behaviors; 2) longitudinal risk and protective pathways linking early contextual stressors to mental health problems in adolescence; and 3) interaction of social contexts and biological factors influencing psychological vulnerability to addictive behaviors including substance use across adolescence and young adulthood.
Chih-Ping Chou, PhD
Emeritus Professor Population and Public Health Sciences
cchou@usc.edu
Dr. Chou is a Professor of Preventive Medicine. His research focuses on the advancement of research methodology and statistical techniques in social and health behavioral research. His research interest falls into three distinct areas: evaluation of prevention intervention of substance use among adolescents; evaluation of substance abuse treatment, and statistical and methodological application and development for prevention research. Dr. Chou is an internationally recognized researcher on structural equation modeling. Â He has a well-established record on the application and development of statistical models and research methodologies in prevention research, and has extensive experience in longitudinal analyses of the effects of health promotion interventions, structural equation modeling, multilevel modeling, growth curve modeling and psychometrics analysis. Dr. Chou received the Research Scientist Development Award and several research projects from NIH to study advanced statistical methods for prevention research. He has also been serving as the directors of measurement core and statistics core for four NIH funded transdisciplinary research centers based at USC. Dr. Chou also holds a joint appointment in School of Social Work.
Farzana Choudhury, PhD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
fchoudhu@usc.edu
Myles Cockburn, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
cockburn@usc.edu
Myles Cockburn is Professor in the Department of Population & Public Health Sciences\nand the Department of Dermatology, focusing on cancer etiology and prevention. A native of New Zealand, he came to USC to study melanoma risk factors and to design methods for improved primary prevention and screening. His current research focuses on improving SunSmart attitudes and behaviors in school children throughout Los Angeles, developing skin self examination methods for effective skin cancer screening, and working with clinical dermatologists and oncologists to better understand the complex role of UV in melanogenesis. Incorporating his background in GIS and spatial sciences, he has worked extensively on elucidating the role of pesticide exposures in hormone-related cancers and Parkinson’s Disease with collaborators from UCLA and elsewhere in California. In his role in the Los Angeles Cancer Surveillance Program he is responsible for the development and dissemination of novel methods for improving cancer control, particularly in diverse and underserved populations. Dr. Cockburn mentors a number of PhD students who are trained in all aspects of epidemiologic investigation while participating in, and often taking a leading role in, his ongoing research studies. Dr. Cockburn is a member of the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center where he co-leads the Cancer Control Program and DIrects the Population Research Shared Resource, and is a member of the Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center, and USC’s Spatial Sciences Institute.
Jonathan Cohen, JD
Clinical Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences (Part-Time)
jecohen@usc.edu
David Conti, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
dconti@usc.edu
The Conti Lab performs research in genetic and environmental epidemiology with a particular interest in identifying and characterizing risk factors across populations. This includes development of statistical methods and applied collaborations. Methodological research aims to integrate multiple omic measurements, biological knowledge, and external prior information in statistical modeling, primarily focusing on the use of Bayesian hierarchical models. More recently, we have been developing a stochastic epidemic model for the COVID-19 pandemic in Los Angeles County. https://contilab.usc.edu
Saida Coreas
Research Assistant
scoreas@usc.edu
Saida Coreas is a PhD Student in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She graduated from California State University, Los Angeles in 2018 with a B.S in Public Health. She completed a 3-year (2018-2021) post-baccalaureate Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA) fellowship at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland where she worked on research projects looking at racial/ethnic differences in tobacco product use patterns among U.S. adults, as well as relationships between cigarette smoking susceptibility and smoking initiation among U.S. youth. Other work includes investigating the relationship between acculturation and cardiometabolic risk factors among U.S. Latinos. Her research focuses on understanding how factors relating to social determinants of health influence tobacco use among minority populations. In her free time, Saida enjoys gardening, going on road trips, and spending time with friends and family.
Fabian Corlier, PhD, MSc
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
fcorlier@usc.edu
Victoria Cortessis, PhD
Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
Director of Research in Obstetrics and Gynecology
cortessi@usc.edu
Dr. Cortessis? professional activities are dedicated mainly to research and teaching. Her primary scientific identity is as an epidemiologist, but her work integrates approaches from anthropology, epidemiology, human genetics and molecular biology. In her most long-standing research programs, she investigates complex etiology of urogenital malignancies and congenital disorders by implementing hypothesis-driven research at USC and by collaborating with international consortia to accelerate forms of agnostic discovery that require extraordinarily large data resources. She has recently expanded her work to address cervical cancer disparities, a topic in which her expertise in cancer etiology intersects an enduring interest in the health of underserved communities. Her teaching at undergraduate, masters and doctoral levels focuses on epidemiologic methods and epidemiologic approaches to understanding chronic disease; she also brings the perspective of population science to interdisciplinary instruction in clinical-translational research.
Panayiota Courelli, PhD
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
courelli@usc.edu
Wendy Cozen, DO, MPH
Adjunct Research Professor
wcozen@usc.edu
Dr. Cozen’s areas of interest include the epidemiology of hematologic neoplasms, particularly Hodgkin’s disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and multiple myeloma. She is currently conducting several case-control studies examining various aspects of T-cell function, including V-Beta T-cell repertories, cytokine secretion and T-cell replication, as susceptibility phenotypes for Hodgkin’s disease and multiple myeloma in twins. In addition, Dr. Cozen is the medical epidemiologist for the USC Cancer Surveillance Program and has expertise in the areas of cancer surveillance, nosology and cancer cluster analysis.
Samantha Cwalina
cwalina@usc.edu
Sam graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2014 with a B.S. in Psychology, where she conducted high-impact research on nicotine reduction paradigms in rodent and human subjects. Currently in her third year at USC, she works with fellow tobacco regulatory scientists to inform tobacco-related policy decisions that will reduce the number of preventable deaths, diseases, and addictions attributable to tobacco use in the United States.
Aninda Das, MD, MPH, FAAP
Clinical Assistant Professor of Medical Education (Part-Time)
anindada@usc.edu
Kusha Davar, MD
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
davar@usc.edu
NallelyDeAnda-Zamora De Anda-Zamora
Student Worker, Research
deandaza@usc.edu
Kayla de la Haye, PhD
Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
delahaye@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/kayla-de-la-haye/9/95a/231
Project: Quantitative Network-based Models of Adaptive Team Behavior|https://muriteams.cs.ucsb.edu
@kayladelahaye
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RrrcROUAAAAJ&hl=en
Kayla de la Haye is an Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California, who specializes in applying social network analysis and systems science to health promotion and disease prevention. Her research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Defense, targets family and community social networks to promote healthy eating and prevent childhood obesity, and explores the role of social networks in group problem solving in families, teams, and coalitions. Dr. de la Haye previously worked as an Associate Behavioral/Social Scientist at the RAND Corporation, and she is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Network of Social Network Analysis (INSNA). In 2018, she received the INSNA Freeman Award for significant contributions to the study of social structure. Dr. de la Haye holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Adelaide, Australia.
Adam de Smith, PhD
Assistant Professor of Clinical
desmith@usc.edu
@adamdesmith
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-de-smith-08796929/
https://sites.usc.edu/childhoodcancer/
Adam de Smith is an Assistant Professor in the USC Center for Genetic Epidemiology in the Department of Preventive Medicine, and is a member of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is a genetic epidemiologist with a research focus on identifying the causes of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common childhood cancer. Dr. de Smith leads studies investigating the role of common and rare genetic variants in ALL etiology, with a particular interest in elucidating the increased ALL risk in Latinos. He also leads a study of leukemia in children with Down syndrome, the International Study of Down Syndrome Acute Leukemia (IS-DSAL), investigating genetic and epigenetic variation associated with risk of DS-ALL. In addition, Dr. de Smith utilizes whole genome sequencing of tumors to examine potential causative agents, i.e. DNA mutational signatures as molecular footprints of environmental exposures.
Dennis Deapen, DrPH, MPH
Clinical Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
ddeapen@usc.edu
Dennis Deapen, DrPH received a B.S. in Psychology in 1975 at Walla Walla College in Washington, a Masters in Public Health – Epidemiology in 1977 at Loma Linda University in California, and a Doctorate in Public Health – Epidemiology at University California Los Angeles in 1982. Currently the Director of the Los Angeles Cancer Surveillance Program, and Professor, Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. He is past president of the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries. Major areas of interest are human health risks of breast implants, epidemiology and etiology of cancer, neurologic and connective tissue diseases, development of innovative methodologies for the above, and methods of assessing occupational and socioeconomic determinants of cancer.
Virginia Defrank
Program Manager Undergraduate Masters Professional Programs
defrank@usc.edu
Scott Donaldson
Research Associate, Senior
scottdon@usc.edu
Scott Donaldson is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. He completed his Postdoctoral Scholarship with the Center for Research and Intervention in Tobacco Control (CRITC) at the University of California, San Diego and received his Ph.D. in psychology with a concentration in evaluation, applied research methods, and positive organizational psychology from Claremont Graduate University. Prior to his doctoral training, Scott received a master`s degree in organizational psychology from the University of Southern California, and his bachelor`s degree in psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on the design, measurement, and evaluation of health and well-being interventions. He currently works with the SOMA Lab director to help reach the aims of the Tobacco Industry Monitoring Evaluation (TIME).
Allison Dormanesh, M.S.
Project Specialist
ad79448@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisondormanesh/
Allison Dormanesh is a project specialist in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She earned her B.A. in Ethnic Studies from Cal Poly SLO, with a focus on medical sciences, and an M.S. in Health and the Public Interest from Georgetown University. Her research has focused on the intersection of race and medicine, as well as health disparities affecting predominately low-income and underrepresented communities. She is currently assisting on projects that use data from social media (Instagram/Twitter) to understand 1) the marketing and promotional activities of companies and services that may influence health behaviors, 2) user perceptions of vaping products.
Fatema Dossajee, MPH
Project Manager
fatema.dossajee@med.usc.edu
Fatema Dossajee is the Program Manager for the group, with a leading role in financial, operational, and personnel management. Fatema is currently collaborating with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to develop a digital platform that will serve as the go-to resource for global stakeholders on congenital syphilis elimination and fuel momentum to tackle this issue. She has several years of prior experience developing, implementing, and managing projects in the healthcare and hospital industry. Fatema has demonstrated the ability in streamlining operational processes and workflows to improve efficiency in various clinical, research, academic, non-profit, and government organizations. She received a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, San Diego, and her Master’s in Public Health with a concentration in Healthcare Administration from National University She is passionate about the intersection of public health and technology to improve healthcare delivery and efficiency.
Dayane Duenas Barahona
Research Coordinator I
duenasga@usc.edu
Dayane is a first-generation college graduate and received her B.S. in Public Health from CSULA. She joined Dr. Johnston’s team in 2017 and worked on a project involving communities living near a lead-smelting factory in Los Angeles. Currently, she works in the Children’s AIRE Study assisting with field work as well as project coordination. Her research interests include working with vulnerable populations/EJ communities and learning about the effects that air pollution has on the human body.
Genevieve Dunton, PhD, MPH
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences & Psychology
Division Chief for the Division of Health Behavior Research (HBR)
dunton@usc.edu
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/genevieve-dunton/1/94a/279/
https://reach.usc.edu
@GenevieveDunton
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=AgCaPakAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Genevieve Dunton, PhD, MPH is a Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences and Psychology, and Chief of the Division of Health Behavior Research at the University of Southern California. She earned a doctorate in Health Psychology from the University of California, Irvine and a Master of Public Health from the University of Southern California. Dr. Dunton received post-doctoral training in physical activity, nutrition, and cancer prevention from the Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Dunton´s research examines health behaviors related to chronic disease risk in children and adults, with a focus on physical activity and nutrition. Dr. Dunton is the Director of the USC REACH (Real-Time Eating Activity and Children’s Health) lab, whose goals are to develop, test, and apply real-time data capture methodologies and applications, using smartphones and wearable sensors, to better understand the effects of psychological, social, and environmental factors on eating and physical activity. She is the PI on numerous studies funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society, author of over 190 peer-reviewed publications, and past Chair of the American Public Health Association Physical Activity Section. Dr. Dunton is also past Chair of the National Physical Activity Plan Public Health Sector Committee and past member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Implementation of Physical Activity Surveillance Strategies.
Sandrah Eckel, PhD
Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
eckel@usc.edu
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HKcr3eEAAAAJ&hl=en
I am an Associate Professor in the Division of Biostatistics of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC). My work focuses on on statistical methods and applications in environmental epidemiology and exhaled breath biomarkers. I lead an NIEHS-funded R01 on statisical methods for exhaled nitric oxide and I lead the statistical group working on methods for sensor-based, integrated health monitoring systems for measuring environmental, physiological, and behavioral factors in epidemiological studies of asthma in children.
Patricia Escobedo, Ph.D., M.A.
Research Assistant
pescobed@usc.edu
Patricia Escobedo is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow for the BUILD PODER program at California State University Northridge. She earned her doctoral degree in the Health Behavior Research from the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at USC. As a doctoral student, Patricia was awarded the USC Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS) Predoctoral Fellowship and a Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) Predoctoral Fellowship Award. As a TRDRP award recipient, she examined the spatial distribution and clustering of vaping and cannabis retailers to understand which communities in Los Angeles are disproportionately impacted by higher retailer density. During her doctoral training she also worked on research projects that examined the content of tobacco brand websites, tobacco and cannabis marketing on social media platforms, the occurrence of vape pen product placement in music videos and how -unprimed recall of e-cigarettes product placement in music videos is associated with e-cigarette use.
Juan Espinoza, MD, FAAP
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics | Division of General Pediatrics
jcespino@usc.edu
Tyler Evans, MD, MS, MPH
Adjunct Research Associate Professor
tbe_950@usc.edu
Tyler B. Evans, MD, MS, MPH, AAHIVS, DTM&H, FIDSA currently serves as the CEO and co-founder of Wellness and Equity Alliance, a national alliance of public health clinicians and supporting operations committed to transforming health care delivery to vulnerable communities with a focus on effective COVID-19 clinical services in strategic settings. Prior to this, he held a number of physician executive positions, including CEO/CMO for Curative Medical Associates, where we facilitated the mass administration of COVID-19 vaccines across the nation with >2 million doses in 10 states with a focus on health equity. He was previously the Deputy Health Officer for the Marin County (Bay Area, California) Health and Human Services Agency and leading the COVID-19 vaccine mass distribution operations, as well as the first chief medical officer (CMO) for NYC – based at the Office of Emergency Management medical branch focusing on COVID-19 isolation, quarantine and risk reduction hotel operations. Prior to COVID-19, he was the CMO for the county of Santa Cruz (California) Health Services Agency, and held multiple other leadership positions in Southern California focusing on homelessness, substance abuse and migrant health, as well as leading infectious disease divisions in a number of organizations across the US – including the AIDS HealthCare Foundation.
With training in tropical medicine/infectious disease, internal medicine, preventive medicine/public health, and epidemiology, he has worked extensively with vulnerable populations both in the US and abroad. In addition to a number of international missions (mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Middle East) with Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders), Partners in Health and other global organizations, he has also worked domestically serving Native Americans with the Indian Health Service, as well as at a large federally qualified health center (FQHC) in NYC, where he established one of the first refugee/asylee integrated primary care/mental health programs. He is one of the founders of the NYC Refugee and Asylee Health Coalition (NYCRAHC).
In terms of populations, his life’s work has focused on health equity, working with special populations, namely migrants (namely refugees, asylees and victims of human trafficking), the LGBTQ (with a special focus on transgender populations), the homeless, and Native Americans. He is currently focusing on the mental health needs of women affected by gender-based violence (including conflict-related gang rapes) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In terms of fields of medicine, most of his experience is in HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, TB, neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), travel medicine, as well as general primary care and community health. Academically, his research interests are in HIV, hepatitis C, COVID-19, tropical and travel medicine, transgender health, homeless health and the social determinants of health. He holds two faculty appointments at the University of Southern California (USC), Keck School of Medicine , Department of Population and Public Health Sciences and University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) with a number of teaching and precepting engagements. He also serves on a number of boards and executive committees, including the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA), representing >12,000 HIV providers in the US. He currently splits his time between the Bay Area, CA and New York, NY.
Esthelle Ewusi Boisvert
ewusiboi@usc.edu
Esthelle Ewusi Boisvert is a doctoral student in Clinical Science in USC’s Department of Psychology. She received her B.A. in Psychology (Honours) from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, in May 2016, as well as her Certificate in Substance Abuse Counselling from the University of Montreal in December 2016. Broadly, Esthelle is interested in the etiology and treatment of addiction, especially when comorbid with other psychiatric disorders. She is also interested in examining the factors that contribute to the initiation and maintenance of substance use. Outside of doing science, Esthelle likes to go for runs, cook good meals in the least amount of time possible, explore microbreweries, and attend free concerts!
Albert Farias, MPH, PhD
Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
albertfa@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/albert-j-farias-903b3972
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dsZx8KEAAAAJ&hl=en
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California. My research is devoted to helping eliminate racial/ethnic disparities in cancer outcomes by furthering the understanding of how the provision of medical care contributes to racial/ethnic disparities in cancer incidence and outcomes. I have applied my academic training with a unique perspective as a first-generation college graduate to 1) explain the existence of racial/ethnic health disparities and 2) identify health inequities in cancer care. To carry out this research, I have applied advanced training in methodology and analytic approaches.
Shohreh Farzan, PhD
Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
sffarzan@usc.edu
Dr. Shohreh Farzan is an environmental epidemiologist, with a background in molecular biology and toxicology. Dr. Farzan received her BA from Mount Holyoke College (2004) and her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology from Dartmouth Medical School under the mentorship of Dr. David Robbins (2009). Dr. Farzan completed her postdoctoral training in environmental epidemiology at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, under the mentorship of Dr. Margaret Karagas, prior to joining the Keck School of Medicine at USC in 2016.\n\nDr. Farzan’s research focuses on the impact of environmental contaminants on maternal-child health, with a special interest in cardiometabolic health. Much of Dr. Farzan’s work focuses on the role of environmental exposures in altering preclinical indicators of cardiovascular and metabolic disease risk, particularly during vulnerable lifestages, such as childhood and pregnancy. Within the Maternal and Developmental Risks of Environmental and Social Stressors (MADRES) study, a NIMHD-funded Center of Excellence on Environmental Health Disparities Research, she focuses on the role of prenatal air pollutants and psychosocial stressors on maternal postpartum cardiometabolic health. Dr. Farzan also leads multiple studies of the impacts of toxic metals and air pollutants on preclinical biomarkers of cardiovascular dysfunction in children and adolescents, both as PI of a NIEHS R01 to investigate the role of air pollutants in the development of atherosclerosis in the transition from childhood to young adulthood and as MPI of the ECHO LA DREAMERs study. She is also MPI of a NIEHS Research to Action R01 that established the Children’s AIRE cohort to investigate environmental contributors to children’s respiratory health in a rural border region of California to inform community-engaged public health actions and the recipient of a NIEHS K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award.
Maryam Farzanegan, PhD
Clinical Associate Professor of Medical Education (Part Time)
mfarzane@usc.edu
Dr. Farzanegan’s research, teaching, and personal interests focus on policies and programs related to provision of equitable basic services for the world’s most marginalized and underserved children. She has 20 years of practical experience working with UNICEF in New York, field offices in Africa and Asia, and the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, Italy. Through her work with policy makers and practitioners worldwide, and through teaching at universities, she has advocated strongly for the rights of the world’s most disadvantaged children to health care, education and social protection. Prior to joining UNICEF, she served as Assistant Professor of Occupational Health Sciences at the New York Institute of Technology and as Staff Research Associate in the UCLA School of Public Health. She received her Ph.D. from the USC School of Education in special education with a public health focus.
Anne Fehrenbacher, PhD
Assistant Professor Of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
afehrenb@usc.edu
Laura Ferguson, PhD
Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
laurafer@usc.edu
Laura Ferguson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences. She is the Director of Research for the Institute on Inequalities in Global Health and Director of the Program on Global Health & Human Rights at the Keck School of Medicine. She is also on the faculty of USC Dornsife’s Spatial Sciences Institute. Dr. Ferguson earned her MSc in Population and International Health from the Harvard School of Public Health and her PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her work focuses on understanding and addressing health system and societal factors affecting health, and developing the evidence base of how attention to human rights can improve health outcomes.
Dr. Ferguson has spent extended periods of time in low-income countries, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, collaborating with local partners to design and manage research and programs to tackle a broad range of issues including HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, and child health.
Dr. Ferguson serves on a range of expert advisory groups to the World Health Organization and UNAIDS. She is also an Associate Editor for Reproductive Health Matters.
Emilio Ferrara, PhD
Associate Professor of Communication and Computer Science
emiliofe@usc.edu
Jane Figueiredo, Ph.D., M.Sc., B.A.Sc.
Adjunct Research Associate Professor
janefigu@usc.edu
Carol Folt, PhD
President
president@usc.edu
Dr. Carol L. Folt serves as the twelfth president of the University of Southern California. She is a highly experienced leader, internationally recognized life scientist, and award-winning teacher. In leading USC, Dr. Folt brings broad executive and leadership experience across the academy, including arts and sciences, professional schools, and academic medicine.
Throughout her career, Dr. Folt has earned a reputation for always placing students at the center, advancing academic excellence and innovation, setting ambitious goals, prioritizing shared governance, and focusing on the future.
Read more…
Alyssa Foster
Population and Public Health Sciences Student Worker
abfoster@usc.edu
Honour Fottrell, B.A.
Student
fottrell@usc.edu
Honour is currently a Master of Public Health student at USC concentrating in Community Health Promotion. She has worked on various COVID-19 related studies at the Keck School of Medicine. She graduated from the University of Washington in 2020 with a B.A. in Public Health/Global Health, where she did mental health research. Honour's research interests are infectious disease, sexual health, substance abuse, and psychedelic-assisted therapy.
Meredith Franklin, PhD
Clinical Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences (Part-Time)
meredith.franklin@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredithfranklin
https://meredithfranklin.github.io/
David Freyer, DO, MS
Professor of Clinical Pediatrics
dfreyer@chla.usc.edu
Dr. David Freyer joined Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in January 2008. As Director of the LIFE Program, he oversees all aspects of its services, which include clinical assessments of more than 350 patients annually, research regarding their long-term outcomes, and training of fellows, residents, and other health care professionals in the care of childhood cancer survivors. His clinical and research activities have focused principally on cancer survivorship and cancer control, including the recognition, management and prevention of short-and long-term morbidity of treatment, as well as health care transition for young adult survivors of childhood cancer, adolescent and young adult (AYA) oncology, palliative care, and decision-making at the end of life. Dr. Freyer is a member of the Children’s Oncology Group where he serves as chair of the AYA Committee, on the Steering Committees for the Survivorship & Outcomes and Cancer Control Committees, and on several protocol and administrative committees. Dr. Freyer graduated magna cum laude from DePauw University, obtained his medical degree from the Des Moines University College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery, and completed post-graduate medical training at Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine and Hospitals, Rush University Medical Center and the University of Michigan Medical Center. In 2007, he obtained a MS degree in Clinical Research Design and Statistical Analysis from the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
Erika Garcia, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
garc991@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/erika-garcia-a5978726/
Erika Garcia is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Environmental Health of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She is an environmental epidemiologist whose research focuses on the role of airborne environmental contaminants in the development of human disease and applies both traditional epidemiologic as well as advanced causal inference methodologies. She has published studies conducted in both occupational and community exposure settings. Her early research involved examination of the healthy worker survivor effect and application of g-methods in cancer studies of autoworkers exposed to metalworking fluids. More recently, her research has focused on the effects of early-life air pollution exposure on pediatric respiratory and metabolic health outcomes, including new-onset asthma, lung function, and childhood obesity. As part of these studies, she uses causal inference methods to estimate effects of policy-relevant air pollution interventions. Dr. Garcia received a PhD and MPH in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley.
Robert Garcia, PhD
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
garc617@usc.edu
Nicole Gatto, PhD, MPH
Adjunct Research Assistant Professor
nativewoman@earthlink.net
William Gauderman, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
jimg@usc.edu
Dr. Gauderman’s research falls into three areas:
1) Statistical methods: He has developed novel statistical methods for applications in genetic epidemiology over the past 30 years. He has focused on methods that unite information from both genetic and environmental sources, with particular emphasis on gene-environment (GxE) interactions. These have included methods applicable to pedigree studies, candidate gene studies, and genomewide association studies (GWAS). Across these topic areas, he and his trainees have developed more efficient (statistically more powerful) methods for detecting GxE interactions and have demonstrated that incorporating GxE interactions into an analysis can increase power to detect a novel gene.
2) Software development: He has always felt that the development of software is an important way to translate new statistical methods into a format that can be utilized by others in the analysis of their data. This is particularly true for methods that involve complex calculations (e.g. analysis of pedigrees), non-standard models (e.g. 2-step methods for GxE analysis), or large databases (e.g. genomewide association studies). He has developed three distinct software packages over his career: 1) The Genetic Analysis Package (GAP), which implements novel methods developed for segregation and linkage analysis of pedigrees; 2) Quanto, which implements sample size and power calculations for genetic epidemiology studies; and 3) GxEscanR, which implements methods developed for genomewide GxE scans.
3) Applied data analysis: He has dedicated a significant portion of his time to the analysis of real data, with the goal of publishing findings in a substantive medical/biomedical journal. His work has included the investigation of how air pollution in southern California affects children’s respiratory health, work stemming from his involvement in the Children’s Health Study (CHS). In 2004, he led a paper in NEJM showing that children in communities with poor air quality have reduced lung function development during their important adolescent growth period. He followed this with a paper in Lancet in 2007 demonstrating that in addition to regional air quality, living close to a busy freeway has an additional negative impact on adolescent lung development. Since the 1990’s, pollutant levels in southern California have declined by as much as 50% for several of the main criteria pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter (PM). He led another NEJM paper in 2015 demonstrating that these improvements in air quality are associated with substantial improvements in children’s adolescent lung development. Related to his work in air pollution epidemiology, he served on the U.S. EPA’s clean air scientific advisory committee (CASAC, ozone review panel). He has also testified at federal, state, and local venues related to air quality issues and has responded to numerous requests for interviews by television, radio, web, and newspaper sources related to each of the three papers described above. He also has a longstanding interest in cancer epidemiology and is currently co-PI of a large study aimed at identifying GxE interactions for colorectal cancer, a project that includes over 100,000 study subjects. The methods and software he has developed are currently being used to scan the genome for GxE interactions with several factors known to influence colorectal cancer risk, including smoking, red meat consumption, alcohol, aspirin, and obesity.
Steven Gazal, PhD
Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
gazal@usc.edu
Angie Ghanem-Uzqueda, PhD, MPH, CIC
Clinical Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Population and Public Health Sciences (Clinician Educator)
angiegha@usc.edu
Frank Gilliland, MD, MPH, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
gillilan@usc.edu
Dr. Gilliland is an established leading investigator in air pollution research, respiratory health and cancer epidemiology, and gene-environment interactions, and he has been the principal investigator for many epidemiological investigations. \n\nSince arriving at USC in 1997, he has published more than 190 scientific papers. Dr. Gilliland is Hastings Professor of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. After obtaining a master’s degree in physics, he received his medical degree from the University of Virginia, followed by a residency and fellowship in occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Minnesota, where he received his M.P.H. and Ph.D. in environmental epidemiology. He also obtained board certification in emergency medicine and in environmental and occupational medicine. \n\nPrior to his appointment at USC, Dr. Gilliland was a faculty member at the University of New Mexico, focusing on occupational and environmental determinants of malignant and non-malignant respiratory disease as well as prostate and breast cancer.
Michael Goran, PhD
Professor of Pediatrics
Dr. Robert C. Atkins Chair in Childhood Obesity and Diabetes
Co-Director, Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute
goran@usc.edu
Prabhu Gounder, MD
Adjunct Research Professor
PGounder@ph.lacounty.gov
Dr. Prabhu Gounder is a medical epidemiologist with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health where he oversees surveillance and outbreak investigations for viral hepatitis, healthcare associated infections, and respiratory diseases including influenza. Prior to joining LA County in 2017, Dr. Gounder served for 7 years as a medical officer with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He was first assigned to the New York City Department of Health and then to CDC’s Arctic Investigations Program in Anchorage, Alaska. His research while in Alaska focused on viral hepatitis, vaccine preventable diseases, and health disparities in Alaska Native people.
Sofia Gruskin, JD, MIA
Director, Institute on Inequalities in Global Health
Professor, Population and Public Health Sciences (Keck)
Professor, Law (Gould)
gruskin@usc.edu
@SofiaGruskin
Sofia Gruskin directs the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health (IIGH). She is Professor of Preventive Medicine and Chief of the Disease Prevention, Policy and Global Health Division at the Keck School of Medicine; Professor of Law and Preventive Medicine at the Gould School of Law; and an affiliate faculty member with the Spatial Sciences Institute at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Within USC, she is highly engaged in university service, including serving as a member of the USC Academic Senate Executive Board and primary convener of the USC Law & Global Health Collaboration.
Gruskin currently sits on numerous international boards and committees, including the PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board; the Lancet Commission on Gender and Global Health; the IUSSP Steering Committee to Strengthen Civil Registration and Vital Statistics Systems; and the Lancet Commission on Health and Human Rights. She is co-coordinator of the Rights-Oriented Research and Education Network for Sexual and Reproductive Health, an international network of sexual and reproductive health and rights researchers and advocates from the Global South and Global North. Professor Gruskin has published extensively, including several books, training manuals and edited journal volumes, and more than 200 articles and chapters covering a wide range of topics. She is an associate editor for Global Public Health, on the editorial advisory board for Revue Internationale des Études du Développement, and a trustee of Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters. Previously, she served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Public Health and editor-in-chief for Health and Human Rights, both for over a decade.
A pioneer in bringing together multidisciplinary approaches to global health, Gruskin’s work — which ranges from global policy to the grassroots level — has been instrumental in developing the conceptual, methodological and empirical links between health and human rights. With a long-standing focus on HIV, sexual and reproductive health, child and adolescent health, gender-based violence, non-communicable disease, and health systems, Gruskin’s work also seeks to address the manifestations of inequalities in a range of new areas, including sustainability, climate change, and the long-term impacts of COVID-19 and other emerging pandemics.
Current research partners include LA Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Office of International Affairs, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Health Organization, Global Action for Trans Equality, the International AIDS Society, UNAIDS, as well as local organizations and universities in Brazil, Kenya, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa and Vietnam.
In recent years, Gruskin served on the board of directors for the Guttmacher Institute; the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on the Outcome and Impact Evaluation of Global HIV/AIDS Programs Implemented under the Lantos/Hyde Act of 2008; the UN Technical Advisory Group for the High-Level Working Group on the Health and Human Rights of Women, Children and Adolescents; the Technical Advisory Group of the UN Global Commission on HIV and the Law; the UNAIDS Reference Group on HIV and Human Rights; and the Global Advisory Board on Sexual Health and Wellbeing. Gruskin was with Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health for many years; director of the Program on International Health and Human Rights and associate professor in the department of Global Health and Population; and co-founder and co-director of the Interdepartmental Program on Women, Gender and Health.
Rima Habre, MSc, ScD
Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
habre@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rimahabre
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rima_Habre
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=c50ZEZ0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
Dr. Habre is an Associate Professor of Clinical Preventive Medicine in Environmental Health and Spatial Sciences at the University of Southern California. Her research aims to understand the effects of co-occurring environmental exposures, air pollution mixtures and social stressors on the health of vulnerable populations across the life course. She develops methods to advance personal exposure assessment using personal monitoring (e.g., wearables, sensors), geolocation, and machine-learning based spatiotemporal models.\n\nAs a native of Beirut, Lebanon, Dr. Habre attended the American University of Beirut for undergraduate studies in Environmental Health (2006). She then completed a Master of Science in Environmental Health in the Harvard Cyprus Program (2007). \n\nDr. Habre then joined the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and trained with Professor Petros Koutrakis. She received her Doctor of Science in Environmental Health (2012) with a concentration in exposure science, air pollution and biostatistics.\n\nDr. Habre co-chairs the Geospatial Working Group in the national NIH Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program. She co-leads the Exposure Sciences Research Program in the Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center (NIEHS Core Center). She is also the Director of Exposure Assessment in two large research centers at USC investigating the effects of air pollution exposure over the life course and during pregnancy on maternal and child health. \n\nResearch Interests\n\n1. Developing measurement and modeling methods for advancing air pollution exposure science\n2. Use of real-time mHealth technologies, personal monitoring, sensors, geolocation and informatics for precision environmental health\n3. Epidemiological investigations of the effects of air pollution mixtures and sources on the health of vulnerable populations across the life course\n4. Cumulative impact of environmental health disparities on exposure and health burden in affected populations
Christopher Haiman, ScD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
AFLAC Chair in Cancer Research
haiman@usc.edu
Christopher Haiman, ScD, is a professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and AFLAC Chair in Cancer Research. He also leads the Cancer Epidemiology Program at USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Epidemiology and Genetics division in the Department of Preventive Medicine. Dr. Haiman is a genetic epidemiologist whose research is focused on exploring racial and ethnic disparities in cancer risk, with the goal of developing approaches to reduce these disparities. He is co-principal investigator of the Multiethnic Cohort (MEC), a large prospective study of cancer in primarily non-European ancestry populations (n>215,000) that has been the foundation of his scientific investigation into the genetic risk of cancer, initially through genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and more recently in large-scale genomic consortia in minority populations that employ next-generation sequencing technology. In addition to these leadership and administrative research positions, he has vast experience in directing large consortia and is currently the scientific leader of the African Ancestry Prostate Cancer Consortium (AAPC). He has also served as a steering committee member for numerous NIH consortia, including the NCI GAME-ON Consortium, NHGRI Population Architecture Using Genomics and Epidemiology Consortium (PAGE), NHGRI Gene Environment Association Studies (GENEVA) Consortium and the NCI Breast and Prostate Cancer Cohort Consortium (BPC3). He is also the principal investigator of the RESPOND African-American prostate cancer initiative. He has co-authored more than 450 peer-reviewed publications, with many in prominent journals, including Nature Genetics, The New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Ann Hamilton, PhD, MA
Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
ahamilt@med.usc.edu
Dr. Hamilton is a cancer epidemiologist whose research has focused on breast, prostate, and testicular cancer, as well as Kaposi’s Sarcoma. She has studied cancers in twins and is currently involved with an investigation of the relationship of exercise to endogenous estrogen levels in healthy identical twins.
Thordar Han
Undergraduate Research Assistant
thordarh@usc.edu
Thordar Han is an undergraduate student at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Computational Neuroscience, set to graduate in 2024. At USC, she serves as the Vice President of Finance for Blueprints For Pangaea, an organization committed to redistributing excess medical supplies to areas in need. She also volunteers with the Power-Based Harm/Mental Health focus group of NOVUS Think Tank. After graduation, she intends to enroll in a Master’s program in Translational Biotechnology and attend medical school. Her main aspiration is to pursue a career in psychiatry and apply technology as a means of addressing features of neurological functioning as well as health inequity. Outside of the classroom, she enjoys baking, reading, playing chess, and watching films.
Alyssa Harlow
Postdoctoral Scholar – Research Associate
afharlow@usc.edu
Dr. Harlow is an epidemiologist and Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California and the USC Health, Emotion, and Addiction Laboratory. After receiving her BA in Biocultural Anthropology from the University of Washington (2011), Dr. Harlow moved to Cairns, Australia to conduct research on mental health and addiction among remote Indigenous communities in the Cape York Peninsula with James Cook University. She earned her MPH in Social and Behavioral Sciences and Epidemiology (2016), and her PhD in Epidemiology (2021) from the Boston University School of Public Health. During her doctoral program, Dr. Harlow received funding for her dissertation as a competitively funded fellow with the American Heart Association’s Tobacco Center for Regulatory Science (A-TRAC 2.0).
Dr. Harlow’s research applies novel epidemiologic methods and causal inference to better understand the determinants and health effects of tobacco-product and substance use behaviors and inform policy. She has extensive experience conducting longitudinal analyses with the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH), a large national cohort study on tobacco product use. Her research primarily falls under three domains, including (a) documenting disparities and identifying fundamental causes of disparities in tobacco use among vulnerable populations; (b) identifying determinants of product transitions (e.g., initiation, progression, cessation), including the impact of product characteristics on substance use behaviors; and (c) examining the physical health effects of tobacco-product and cannabis use, including cardiopulmonary and reproductive health outcomes.
Jaana Hartiala, PhD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
hartiala@usc.edu
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=fcNDskUAAAAJ&view_op=list_works
Jaana A. Hartiala, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Preventive Medicine in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California. She earned her doctorate in Molecular Epidemiology from the University of Southern California. Dr. Hartiala received her post-doctoral training in Applied Statistical Genetics at the USC Keck School of Medicine, where she studied genome-wide associations of metabolite levels and cardiovascular disease. Dr. Hartiala’s research interests include systems genetics and computational biology approaches to identify genes and pathways for cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases; identification of environmental exposures that modulate susceptibility to cardiopulmonary diseases using epidemiological approaches; and study genome-wide gene-environment interactions for disease outcome and associated biomarkers. Dr. Hartiala’s more recent work include identifying a sex-specific genetic variant in the CPS1 gene that raises glycine levels and protects against cardiovascular disease among women. In another project, she showed that ambient air pollution is associated with the severity of coronary atherosclerosis and incident myocardial infarction among cardiac patients. Her current projects involve integrating large scale genetic, gene expression and metabolomic data to understand susceptibility to atherosclerosis and asthma.
Zainab Hasan
Student Worker, Research
zhasan@usc.edu
Zainab Hasan is an undergraduate student pursuing a B.S. in Global Health with a minor in Applied Analytics, set to graduate in 2022. She is also pursuing a progressive master’s degree in Applied Biostatistics/Epidemiology. Zainab is passionate about health disparities hopes to use data and research to address disparities and serve underserved communities. At USC, Zainab is the co-director of Keck Student Ambassadors and a Resident Assistant. She also volunteers with Ansar Service Partnership to address social justice issues in the LA community. In her free time, Zainab is a competitive figure skater. She also loves traveling, exploring new foods in LA with her friends, and spending time at the beach.
Allen Heller, MD, PhD
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
ahheller@usc.edu
Susanne Hempel, PhD
Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
susanneh@usc.edu
https://sites.usc.edu/socalevidencereview
Susanne Hempel is a professor of research in the department of Preventative Medicine and a faculty member at the Gehr Center for Health Systems Sciences and Innovation, USC Keck School of Medicine. She is the director of the Southern California Evidence Review Center (https://sites.usc.edu/socalevidencereview), leading contracts for federal agencies such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Psychological Health Center of Excellence (PHCoE), and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), as well as nonprofit organizations such as the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). Dr. Hempel oversees a large portfolio of evidence synthesis projects; including systematic reviews, scoping reviews, and stakeholder panels; and leads large multi-site and multi-discipline projects. Dr. Hempel is an affiliate adjunct senior behavioral scientist at RAND and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS) teaching systematic review methodology and applied psychometrics. Prior, she worked at the Center for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD), University of York, UK. Her academic background is personality psychology with a PhD from the University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.
Jacqueline Hernandez
CWSP Fall – Spring 2016 Student Worker
hern654@usc.edu
Megan Herting, PhD
Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
herting@usc.edu
https://hertinglab.usc.edu/
http://enigma.ini.usc.edu/ongoing/enigma-environment/
https://abcdstudy.org/
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8deLlAQAAAAJ&hl=en
@hertinglab
https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-herting-b0555a124/
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences and the Director of the Herting NeuroImaging Laboratory at the University of Southern California. Broadly, my research has focused on brain and cognitive development in healthy and at-risk populations including several ongoing NIH funded studies in children, adolescents, and young adults. Using cognitive-behavioral assessments, neuropsychological testing, semi-structured mental health interviews, and a multi-modal Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) approach, I aim to determine which lifestyle and environmental factors, including exposure to air pollutants, influence neurodevelopment, cognition, and mental health outcomes in children and adolescents. \n\nAt a national level, I am part of multiple NIH consortium projects that aim to further assess how hormones and the environment may affect brain maturation, cognition, and mental health, including the Linked External Data Environment and member of the Physical Health Working Groups for the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study (U01DA041048, 2P30ES007048-23S1) and the Neurodevelopment Working Group for the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program (4UH3OD023287). I am also a co-chair for the new ENIGMA Environment working group.
Howard Hodis, MD
Professor of Medicine
Harry J. Bauer and Dorothy Bauer Rawlins Professorship in Cardiology
athero@usc.edu
During his academic career, Dr. Hodis? overarching research interest has been in the area of vascular disease and atherobiology with investigative pursuits to understand the genetics and biology of the etiology and progression of these aging processes including prevention and intervention. In addition, Dr. Hodis? research interests include development and application of imaging and measurement tools for the assessment, screening, prevention and treatment of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. Since vascular disease is an aging process affected by many conditions, Dr Hodis? approach is integrative biology in practice and highly collaborative in application involving study of a broad array of conditions and disease processes that converge either as a cause of or result from atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. Dr. Hodis? work is translational in nature and spans basic to clinical science, including large population studies and intervention trials.\n\nWith more than 26 years of continuous NIH funding, Dr. Hodis has extensive experience as Principal Investigator from 20 NIH projects including 8 randomized controlled trials integrating translational research, biomedical engineering and integrative biology/medicine spanning basic, clinical and genetic investigation. In addition, Dr. Hodis has an extensive collaborative record as Co-Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on another 24 NIH projects. By leading a stable research team as director of the USC Atherosclerosis Research Unit, Dr. Hodis has successfully completed 10 single-center, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled serial arterial imaging trials of menopausal hormone therapy, lipid-lowering therapy, insulin-sensitizers, nattokinase, vitamin E, vitamin B and soy isoflavone supplementation.\n\nIn addition, as the director of the Atherosclerosis Research Unit Core Imaging and Reading Center (CIRC), Dr. Hodis has 25 years of experience in leading a stable team of highly-trained and experienced imaging specialist in the coordination and conduct of over 25 human clinical studies predominantly NIH-funded that have included large national randomized controlled trials and epidemiological and community studies. The CIRC provides a variety of non-invasive arterial imaging services encompassing anatomical and physiological measurements of atherosclerosis developed by Dr. Hodis? team providing a full-array of research and experienced capability to support all investigational approaches that employ arterial imaging.\n\nDr. Hodis has received a number of honors and awards including the North American Menopause Society Thomas Clarkson Outstanding Clinical and Basic Science Research Award, a peer-nominated award for translational contributions, NASA Technology Awards and an Outstanding Teaching Award from the University of Southern California. He has been inducted into the prestigious Association of American Physicians and holds membership in a variety of scientific organizations, such as Fellow of the American Heart Association. Dr. Hodis serves on Special Emphasis Panels and review committees for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other funding agencies and has extensive experience as Chair of Data Safety and Monitoring Boards for NIH-funded studies. Dr. Hodis has served on dissertation committees and mentored 56 MD/PhD, PhD and master level graduate students, most of whom have used research data from Atherosclerosis Research Unit (ARU) studies as the basis for their theses. In addition, Dr. Hodis has served as a co-mentor on several NIH K-awards. Dr. Hodis has delivered more than 300 invited presentations worldwide and authored or co-authored more than 250 original scientific, peer reviewed publications many of which have been in the field of women’s health.\n\nA major focus and special interest of Dr. Hodis? research has been women’s health in which he and his colleagues have made significant contributions to science. Dr. Hodis and his colleagues have conducted two of the earliest randomized controlled trials of hormone therapy and atherosclerosis intervention, the Estradiol Prevention Atherosclerosis Trial (EPAT; Ann Intern Med 2001) and the Women’s Estrogen-progestin Lipid-Lowering Hormone Atherosclerosis Regression Trial (WELL-HART; New Engl J Med 2003). The results of these early trials contributed to formation of the menopausal hormone therapy timing hypothesis that posits that the effects of hormone therapy depend on timing of initiation of hormone therapy in relation to menopause. Dr. Hodis and his colleagues conducted the Early versus Later Intervention Trial with Estradiol (ELITE; New Engl J Med 2016), the only randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial designed to test the menopausal hormone therapy timing hypothesis. The results of ELITE showed that the progression of atherosclerosis was reduced with hormone therapy when initiated in women less than 6 years since menopause but a null effect on atherosclerosis progression when initiated in women more than 10 years since menopause. ELITE supports the menopausal hormone therapy timing hypothesis, mechanistically explaining the divergent results from other studies reported over the past 40 years and has major public health significance. In addition, Dr. Hodis and his colleagues have conducted other women’s health studies such as the Women’s Isoflavone Soy Health (WISH; Stroke 2011) study, the only soy isoflavone primary prevention atherosclerosis trial in postmenopausal women. The ARU program is described at aru.usc.edu.
Paul Holtom, MD
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
holtom@usc.edu
Howard Hu, MD, MPH, ScD
Chair and Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
Flora L. Thornton Chair in Preventive Medicine
howard.hu@med.usc.edu
Howard Hu, MD, MPH, ScD, is the Flora L. Thornton Chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, at the University of Southern California. He is a physician-scientist, internist and preventive medicine specialist, with a doctoral degree in epidemiology. Previously, he has been Professor of Occupational & Environmental Medicine (tenured), Founding Director of the NIH/NIEHS Center for Children’s Environmental Health, Director of the Occupational Medicine Residency at the Harvard School of Public Health and Associate Physician in the Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston (1988- 2006); the NSF International Endowed Chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Professor of Environmental Health, Epidemiology and Medicine (tenured), Founding Director of the NIH/NIEHS Environmental Health Core Sciences Center, and Associate Physician at the University of Michigan and University of Michigan Health System (2006-2012); and Professor of Environmental Health, Epidemiology, Global Health, and Medicine (tenured) and the Founding Dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto (2012-2017). In 2017-2018, while on sabbatical from the University of Toronto, Dr. Hu was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington, following which he was appointed as Affiliate Professor in the School of Public Health. \n\nSince 1990, Dr. Hu has led multi-institutional and international teams of scientists, students and fellows devoted to investigating the environmental, nutritional, social, psychosocial, genetic and epigenetic determinants of chronic disease and impaired child development in birth cohort and aging cohort studies in the U.S., Mexico, India, China, and elsewhere around the world. His team’s work has generated over 300 publications and won several awards, such as the 1999 Progress and Achievement Award from the U.S. NIH/NIEHS, the 2009 Linus Pauling Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2011 Award of Excellence from the American Public Health Association, and the 2015 John Goldsmith Award for Outstanding Contributions from the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology. \n\nDr. Hu has continued his work on NIH-funded environmental birth cohort research (the Early Life Exposures in Mexico to Environmental Toxicants project: https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/supported/cohort/resources/cohort806011.cfm) while co-leading the Global Burden of Disease-Population Health initiative, which aims to improve understanding of pollution’s ?footprint? on the global burden of disease (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30318094). \n\nIn 1999-2000, Dr. Hu was a Senior Faculty Fulbright Scholar in India. He served on the Board of Directors and on four fact-finding missions for Physicians for Human Rights (Nobel Peace Prize co-winner, 1997); on the Board of Population and Public Health Practice of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences; on the Board of Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the National Research Council; on the External Advisory Council of the U.S. National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences; and as the Chair of the Research Commission for the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (Nobel Peace Prize, 1985). In the latter capacity, he and colleagues published ?Nuclear Wastelands?, which was nominated for the U.S. National Book Award in 1996. \n\nAs the Founding Dean of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Dr. Hu led Canada’s best and largest School of Public Health, a Faculty within Canada’s best Global University. With the School’s leaders, he advanced a number of innovative initiatives involving healthy cities, big data for population health, the integration of the Institute for Health Policy Management and Evaluation as well as the Joint Centre for Bioethics into the School, the creation of the endowed Waakabiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous health, the integration of population health into primary care, social entrepreneurship, and, with its partners around the world, the global agenda of addressing health inequities, supported, in part, by over $40M raised through the School’s Advancement Campaign. In 2016, Dr. Hu was elected to Fellowship in the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and in 2017, the School was ranked #10 on the ShanghaiRanking’s Global Rankings related to Public Health.
Marlene Huerta
huertam@usc.edu
Marlene Huerta was SOMA Lab`s first Postbaccalaureate Fellow. Prior to working with SOMA Lab, Marlene earned a B.S. in Public Health at Cal State LA (CSULA) and worked as a Patient Access Representative in the Department of Family Medicine at the Keck Hospital of USC. During her time at SOMA Lab, she worked on projects examining cannabis and tobacco retailers` promotional practices in lower SES communities. She is currently pursuing an MPH degree with a focus in urban health at CSULA.
Chanita Hughes Halbert, PhD
Visiting Professor of Preventive Medicine
Vice Chair for Research, Preventive Medicine
Associate Director for Cancer Equity
hughesha@usc.edu
Jimi Huh, PhD
Associate Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
jimihuh@usc.edu
Dr.Jimi Huh has joined the University of Southern California in 2011. She has a background in psychology and epidemiology, with specific interests in the topics of health disparities, acculturation and immigrant health. Since joining IPR, she has expanded her research to include developmental aspects of various health behaviors and has acquired various analytic skills, with special emphasis on multilevel modeling, mixture growth curve modeling, piecewise growth curve model, latent class analysis and latent transition analysis. Her past project, funded by Tobacco Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) examines cultural influences on tobacco use and environmental exposure to smoking among Korean American emerging adults (KAEA), using mixed methods. Her recent work also includes applying innovative statistical models pertinent to Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) data such as mixed-effects location scale model and time-varying effect models. Her current project assesses ecological contexts of smoking among KAEA using mobile device. She plans to develop a culturally-tailored ecological momentary intervention to curb smoking among KAEA.
Amie Hwang, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
amiehwan@usc.edu
Amie Hwang, MPH PHD is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences with broad training in nutrition, public health and epidemiology. Dr. Hwang graduated from UC Davis and worked for the Western Human Nutrition Research Center at the U.S. Department of Agriculture before pursuing her graduate training at the University of Southern California. She earned her MPH and PhD from the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at USC and had conducted several large scale epidemiologic studies of hematologic cancers during her training. In recent years, she has focused her research in studying disparate burden of cancer in children and ethnically underserved populations. She also works closely with the Cancer Surveillance Program in assessing cancer clusters in Los Angeles County and in utilizing central cancer registry data for cancer disparities research.
Sue Ingles, DrPH
Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
ingles@usc.edu
Khandaker Islam, MBBS, PhD
Assistant Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
islam@usc.edu
Talat Islam is an environmental epidemiologist who joined the USC faculty in 2009. He completed his medical education at Dhaka Medical College, Bangladesh and Doctoral degree in Epidemiology at USC. His primary research interest is the contribution of the environmental exposure to diseases and its underlying pathogenesis. A major focus of his research is understanding the effect of environmental exposures on children health outcomes. As a researcher of the Children’s Health Study (CHS) of Southern California, he has investigated the effect of air pollution on respiratory health of children (lung function growth and asthma incidence) with possible role of genes and social stressors. He received Fogarty funding (International Research Scholar Development Award) in 2015 to investigate the effects of cook stove smoke exposure on pregnancy outcomes and pneumonia among infants in Bangladesh. As part of the study, he established and followed a pregnancy cohort in Bangladesh from 18 weeks of pregnancy to 12 months after delivery. He is also interested in understanding the effect of environmental factors in the etiology and prognosis of multiple sclerosis (MS). He collaborates with neurologists as USC in MS research. He is also involved in teaching Epidemiology and Environmental Epidemiology at the graduate level at USC.
Joyce Javier, MD, MPH, MS, FAAP
Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics
jojavier@chla.usc.edu
Lingyun Ji, PhD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
lji@usc.edu
Lingyun Ji, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
Division of Biostatistics, Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
University of Southern California
Faculty Statistician, Children’s Oncology Group
Tel: (626) 241-1519
Email: lji@usc.edu
lji@childrensoncologygroup.org
Xuejuan Jiang, PhD
Assistant Professor of Research Ophthalmology
xuejuanj@usc.edu
Xuejuan Jiang received a BS with Honors in Molecular and Cellular Biology from University of Science and Technology of China in 2002. Subsequently, she joined the graduate program in Biomedical and Biological Sciences (PIBBS) at University of Southern California (USC), and received a M.S. in Applied Biostatistics and Epidemiology and a PhD in Epidemiology. At USC, Dr. Jiang investigated how smoking affects bladder cancer risk. Her research provided strong evidence supporting that 1) second-hand smoke can increase bladder cancer risk in female lifelong nonsmokers, 2) genetic variations associated with nicotine dependence and smoking behavior can also affect bladder cancer risk, and 3) use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory may attenuate the carcinogenic effect of cigarette smoking on the bladder. In addition, she found that factors associated with prolonged exposure to carcinogens in the urine, e.g. infrequent drinking and urination, may increase bladder cancer risk. After earning her doctorate, Dr. Jiang became a postdoctoral research associate at USC, where she focused on using pathway-based systemic approaches to investigate genetic components of adolescent alcohol drinking, bladder cancer, and colorectal cancer, and developing noninvasive biomarkers of oxidative stress. Dr. Jiang joined USC’s Department of Ophthalmology as an Assistant Professor of Research in 2011.\n\nAs an experienced epidemiologist, Xuejuan Jiang, PhD, has expertise in designing, managing and analyzing epidemiological studies to evaluate the impact of different environmental and genetic risk factors, on various cancers, adolescent smoking/drinking behaviors, and ocular disorders. In particular, Dr. Jiang’s research on ocular disease focuses on etiologies of glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and refractive errors, especially myopia, identifying early indicators of disease development and progression, and developing possible prevention, intervention and treatments.\n\nDr. Jiang is currently leading the international effort in consolidating all existing population-based studies of eye diseases among preschool children, to create the largest repository of population-based survey data on vision health among preschool children. Results from this project will improve our understanding of the risk factors for the most common pediatric vision disorders among preschool children, and help inform and develop evidence-based guidelines for population screening and clinical management.
Jill Johnston, PhD
Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
jillj@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/jill-johnston/54/2a3/9b3
https://www.facebook.com/USCEHC/?fref=ts
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2c4l1pkAAAAJ&hl=en
@JillJohnstonPhD
https://ejresearchlab.usc.edu
Jill Johnston, PhD is an Asoociate Professor and Director of Community Engagement in the Division of Environmental Health at University of Southern California. Her research focuses on addressing unequal exposures to harmful contaminants that affect the health of working poor and communities of color. Dr. Johnston engages in collaborations with grassroots organizations to conduct community-engaged action-oriented research at USC to support environmental justice. She works towards strong partnership with local organizations, community health workers (promotores), policymakers and residents to address air pollution, upstream oil and gas extraction and incompatible land use. Previously she worked as a community organizer on issues of environmental and economic justice in South Texas. Dr. Johnston received her PhD in environmental sciences and engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she studied hazardous waste sites and industrial animal production.
Kamia Jones
Student Worker Dept. of Population and Public Health Sciences
kamiajon@usc.edu
Elizabeth Kamai
Postdoctoral Scholar – Research Associate
kamai@usc.edu
Elizabeth is an environmental epidemiologist and Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Division of Environmental Health at University of Southern California. She received her MSPH and PhD in Epidemiology at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She studies how environmental exposures – such as chemicals in consumer products or pollution – affect the health of vulnerable populations. Her dissertation research focused on patterns of childhood blood lead surveillance in North Carolina and the relationship between local occupational and environmental point sources of lead and children's blood lead levels. As part of the EJ Research Lab, Elizabeth works on the AIRE and BELLA studies and provides research support for the SCLA-PUSH collaboration.
Roksana Karim, PhD, MBBS
Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
rkarim@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/roksana-karim-697186b0
https://www.pubfacts.com/author/Roksana+Karim
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=roksana+karim&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=
Dr. Karim joined the USC faculty in 2007; soon after receiving her Doctoral degree in Epidemiology at Preventive Medicine USC. She has a medical degree from Dhaka Medical College, Bangladesh. Dr. Karim teaches Epidemiology and Research Methods for the MPH online program and the undergraduate program of Health promotions (HP) within the Department of Preventive Medicine. Her major research interest is women’s health, particularly the impact of menopause and sex hormone concentrations on atherosclerosis/cardiovascular disease and other age-related chronic inflammatory outcomes including bone density and cognition. She also has vast interest in HIV-associated endocrine and cardiovascular complications in women and children. Dr. Karim published over 60 original articles in well-respected, peer-reviewed journals from NIH-funded studies and received multiple awards and recognition for her research works.
Eric Kawaguchi, PhD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
ekawaguc@usc.edu
Kori Keith, MPH
Project Specialist
kdkeith@usc.edu
strong>Kori Keith is a Project Specialist. She manages an international clinical trial evaluating the clinical efficacy of oral Cefixime medication versus the standard of care, penicillin G, in the treatment of early syphilis infections in men and women both HIV infected and uninfected. Kori received her bachelor’s in Health and Human Sciences at the University of Southern California and her Master of Public Health in Epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Annemarie Kelleghan
Teaching Assistant – PSYCH
kellegha@usc.edu
Annemarie Kelleghan is a dual degree student at USC working on her doctorate in the Clinical Science program and her MPH in biostatistics and epidemiology. She received her B.A. degrees in Psychology and in Human Biology & Society at the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to starting grad school, Annemarie worked as a research associate at the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Program where she helped develop an intervention for parents of substance abusing adolescents. She also assisted in conducting research and implementation projects on the use of a smartphone apps as a treatment tool for young adult methamphetamine users. Her current research focuses on understanding the psychosocial functioning of adolescents and emerging adults. Additionally, she is interested in understanding how social factors and psychosocial stress impact psychopathology and health behaviors including substance use.
Lorraine Kelley-Quon, MD, MSHS, FAAP
Assistant Professor of Clinical Surgery, Peds/CHLA(dual appointment in PM)
kelleyqu@usc.edu
Dr. Lorraine Kelley-Quon is an Assistant Professor in Surgery and Population and Public Health Sciences at CHLA and the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She obtained her B.S. in Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the University of California, San Diego and completed her M.D. and General Surgery training at the University of California, Los Angeles followed by a fellowship in Pediatric Surgery at Nationwide Children’s Hospital at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. During residency, she completed the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and obtained a Master’s in Health Services Research from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. Currently, she is developing a pilot project to explore postoperative opioid use in adolescents and identify predictors of use, abuse, diversion, and conversion to chronic use. Her goal is to create physician decision support tools to optimize opioid prescribing for children and to inform policy makers of prudent initiatives regarding pediatric opioid legislation.
Francesca Keogh-Clark
Student Worker
keoghcla@usc.edu
Francesca Keogh is an undergraduate studying Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and pursuing a minor in Nonprofits, Philanthropy, and Volunteerism with the Keck School of Medicine. Her plan is to eventually attend medical school with a potential specialty in pediatric oncology. Francesca is also a member of Keck Student Ambassadors, and is the president of USC Global Medical Brigades, which plans trips to developing countries to encourage the development of health care systems and the prioritization of health. Francesca enjoys scuba diving, and playing field hockey on the club team at USC.
Daniel Khorshad, MD
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
khorshad@usc.edu
Andrea Kim, PhD, MPH
Adjunct Research Professor
AKim@ph.lacounty.gov
Andrea Kim, PhD, MPH is an Adjunct Research Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences. Dr. Kim is the Director for the Vaccine Preventable Disease Control Program at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
Dr. Andrea Kim has 25 years of experience in the development, implementation, evaluation, and management of surveillance, epidemiology, and laboratory science programs at the local, federal, and international level. She has directed, managed, and served as Principal Investigator on research and non-research activities focused on disease surveillance, population-based surveys in high-risk and general populations, and program evaluations on the impact of prevention, care, and treatment programs on disease epidemics. Her peer-reviewed public health and research publications have demonstrated the advancement of the global and national response to infectious diseases in resource-limited settings through innovations in disease surveillance; achievements in reducing disease transmission and improving health through scaling testing, treatment, and laboratory programs; and leveraging of resources and disease systems for integrated infectious disease monitoring.
Dr. Kim served for 15 years at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Division of Global HIV and Tuberculosis, first as a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer and then as staff, including 4 years stationed in Nairobi, Kenya where she provided technical support to over 50 country teams in the planning, implementation, and oversight of global HIV surveillance and laboratory priorities funded by the US President’s Plan for AIDS Relief. Dr. Kim joined the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) in October 2019 as Chief of HIV and STD Surveillance in the Division of HIV and STD Programs. In this role, she was responsible for providing strategic direction, leadership, and overall management of the HIV and STD Surveillance Program in the County. Shortly after joining DPH, Dr. Kim was assigned to the COVID-19 Incident Command System where she led the public health response to COVID-19 exposures in the Los Angeles County Education Sector until April 2022. In this role, she collaborated closely with Early Care and Education Centers, K-12 Grade Schools, and Institutes of Higher Education on management of COVID-19 exposures, contact tracing, and outbreak investigations in educational settings. Dr. Kim oversaw a $302 million dollar federal grant for COVID-19 testing in support of reopening schools during the pandemic, which led to over 16 million tests administered by schools during the 2021/2022 school year. Stemming from her COVID-19 experience, in May 2022, Dr. Kim was appointed the role of Director of the Vaccine Preventable Disease Control Program in Los Angeles County where she provides leadership and oversight on the County’s comprehensive immunization plan to improve immunization coverage levels and prevent vaccine-preventable diseases.
Dr. Kim has authored over 100 peer-reviewed articles and presented over 50 abstracts in international and domestic conferences. She holds a Ph.D. degree in Epidemiology from the University of California at Berkeley, a Master of Public Health degree in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases from Yale University, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from the University of California Los Angeles.
Sue Kim, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
sueekim@usc.edu
Sue Kim, PhD, MPH is Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences. Professor Kim has expert knowledge of health disparities, health economics, health policy, research methodology, and statistical analysis. Her research has focused on health care service delivery and management, health care reform and policy, and chronic disease management, particularly with emphasis on disease prevention and health care utilization in low-income and ethnically diverse communities. Her publications in academic journals present the results from her studies. She received her doctorate in Health Services and Policy Analysis with a Health Economics focus and Masters of Public Health from University of California, Berkeley.
Michele Kipke, PhD
Professor of Pediatrics (Clinical Scholar)
mkipke@chla.usc.edu
Michele D. Kipke, PhD is a Professor of Pediatrics and Preventative Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC), and serves as the Vice Chair of Research within the Department of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA). She is also Co-Director of the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute (SC CTSI) at USC. Dr. Kipke, a nationally known health researcher and policy expert, also directs The Saban Research Institute’s Community, Health Outcomes, and Intervention Research (CHOIR) Program at CHLA.\n\nDr. Kipke is the Co-PI of the NIH-funded Clinical and Translational Science Award and directs the Community Engagement and Clinical Research Services programs within the SC CTSI. She is currently providing oversight in the implementation of a new Clinical Trials Management System and development of a clinical data warehouse at USC and CHLA. As the Co-Director of the SC CTSI, Dr. Kipke provides leadership and oversight of all institute programs and operations. \n\nSince 2013, Dr. Kipke has served as Interim Director of Clinical Research in The Saban Research Institute, including oversight of the clinical research component of the SC CTSI at CHLA. In this role, she has led efforts to streamline the clinical research process including budgeting, contracting and study start-up, revitalizing a robust clinical research infrastructure that includes research nurses, a clinical research coordinator pool, recruitment specialists and regulatory specialists. The new infrastructure provides continued education, training and support for research staff throughout the institution, as well as ongoing quality assurance monitoring and audits. In addition, she has facilitated efforts to improve the efficiency of CHLA’s Institutional Review Board, significantly reducing the turnaround time for full committee review. \n\nDr. Kipke received her doctorate from Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. An expert on child, family, and community health, Dr. Kipke is widely published on topics that examine individual, familial, peer, and social network influences on youth involvement in risky behaviors.\n\nHer research interests include pediatric health outcomes and services research; neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism; access and barriers to health care and disparities in health outcomes; community-level influences on health outcomes, and social epidemiology and health status/outcomes of children, adolescents, and families; community-based translational research and research with at-risk and vulnerable children and adolescents to examine risk factors associated with poor health outcomes, including HIV, injury and violence.
Matthew Kirkpatrick, PhD
Associate Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
mgkirkpa@usc.edu
Dr. Kirkpatrick’s research uses laboratory psychopharmacology, Ecological Momentary Assessment, and survey methods to focus on how drug use – both normal and problematic – functions in social contexts. His work examines the acute and residual effects of a range of psychoactive drugs (including alcohol, nicotine, and amphetamines) in ethnically diverse populations of both current drug abusers and healthy normal volunteers, and under various laboratory and naturalistic conditions. His current interests focus on: (1) the complex bi-directional interactions between acute drug effects and social settings, and how these interactions contribute to the rewarding effects of drugs; and (2) how friends and family can either help or hinder quit attempts (especially cigarette smoking quit attempts). Overall, this multidisciplinary approach carries direct clinical relevance as it will improve our understanding of drug use, which will help to develop novel treatments for those who wish to quit.
Jeffrey Klausner, MD, MPH
Clinical Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
jklausne@usc.edu
https://www.dualelimination.org
https://www.preventcrypto.org
@drklausner
https://klausner.usc.edu
From 1998-2009 Dr. Klausner was a Deputy Health Officer, Director of STD Prevention and Control Services at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, member of the UCSF School of Medicine faculty in the Divisions of AIDS and Infectious Diseases and Attending Physician at San Francisco General Hospital. While in San Francisco Dr. Klausner helped identify key factors associated with the increased spread of HIV and STDs and implemented multiple novel public health prevention programs. He helped create the St. James Infirmary, the first occupational health and safety clinic for sex workers and Magnet, a community-based peer-run sexual health clinic for gay men.
From 2009-2011 Dr. Klausner was Branch Chief for HIV and TB at the Centers for Disease Control in Pretoria, South Africa, helping lead the South African PEPFAR program for care and treatment.
After returning from South Africa, from 2011-2021. Klausner was a senior faculty member in the UCLA Division of Infectious Diseases, David Geffen School of Medicine and the Department of Epidemiology at the Fielding School of Public health. At UCLA, Dr. Klausner was the Principal Investigator for multiple NIH-funded networks, projects and studies on sexually transmitted infections in Peru, Botswana, South Africa, Vietnam, Haiti, Pakistan and India antimicrobial resistance and HIV prevention.
Dr. Klausner's research interests are in applied epidemiology and the prevention and control of infectious diseases of public health importance like HIV, STDs, TB, COVID-19 and cryptococcal infections. Dr. Klausner has a particular interest in the use of technology?information, digital, and laboratory?to facilitate access to treatment for disadvantaged populations. Dr. Klausner has been funded by the NIH, CDC, private pharmaceutical and test manufacturers to study the benefits of new ways to find and treat infectious diseases. Dr. Klausner is a frequent advisor to the CDC, NIH and WHO and a popular public speaker. Dr. Klausner is a highly sought after mentor who has trained dozens of fellows, residents and students of medicine and public health.
Gina Klemm
Project Manager
gklemm@usc.edu
Gina C. Klemm joined the HEAL team in January of 2020. Gina studied behavioural science, receiving a Master's in Public Health from Emory University before joining the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. As a Research Specialist at Cornell, Gina managed several overlapping multi-site, multi-year grants providing critical leadership and direction of day-to-day operations. Gina's research focused on translational research to enhance the effectiveness of community-based programs for improving nutritional status, especially the integration of nutrition interventions with multisectoral strategies. As a project manager with HEAL, Gina oversees two cohort studies exploring e-cigarette ("vaping") product preference and vaping's causal role in subsequent cigarette and cannabis use among low-risk adolescents and young adults. More broadly, Gina is interested in work that looks critically at health disparities and low-cost, high impact approaches to strengthen health and educational systems. She is passionate about community-based research especially the crucial elements of reciprocity in the context of research-community partnerships and collaborations.
Kelika Konda, PhD
Clinical Associate Professor Population and Public Health Sciences
kelikakonda@gmail.com
Andrea Kovas, MD
Professor of Pediatrics and Pathology
akovacs@usc.edu
Dr. Kovacs is a Professor of Pediatrics and Pathology and the Founder and Director of LAC+USC’s Maternal, Child and Adolescent Center for Infectious Diseases and Virology (MCA). She is Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the LAC+USC Medical Center/Keck School of Medicine of USC. Dr. Kovacs has dedicated her career to developing new strategies to provide state-of-the-art clinical care to underserved populations using innovative strategies of integrated, multidisciplinary care combined with cutting edge clinical, translational and laboratory-based research at all levels of care to improve the outcomes of these patients, and to educate a new generation of clinicians and researchers to serve them.\n\nDr. Kovacs, is the principal investigator of the USC clinical trials unit for the NIH International, Maternal, Pediatric, and Adolescent Clinical Trials (IMPAACT) group and directs the MCA Research Laboratory, which is certified by the NIH, CLIA, CAP and the State of California to perform clinical trials and natural history studies. MCA research projects have included laboratory-based projects, clinical trials design and conduct, epidemiological studies that involve small and large cohorts and translational studies that go from the bench to bedside. \n\nDr. Kovacs has many years? experience, dating to the first cases of acquired immunodeficiency virus (AIDS), in clinical and translational research studies with major emphasis on pathogenesis, transmission, treatment and prevention of human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis C virus (HCV) and human cytomegalovirus (CMV). Her current research focuses on understanding how viruses act together to alter the immune system and cause disease. Ongoing studies include the impact of \HCV cure\ and liver disease on immune activation/dysregulation in reproductive aging HIV and HCV co-infected women and the role of CMV on ?immunologic aging? in both children and adults. In infants, she is assessing what effect congenital or perinatal CMV infection has on the developing immune system.
Mark Krailo, PhD
Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
krailo@usc.edu
Shubha Kumar, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
shubha.kumar@usc.edu
Shubha Kumar, Ph.D., M.P.H., is Assistant Professor of Clinical Preventive Medicine and Director of the Master of Public Health Online Program at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. Her professional and research interests include management and leadership in global health and development, program planning & evaluation, health systems strengthening, and best practices in knowledge transfer and health education. She has successfully led the design and oversight of several programs in healthcare, disaster relief, and education, as well as launched an international humanitarian NGO for which she was the Chief Operating Officer. Her recent projects include capacity building of healthcare NGOs and the development and strengthening of emergency medical systems in sub-Saharan Africa. She is most well-known for her expertise in impact evaluation, particularly Social Return on Investment Analysis. She has lectured and consulted nationally and internationally, as well as developed the first distance education module on this subject. Dr. Kumar directs and teaches in the USC Master of Public Health Online Program as well as directs the Business of Medicine Program for medical students. She earned her B.S. in Biology, and M.P.H. and Ph.D. in Healthcare Management & Policy from the University of California Los Angeles.
Benjamin La Brot, Bch. Medicine/Bch. Surgery/Bch. of Obs & Gyne
Clinical Assistant Professor of Medical Education (Part-Time)
labrot@usc.edu
Ashwini Lakshmanan, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics
alakshmanan@chla.usc.edu
Ashwini Lakshmanan, MD MPH is an attending neonatologist in the Division of Neonatology at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and is an assistant professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California.
Bryan Langholz, PhD
Emeritus ProfessorEmeritus Professor Population and Public Health Sciences
langholz@usc.edu
Josephine Le
Project Specialist- Administrative
kpn@usc.edu
Josephine Le is a double Trojan, earning a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and a Master of Education in Postsecondary Administration and Student Affairs at the University of Southern California. She has been a staff member at USC for over 15 years, serving as an academic advisor in the Provost’s Office of Undergraduate Programs, Dornsife Advising Office, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Most recently, Josephine joined the USC HEAL as an Administrative Project Specialist and is responsible for streamlining daily functions of the laboratory, and assisting faculty, research staff, and students. She enjoys spending time with her family and friends, watching movies, and eating out.
Eunjung Lee, PhD
Associate Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
leee@usc.edu
My primary research interests are in understanding the environmental and lifestyle factors that influence cancer risk and cancer disparities with focus on understudied Asian American and Latinx populations.
Ryan Lee
Project Manager
rlee6472@usc.edu
Ryan Lee is a Project Manager in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. He graduated from Occidental College in 2019 with a B.A. in Biology with an emphasis in Cell and Molecular Biology and minors in Public Health and East Asian Studies. As an undergraduate, he worked on research projects ranging from infectious disease pathology to evaluation of public health regulations in Hong Kong. At the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, Ryan currently oversees data collection efforts for multiple studies in health behavior and substance prevention research. In his free time, Ryan enjoys cooking, cycling, and playing tennis.
Heinz-Josep Lenz, MD
Professor of Medicine
lenz@usc.edu
Heinz-Josef Lenz, M.D., FACP, is the Associate Director for Clinical Research and Co-Leader of the Gastrointestinal Cancers Program at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Lenz is Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine, Section Head of GI Oncology in the Division of Medical Oncology and Co-Director of the Colorectal Center at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California.\n\nDr. Lenz received his medical degree from Johannes-Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Germany, in 1985. He completed a residency in Hematology and Oncology at the University Hospital Tübingen in Germany, a clerkship in Oncology at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and a clerkship in Hematology at Beth Israel Hospital of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He served subsequent fellowships in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.\n\nAn active researcher, Dr. Lenz focuses on topics including the regulation of gene expression involved in drug resistance, patients at high risk of developing colorectal cancer, and determination of carcinogenesis, methods of early detection, and better surveillance of these cancers. He is a member of several professional societies, including the American Association for Cancer Research, the American Gastroenterology Association, and the National Society of Genetic Counselors. He also serves on the National Advisory Board of a number of professional organizations. Dr. Lenz is the author of numerous peer-reviewed publications and invited papers, reviews, and editorials. He also serves as Co-Chair of the GI Committee and Correlative Science Committee for SWOG. He is a member of the NCI Task Force for Gastroesophageal Cancer, the NCI Steering Committee and the NCI Translational Science Committee. In addition to having an NCI-funded laboratory, he was a recipient of the ASCO Young Investigator Award, the ASCO Career Development Award, and the STOP Cancer Career Development Award. He has been listed in the Best Doctors? database (www.bestdoctors.com) since 2003.\n\nAs Associate Director for Clinical Research, Dr. Lenz oversees the programmatic activities of the Gastrointestinal Cancers, Genitourinary Cancers, Women’s Cancers, and Leukemia and Lymphoma Programs.
Adam Leventhal, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
Director of the Institute for Addiction Science
adam.leventhal@usc.edu
https://heal.usc.edu
https://eosresearch.usc.edu
https://www.facebook.com/USCHEAL
@USC_HEAL
Adam Leventhal, Ph.D., Professor of Preventive Medicine and Psychology at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, is an addiction psychologist and public health scientist. Dr. Leventhal is the Founding Director of the USC Health, Emotion, & Addiction Laboratory (USC-HEAL; heal.usc.edu), a group of six faculty investigators and 30 staff and trainees who study the causes, consequences, treatment, and prevention of addiction and mental illness across the lifespan. Having been awarded more than $40M in grant funding from the NIH and other agencies, USC-HEAL’s current areas of focus are: (1) adolescent and young adult use of tobacco, cannabis, and opioids; (2) the co-occurrence of addiction and mental illness; (3) the development of new medications to promote smoking cessation; (4) science to inform public policies for regulating tobacco and other consumer products; and (5) cancer and cardiovascular disease prevention.\n\nDr. Leventhal is also the Founding Director of the USC Institute for Addiction Science (USC-IAS; ias.usc.edu), a university-wide initiative that supports transdisciplinary science and education for a network of 40+ faculty addiction experts across 5 schools and colleges at USC.\n\nDr. Leventhal has authored over 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles, including publications in JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, and other journals. His work has been covered by the Associated Press, NBC Nightly News, New York Times, and other media outlets. Dr. Leventhal is active in policy arenas, having served on expert panels on the health effects of e-cigarettes and tobacco products for the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the US Surgeon General. He is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Health Behavior and American Psychological Association and recipient of awards for early and mid-career contributions to science and mentoring. His personal interests include running, playing guitar, watching football, and spending time with friends and family.
Juan Pablo Lewinger, PhD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
lewinger@usc.edu
Arthur Li, MS
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
arthurxl@usc.edu
Chun Li, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
cli77199@usc.edu
PhD in Biostatistics, 2002, University of Michigan. I joined USC in 2020, and I am currently the Deputy Director of the PhD Program in Biostatistics.
Ming Li, PhD
Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
mli69131@usc.edu
Dr. Ming Li is a Professor in the Division of Biostatistics of the Department of Preventive Medicine starting January 2020. Dr. Li now serves as the Director for Data Science Core at Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. \n\nPrior to joining USC, Dr. Li was an Associate Professor in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences and a faculty biostatistician at Center for Proteomics and Bioinformatics at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) since 2014. During year 2014 to 2019, she was the Director for Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Shared Resource at Case Comprehensive Cancer Center (Case CCC) and served as a full member on the Case CCC Protocol Review and Monitoring Committee. Dr. Li was also the Director for Biostatistics Core in Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences. Dr. Li was the primary statistician for CWRU Center for Multimodal Evaluation of Engineered Cartilage. \n\nDr. Li’s research interests include proteomic data analysis, cancer biostatistics, statistical and bioinformatics methods for high dimensional data and statistical education and consulting. With more than 18 years working in biostatistics field, Dr. Li has devoted her efforts to two major areas: (1) collaborative research with principle investigators, during the collaboration, Dr. Li played a key role in multiple aspects, including designing experiments, analyzing data, supervising staff statisticians, interpreting results, drafting manuscripts, and writing statistical sections for grants; and (2) high dimensional data analysis, especially methods and software development for proteomics data.
Danica Liberman, MD
Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics
dliberman@chla.usc.edu
Lihua Liu, PhD
Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
Director and Principle Investigator of the Surveillance Epidemiology End Results (SEER) Program
lihualiu@usc.edu
Dr. Liu holds a Ph.D. in Demography and Medical Sociology from the University of Southern California. She worked as a research scientist at the Los Angeles Cancer Surveillance Program (CSP) for many years, before joining the faculty of the Dept. of Preventive Medicine as an Assistant Professor of Clinical Preventive Medicine in 2008. Her interest in population and health found the ideal laboratory at the CSP, the population-based cancer registry for Los Angeles County. She was fascinated by the dramatic differences in cancer risk by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status and learned to understand the values and challenges of using cancer registry data for research. She has contributed significantly to the enhancements of cancer registry data nationwide through participation of the developments of population estimates by detailed racial/ethnic groups and better identification of race/ethnicity in cancer registries. Her research interest is in the impact of social, economic, cultural, behavioral, and environmental factors on the development, diagnosis, and survival of cancer. Compelled by the alarming fact that immigrants in the U.S. quickly lose their healthy advantage after arrival, Dr. Liu assembled a multidisciplinary team with 12 faculty members from 8 USC schools to propose a new public health initiative to promote healthy behaviors and lifestyles in immigrants and to enrich and redefine American way of living. This visionary proposal recently received the USC Collaboration Fund Award. The group is poised to explore the new path and to inspire and attract interested faculty and students to join the effort.
Sandy Lopez Najera, PhD
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
lopeznaj@usc.edu
Gabrielle Lozoya
Project Specialist
lozoyag@usc.edu
Gabi Lozoya graduated from the University of Southern California in 2018 with a B.S. in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and continued her education at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. As an undergraduate, Gabi developed an interest in diminishing health disparities while supporting a research project on health equity within reproductive healthcare and volunteering to teach health education to students in low income areas. These experiences, along with her coursework, allowed Gabi to find her passion for achieving health equity, especially for youth and racially and ethnically diverse populations. She is, also, curious about the intersect of policy and healthcare access and outcomes. Gabi hopes to expand on her knowledge and interests in the areas of addiction and mental health with USC HEAL. Outside of HEAL, you can find her reading, playing volleyball at the beach, or painting with friends.
Armine Lulejian, EdD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
alulejia@usc.edu
Holly Lung
hlung@usc.edu
Holly is a first-year doctoral student in the Health Behavior Research program at USC’s Keck School of Medicine. She graduated from the University of California, San Diego in 2021 with a B.S. in Public Health, where she worked on multiple Tobacco-Related Disparities Research Program grant projects. Under these projects, she worked as research assistant on a pilot study investigating the feasibility of integrating tobacco cessation into HIV care, and as an author for manuscripts related to the association between e-cigarette use and cigarette initiation and cessation across racial/ethnic groups. Holly is primarily interested in tobacco and cannabis use patterns among adolescent and minority populations, and hopes to contribute to high-impact tobacco regulatory research that will reduce health disparities.
Stephanie Ly, PhD
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
stephanie.ly@med.usc.edu
Thomas Mack, MD, MPH
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
tmack@usc.edu
Wendy Mack, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
wmack@usc.edu
Wendy Mack, PhD, is a professor of biostatistics in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She co-directs the department’s Division of Biostatistics graduate programs and directs Biostatistics Resources at the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute (SC CTSI).\n\nProfessor Mack has more than 20 years of experience directing biostatistical and data coordination activities, primarily funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Her expertise includes design, conduct and analysis of multiple single-centered and multi-centered clinical trials and observational studies. She also directs biostatistical activities for the USC Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and for other basic and clinical research programs.\n\nShe has served on numerous NIH study sections for biostatistical expertise and has recently completed a term on the NHLBI Clinical Trials Review study section. Professor Mack received her doctorate from the University of Southern California. Her home is open to needy animals wandering by, and she dabbles in competitive dog obedience in her minimal spare time.
Nicholas Mancuso, PhD
Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
nmancuso@usc.edu
@nmancuso_
My research aims to develop novel computational and statistical approaches to understand the genetic etiology of complex diseases. This includes integrating molecular phenotypes (e.g., gene expression, protein abundance) with large-scale genome-wide association studies, characterizing the genetic architecture of complex disease (e.g., rare vs common variation), and quantifying the role of selection in shaping the effect-size distribution for alleles.
Lilia Margaryan
Undergraduate Research Assistant
liliamar@usc.edu
Lilia is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.A. in Health and the Human Sciences with minors in Spanish and Healthcare Studies, set to graduate in 2024. At USC, Lilia has been involved with JEP Tutoring for elementary kids, Colleges against Cancer, and the Armenian Student Association. She is currently the vice president for National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and is an active member of the Health Sciences Education Program (HSEP), which is a club that presents on various health topics across schools in the LA area. After graduation, Lilia hopes to attend graduate school and pursue a career in healthcare. In her free time, Lilia enjoys hiking, baking, cooking, going out with friends, and spending time with family.
Paul Marjoram, PhD
Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
pmarjora@usc.edu
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Marjoram+P&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=
I am an Englishman abroad, moving to Los Angeles in 1995 and finding that I feel very at home here.
My research interests include Approximate Bayesian Computation, Simulation-based analysis, Behavioral models, Models for tumor growth, Next-generation sequencing data and Association studies.
Antonia Marron-Maldonado
Project Specialist – Administrative
amaldona@usc.edu
Tyler Mason, PhD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
tylermas@usc.edu
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5yfpC4EAAAAJ&hl=en
Tyler Mason, Ph.D., is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California and Associate Director of the Real-Time Eating Activity and Children’s Health (REACH) lab. Broadly, his research interests include the etiology and treatment of eating disorders and obesity. In particular, his research studies trait- and state-based processes that affect individuals’ ability to engage in self-regulation and goal-directed behaviors among diverse groups such as adults, children, and minorities. Specifically, he investigates how the interplay of factors such as affect, executive functioning, and social stressors are associated with unhealthy behaviors in the context of regulatory, control, and goal theories. Much of this research uses ecological momentary assessment to measure the momentary processes that maintain various eating and diet behaviors and physical activity. Further, he is interested in the use of advanced statistical methodology to further obesity and eating disorder research including multilevel modeling, latent variable modeling, and network analysis. His research has culminated in over 143 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and his research has been featured in top journals such as Psychological Bulletin, Health Psychology, Obesity, and the International Journal of Eating Disorders. Finally, he serves on the editorial boards of two international peer-reviewed journals: Eating Behaviors and Eating and Weight Disorders.
Rob McConnell, MD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
rmcconne@usc.edu
Dr. Rob McConnell is a physician and environmental epidemiologist, and Professor of Preventive Medicine. He directs the NIH/Environmental Protection Agency-supported Southern California Children’s Environmental Health Center. He has studied the effects of air pollution on children’s health, including the development of asthma and lung function deficits, and early markers for cardiovascular disease. Dr. McConnell has investigated susceptibility to the effects of environmental exposures conferred by psychosocial stress and social factors, exercise, genetics and co-exposures associated with housing conditions. He has interest, in addition, in the development of methods for estimating the burden of disease associated with near-roadway air pollution and for assessing exposure in environmental epidemiology. Currently funded research is focused on environmental determinants of autism and of obesity and its metabolic consequences in children; on respiratory hazards of e-cigarette use; and on the determinants of tobacco product use as a project director in the USC Tobacco Center for Regulatory Science. He co-directs the NIEHS T32 training program in environmental genomics and the Career Development Program of the NIEHS-supported Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center. Prior to coming to USC, he directed a World Health Organization regional environmental health center for Latin America and the Caribbean. Dr. McConnell is a member of EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) Particulate Matter Panel. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.\n\nSelected peer-reviewed publications (from over 140):\n\n1. Impact of air pollution on childhood respiratory disease and lung function and asthma.\n\na. McConnell R, Berhane K, Gilliland F, London SJ, Islam T, Gauderman WJ, Avol E, Margolis HG, Peters JM. Asthma in exercising children exposed to ozone: a cohort study. Lancet. 2002 Feb 2;359(9304):386-91. PubMed PMID: 11844508\nb. Gauderman WJ, Vora H, McConnell R, Berhane K, Gilliland F, Thomas D, Lurmann F, Avol E, Kunzli N, Jerrett M, Peters J. Effect of exposure to traffic on lung development from 10 to 18 years of age: a cohort study. Lancet. 2007 Feb 17;369(9561):571-7. PubMed PMID: 17307103. \nc. McConnell R, Islam T, Shankardass K, Jerrett M, Lurmann F, Gilliland F, Gauderman J, Avol E, Künzli N, Yao L, Peters J, Berhane K. Childhood incident asthma and traffic-related air pollution at home and school. Environ Health Perspect. 2010 Jul;118(7):1021-6. PubMed PMID: 20371422; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2920902. \nd. *Urman R, McConnell R, Islam T, Avol EL, Lurmann FW, Vora H, Linn WS, Rappaport EB, Gilliland FD, Gauderman WJ. Associations of children’s lung function with ambient air pollution: joint effects of regional and near-roadway pollutants. Thorax. 2014 Jun;69(6):540-7. PubMed PMID: 24253832; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4191894. \ne. Gauderman WJ, Urman R, Avol E, Berhane K, McConnell R, Rappaport E, Chang R, Lurmann F, Gilliland F. Association of improved air quality with lung development in children. N Engl J Med. 2015 Mar 5;372(10):905-13. PubMed PMID: 25738666; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4430551. \n\n2. Novel risk factors for respiratory disease and their interactions with air pollution that may provide clues to relevant biological pathways.\n\na. McConnell R, Berhane K, Molitor J, Gilliland F, Künzli N, Thorne PS, Thomas D, Gauderman WJ, Avol E, Lurmann F, Rappaport E, Jerrett M, Peters JM. Dog ownership enhances symptomatic responses to air pollution in children with asthma. Environ Health Perspect. 2006 Dec;114(12):1910-5. PubMed PMID: 17185284; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC1764158. \nb. *Shankardass K, McConnell R, Jerrett M, Milam J, Richardson J, Berhane K. Parental stress increases the effect of traffic-related air pollution on childhood asthma incidence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Jul 28;106(30):12406-11. PubMed PMID: 19620729; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2718368. \nc. *Islam T, McConnell R, Gauderman WJ, Berhane K, Avol E, Peters JM,Gilliland FD. Glutathione-S-Transferase (GST) P1, exercise, ozone and asthma incidence in school children. Thorax. 2009 Mar; 64(3):197-202. PubMed PMID: 18988661; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2738935.\nd. *Islam T, Urman R, Gauderman WJ, Milam J, Lurmann F, Shankardass K, Avol E, Gilliland F, McConnell R. Parental Stress Increases the Detrimental Effect of Traffic Exposure on Children’s Lung Function. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2011 Oct 1;184(7):822-7. PubMed PMID: 21700914; PMCID: PMC3208647.\n3. Neurological effects of diverse environmental exposures in studies of children and workers.\na. Rosenstock L, Keifer M, Daniell WE, McConnell R, Claypoole K. Chronic central nervous system effects of acute organophosphate pesticide intoxication. The Pesticide Health Effects Study Group. Lancet. 1991 Jul 27;338(8761):223-7. PubMed PMID: 1676786. \nb. *Volk HE, Hertz-Picciotto I, Delwiche L, Lurmann F, McConnell R. Residential proximity to freeways and autism in the CHARGE study. Environ Health Perspect. 2011 Jun;119(6):873-7. PubMed PMID: 21156395; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3114825. \nc. *Volk HE, Lurmann F, Penfold B, Hertz-Picciotto I, McConnell R. Traffic-related air pollution, particulate matter, and autism. JAMA Psychiatry. 2013 Jan;70(1):71-7. PubMed PMID: 23404082; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4019010. \nd. *Volk HE, Kerin T, Lurmann F, Hertz-Picciotto I, McConnell R, Campbell DB. Autism spectrum disorder: interaction of air pollution with the MET receptor tyrosine kinase gene. Epidemiology. 2014 Jan;25(1):44-7. PubMed PMID: 24240654; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4019012. \n\n4. Associations of air pollution in children with obesogenic and cardiometabolic outcomes.\n\na. Breton CV, Wang X, Mack WJ, Berhane K, Lopez M, Islam TS, Feng M, Lurmann F, McConnell R, Hodis HN, Künzli N, Avol E. Childhood air pollutant exposure and carotid artery intima-media thickness in young adults. Circulation. 2012 Sep 25;126(13):1614-20. PubMed PMID: 22896588; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3474843. \nb. Jerrett M, McConnell R, Wolch J, Chang R, Lam C, Dunton G, Gilliland F, Lurmann F, Islam T, Berhane K. Traffic-related air pollution and obesity formation in children: a longitudinal, multilevel analysis. Environ Health. 2014 Jun 9;13:49. PubMed PMID: 24913018; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4106205. \nc. McConnell R, Shen E, Gilliland FD, Jerrett M, Wolch J, Chang CC, Lurmann F, Berhane K. A longitudinal cohort study of body mass index and childhood exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke and air pollution: the Southern California Children’s Health Study. Environ Health Perspect. 2015 Apr;123(4):360-6. PubMed PMID: 25389275; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4384197. \nd. *Ghosh R, Gauderman W, Minor H, Youn H, Lurman F, Cromar K, Chatzi L, Belcher B, Ren Fielding C, McConnell R. Air pollution, weight loss and metabolic benefits of bariatric surgery: A potential model for study of metabolic effects of environmental exposures. International Journal of Pediatric Obesity in press.\n\n5. Emerging risks of e-cigarettes, cigarettes, and other alternative tobacco products \n\na. *Barrington-Trimis, JL, Samet, JM, McConnell, R. Flavorings in Electronic Cigarettes: An Unrecognized Respiratory Health Hazard? JAMA. 2014 Dec 17;312(23):2493-4.doi:10.1001/jama.2014.14830. \nb. *Barrington-Trimis JL, Urman R, Berhane K, Unger JB, Cruz TB, Pentz MA, Samet JM, Leventhal AM, McConnell R. E-Cigarettes and Future Cigarette Use. Pediatrics. 2016;138(1). PubMed PMID: 27296866; PMCID: PMC4925085.\nc. *Barrington-Trimis JL, Urman R, Leventhal AM, Gauderman WJ, Cruz TB, Gilreath TD, Howland S, Unger JB, Berhane K, Samet JM, McConnell R. E-cigarettes, Cigarettes, and the Prevalence of Adolescent Tobacco Use. Pediatrics. 2016; 138(2). PubMed PMID: 27401102; PMCID: PNC4960723.\nd. McConnell R, Barrington-Trimis JL, Wang K, Urman R, Hong H, Unger J, Samet J, Leventhal A, Berhane K. Electronic-cigarette Use and Respiratory Symptoms in Adolescents. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2017;195(8):1043-1049. PubMed PMID: 27806211.\n\n6. Novel methods for assessing burden and cost of disease associated with near-roadway air pollution and applications to engagement of Southern California stakeholders\n\na. Künzli N, Perez L, Lurmann F, Hricko A, Penfold B, McConnell R. An attributable risk model for exposures assumed to cause both chronic disease and its exacerbations. Epidemiology. 2008;19(2):179-85. PubMed PMID: 18300703\nb. *Brandt S, Perez L, Künzli N, Lurmann F, McConnell R. Costs of childhood asthma due to traffic-related pollution in two California communities. European Respiratory Journal. 2012 Aug;40(2):363-70. PubMed PMID: 22267764; PMCID: PMC4396740.\nc. *Perez L, Lurman F, Wilson J, Pastor M, Brandt S, Kunzli N, McConnell R. Near-Roadway Pollution and Childhood Asthma: Implications for Developing ?Win-Win? Compact Urban Development and Clean Vehicle Strategies. Environ Health Perspect. 2012; 120(11):1619-26. PubMed PMID: 23008270; PMCID: PMC3556611. \nd. Brandt, S, Perez, L, Kunzil, N, Lurman, F, Wilson, J, Pastor, McConnell, R. Cost of near-roadway and regional air pollution?attributable childhood asthma in Los Angeles County.Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. 2014,134:5;1028-1035. PubMed PMID: 25439228; PMCID: PMC4257136.\ne. *Ghosh R, Lurmann F, Perez L, Penfold B, Brandt S, Wilson J, Milet M, Künzli N, McConnell R. Near-Roadway Air Pollution and Coronary Heart Disease: Burden of Disease and Potential Impact of a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategy in Southern California. Environ Health Perspect. 2016 Aug;124(2):193-200. PubMed PMID: 26149207; PMCID: PMC4749075.\n\n\n*Student or junior faculty mentored by McConnell\n\nA complete list of peer reviewed publications is available at:\n\nhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/myncbi/rob.mcconnell.1/bibliography/40704438/public/’sort=date&direction= descending
Roberta McKean-Cowdin, PhD
Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
mckeanco@usc.edu
Daniella Meeker, PhD
Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
Director of Clinical Research Informatics
dmeeker@usc.edu
Daniella Meeker, PhD is an Associate Professor in USC’s Department of Population and Public Health Sciences and the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Economics and Policy. She co-directs the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s Clinical Research Informatics program and leads the Los Angeles Department of Health Services Informatics and Analytics Core. Before joining USC she was an Information Scientist at RAND and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the RAND Bing Center for Health Economics and a PhD in Caltech’s Computation and Neural Systems program. She has led and participated in AHRQ, NIH, ONC, and PCORI-funded multi-institutional initiatives in collaborative analytics, randomized trials of health IT interventions, and standards development. Her research program applies data science, health and behavioral economics, and health IT to optimize health and healthcare delivery.
Karen Mejia
Research Coordinator I
karenmej@usc.edu
Dayane is a first-generation college graduate and received her B.S. in Public Health from CSULA. She joined Dr. Johnston’s team in 2017 and worked on a project involving communities living near a lead-smelting factory in Los Angeles. Currently, she works in the Children’s AIRE Study assisting with field work as well as project coordination. Her research interests include working with vulnerable populations/EJ communities and learning about the effects that air pollution has on the human body.
Huaiyu Mi, PhD
Associate Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
huaiyumi@usc.edu
Kimberly Miller, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
millerki@usc.edu
https://youngadultsurvivors.org
Kimberly Miller, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences and Department of Dermatology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on understanding the health behaviors and healthcare systems factors important to cancer prevention and survivorship for children, adolescents, and young adults. She is currently the Principal Investigator of two NCI R01-funded studies in this area. Her research incorporates behavioral, epidemiological, and implementation science methodologies to inform clinical practice and policies to improve cancer-related health outcomes and reduce disparities for this at-risk cancer population. With Drs. David Freyer (Children’s Hospital Los Angeles) and Joel Milam (University of California, Irvine), she is co-director of the Center for Young Adult Cancer Survivorship Research, an interdisciplinary and multi-institutional research collaborative whose mission is to study and improve the health outcomes of young adult cancer survivors.
Joshua Millstein, PhD
Associate Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
joshua.millstein@usc.edu
Dr. Millstein’s research is focused on developing and applying statistical methods to address the many challenges of high dimensional data, particularly in multi-omic population-based studies of the genome, epigenome, transcriptome, microbiome, etc., in the context of pathogenesis of complex diseases such as cancer. With massive amounts of data collected in typical studies due to these advancing technologies, it has become increasingly important to have computational tools able to sift through all the information to separate the signal of interest from the noise. Specific areas of methods development include, causal mediation (CIT), dimensionality reduction, causal networks, false discovery rates (FDR), and epistasis/statistical interactions.
Sheila Murphy, PhD
Professor (School of Communication and Journalism)
smurphy@usc.edu
Dr. Sheila Murphy is a Full Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Trained in social psychology, Dr. Murphy specializes in identifying the individual, interpersonal, community, ethnic and cultural level factors that shape people’s knowledge, attitudes and practices. She is also an expert on the use of stories or narratives – in contrast to more traditional interventions – to change individual and normative beliefs and behavior on topics ranging from human trafficking, condom use, stereotyping, cancer screening, water conservation, and acceptance of marginalized groups such as Muslims, undocumented immigrants and transgender individuals.
For the past 25 years, Dr. Murphy has designed and/or evaluated persuasive interventions using a wide variety of methodological tools including experiments, large-scale surveys, focus groups, content analysis, social network analysis, multilevel analysis and field observation in order to paint a more complete picture of a particular problem.
Dr. Murphy has received the American Public Health Association’s Public Health Education Award, The Top Translational Research Award in Health Communication and the National Institutes of Health Common Fund Award. For her work on persuasive narrative Dr. Murphy recently received the 2015 Everett M. Rogers Award given to “an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to advancing the study and/or practice of public health communication” by the American Public Health Association. In 2018, Dr. Murphy was elected a Fellow of the International Communication Association for her achievements in the study of human communication.
Anushya Muruganujan
Computer Scientist, Senior
Anushya.Muruganujan@med.usc.edu
Pablo Nam
Undergraduate Research Assistant
yustenam@usc.edu
Pablo Yuste is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Human Biology set to graduate in Spring of 2022. Pablo is highly interested in health and nutrition research and plans to pursue a master’s in nutrition and health and eventually obtain his Restigered Dietician certification. Pablo is also currently working on a progressive master’s program in biochemistry and molecular medicine. In his free time, Pablo enjoys watching movies and shows, exercising, or playing sports like soccer and volleyball.
Giridhar Narasapura Rajagopalaiah
Student Worker, Research
narasapu@usc.edu
Elahe Nezami, PhD
Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences and Medical Education (Educational Scholar)
Director, Health Promotion and Global Health Programs
Director, Global Medicine Program (MSGM)
nezami@usc.edu
Dr. Nezami is the Associate Dean for Undergraduate, Masters, and Professional programs of the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. She serves as the director of the Master of Science in Global Medicine program at the graduate level, and as director of the Global Health and Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Studies programs at the undergraduate level, including eight affiliated minor programs. She is also the co-director of the Master of Science in Electrical Engineering – Wireless Health Technology program.\n \nDr. Nezami’s ongoing research interests examine education and global health, with specific emphases including: global health and citizenship – using education to promote global connectivity across humanity; effective integration of technology into pedagogy; exploration of distance learning models and effects on student engagement; and spaced learning and its impact on student retention of materials.\n \nHer other research examines determinants of behavioral risk factors for chronic diseases, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases, as well as the examination of personality characteristics in relation to cardiovascular disease, and self-medication theories of smoking. Dr. Nezami received her M.A. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Houston and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Southern California.
Anna Nguyen
annan@usc.edu
Anna is a junior at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Human Biology and a minor in Healthcare Studies, set to graduate in 2022, and is applying for the progressive Master’s degree in Narrative Medicine. At USC, she serves as the Service Chair for Alpha Delta Kappa in which she focuses on executing philanthropy and cultural events to give back to the Southern California community. Anna hopes to continue her education in medical school, with aspirations of working in the field of emergency medicine. Outside of school, she loves ceramics, yoga, hiking, shopping, and trying new foods!
Annie Nguyen, PhD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Ophthalmology, Assistant Director of Cornea & Refractive Surgery Fellowship
nguy686@usc.edu
Annie Nguyen, MD, a native Southern Californian, graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University Honors Program at California State University Fullerton. Opportunities presented themselves on the East Coast where she broadened her horizons as she seized opportunities to obtain her medical degree from Harvard University and ophthalmology residency training at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. She returned home to California to complete fellowship training in cornea, external disease, and refractive surgery at USC Roski Eye Institute.\n\nThe foundation for her approach to health care has been firmly laid to rely upon effective communication, endless quest for knowledge, constant skill refinement, and unwavering patient advocacy as she strives to provide exceptional patient care, contribute to the education of medical students, residents, and fellows, and further knowledge through clinical research.\n\nOutside of work, Dr. Nguyen enjoys traveling, spending time with friends and family, cooking and baking, playing sports, arts and crafts, and playing with her dog.
Michelle Nuno, PhD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
mnuno@usc.edu
I am an Assistant Professor of Clinical Preventive Medicine in the Division of Biostatistics at the University of Southern California. In 2015, I received a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Riverside. I completed my graduate work at the University of California, Irvine, where I received an M.S in Statistics in 2017 and a Ph.D. in Statistics in 2020. My research interests include clinical trials and the development of robust methodology for efficient sampling designs.
Jeffrey O’Malley, MA
Adjunct Research Professor
jeffomalleypersonal@gmail.com
Gilbert Orta Portillo, B.A., MPH
ortaport@usc.edu
Gilbert Orta Portillo is currently a PhD student at USC in the Health Behavior Research program. He is under the mentorship of Dr. Ricky Bluthenthal and Dr. Jeffrey Klausner. He is interested in HIV and AIDS prevention, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) linkage, and stigma reduction interventions among marginalized and vulnerable communities. He received his B.A. in Anthropology from Haverford College in Pennsylvania, and his MPH from USC with a concentration in community health promotion.
Juan Gerardo Palacios Aceves
Student Worker – ADVI
juangerp@usc.edu
Lawrence Palinkas, PhD
Frances Lomas Feldman Chair in Social Policy and Health. Chair, Department of Children, Youth and Families Professor of Social Work, Anthropology and Population and Public Health Sciences
palinkas@usc.edu
Lawrence Palinkas is the Albert G. and Frances Lomas Feldman Professor of Social Policy and Health at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. He also holds secondary appointments as professor in the departments of anthropology and preventive medicine at USC.\n\nA medical anthropologist, his primary areas of expertise lie within preventive medicine, cross-cultural medicine and health services research. Palinkas is particularly interested in behavioral health, global behavioral health and health disparities, implementation science, community-based participatory research, and the sociocultural and environmental determinants of health and health-related behavior with a focus on disease prevention and health promotion. His research has included studies of psychosocial adaptation to extreme environments and manmade disasters; mental health needs of older adults; cultural explanatory models of mental illness and service utilization; HIV and substance abuse prevention in Mexico; evaluation of academic-community research practice partnerships; and the dissemination and implementation of evidence-based practices for delivery of mental health services to children, adolescents and underserved populations. This work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA, National Institutes of Health, MacArthur Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation. His current research encompasses mental health services, immigrant health and global health. He also provides expertise to students and colleagues in the use of qualitative and mixed research methods.\n\nAmong his scholarly achievements are the Antarctic Service Medal by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Navy in 1989; deputy chief officer of the Life Sciences Standing Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research in 2002; chair of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute’s External Advisory Council in 2003; and membership on committees of the National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Palinkas is an elected fellow of the American Anthropological Association, Society for Applied Anthropology, American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, and the Society for Social Work and Research, and the author of more than 450 publications.
Raina Pang, PhD
Associate Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
rpang@usc.edu
Broadly speaking my research interest lies in understanding sex/gender differences and women specific factors in addiction. As part of these efforts, I have completed a postdoctoral fellowship investigating the interactive role of menstrual cycle and nicotine on response inhibition and smoking behavior using laboratory based behavioral pharmacology. Currently, I am PI on a five year study aimed at understanding within and between subject effects of ovarian hormones on mood and smoking behavior across the menstrual cycle using ecological momentary assessment.
Amy Parish, PhD
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
parish@usc.edu
Rose Park, EdD, MPH, CHES
Assistant Director, MPH Program
rchon@usc.edu
Cecilia Patino Sutton, PhD, MD, MeD
Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences (Educational Scholar)
patinosu@usc.edu
Research Interests:\n* Asthma\n Epidemiology: The prevalence and severity of asthma world-wide.\n Implementation Science: Using clinical tools that measure asthma control to improve outcomes\n* Tobacco Control \n Implementation Science: Targeting physicians to reduce the use of Tobacco in Developing Countries\n* Patient Reported Outcomes (e.g., Asthma Control, Health Related Quality of Life)\n* Training in Clinical Translational Research Worldwide and its impact on the quality of research\n\n Cecilia M. Patino-Sutton is a Medical Doctor trained in Allergy and Clinical Immunology and in Medical Education at the School of Medicine, National University of Cordoba, Argentina. During 17 years she worked as a clinical practitioner and had was appointed in the Department of Histology, Cellular Biology and Embryology where she taught 2nd year medical students. She then continued her training in clinical research and epidemiology at the Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care, Johns Hopkins University (Fellowship), and University of Southern California (PhD), respectively. \n\n As a researcher she has been involved in describing the burden of Allergic Rhinitis, Eczema, and Asthma in children and adults in Argentina as well as asthma specific mortality rates. These studies lead to actively promoting Asthma guidelines during the 1990’s for the treatment and management of this chronic respiratory disease nation-wide. She was also involved in describing the high prevalence of tobacco use among Argentine generalist and specialists, and its association with knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes towards tobacco use. These studies lead to a country wide campaign against tobacco use among medical doctors and to the first restrictive policies of tobacco use within medical professional venues.\n\n In the United States, she has focused on Provider-Patient communication about asthma control during the clinical encounter in diverse populations (Caucasian, African-American and Hispanic) and its? effect on poor asthma control; as well as accurately measuring patient reported outcomes such as asthma control and general and health specific quality of life. She has maintained her interest in education and is currently an Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine and the Director of Education of the Southern California Clinical Translational Science Institute at USC where she has been involved in developing curriculum for graduate students and clinically oriented professionals focused on a research career in promoting and accelerating research across the translational spectrum. \n\n She takes great pride in being part of a global educational program MECOR (Methods in Epidemiologic, Clinical and Operational Research) for developing countries sponsored by the American Thoracic Society; and has been teaching clinical research methodology in English, Spanish and Portuguese to health care providers interested in respiratory diseases across Latin America, Africa, and Turkey for the past 15 years.
Eric Pedersen, PhD
Associate Professor (Psychiatry)
Eric.Pedersen@med.usc.edu
Maryann Pentz, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
Sidney R. Garfield Chair in Health Sciences
Director, Institute for Prevention Research
pentz@usc.edu
Dr. Pentz is Director of the Institute and Professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences. For over 20 years, her research and program development have focused on community and policy approaches to preventing tobacco, alcohol, drug use, and violence in youth. Her findings contributed to the formulation of a U.S. Senate bill and use of evidence-based criteria for appropriating funds for prevention under the Safe and Drug Free Schools Act. Her recent translational research includes evaluating dissemination of evidence-based prevention programs and policies, translation of evidence-based substance abuse prevention to obesity prevention, and smart growth communities as a built environment intervention to promote health.
Two of her programs, Project STAR (a school and community-based program for drug abuse prevention) and TOPP (a tobacco and drug policy program for schools), have received awards from Congress and the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention and are on the National Registry of Effective Programs. Project STAR is the longest-running drug prevention trial in the U.S., having followed youth from early adolescence into mid-adulthood and their own school-age children. A recent program, Media Buzz (the first media literacy program designed specifically for drug abuse prevention), is expected to be considered for the National Registry next year. A new prevention trial, STEP, involves 24 cities in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Massachusetts, and Missouri. Findings are showing successful adoption and diffusion of evidence-based drug prevention in these cities.
In addition, Dr. Pentz has chaired the NIDA Epidemiology and Prevention study section, been a member of Attorney General Reno’s Task Force on Methamphetamine and the NIH Peer Review Oversight Group.
Natalia Peraza
Project Assistant
nperaza@usc.edu
Natalia Peraza graduated from the University of Houston in 2018 with a bachelor of science in Psychology and a minor in Human Development and Family Studies. As an undergraduate, she first developed her research interests in psychopathology and substance use at the Anxiety and Health Research Laboratory and Substance Use Treatment Clinic at the University of Houston. Natalia’s main research interests include understanding the comorbidity of mental health disorders and addictive behaviors, developing intervention efforts to treat psychological and substance use issues, and identifying populations that may be at greater risk for maladaptive mental health and substance use problems. She plans to further her education by pursuing a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. In her free time, Natalia enjoys long hikes, baking, song/poetry writing, and watching stand-up comedy.
Judith Perrigo
Student Worker Population and Public Health Sciences
jlpleite@usc.edu
Jin Piao, PhD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
jpiao@usc.edu
Dr. Jin Piao is an Assistant Professor from the Division of Biostatistics, Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, the University of Southern California. She has been working on the development of methodological approaches that have direct impacts on biomedical applications. Her research interest lies in the areas including clinical trial design and analysis, survival analysis, semiparametric statistical models, and meta-analysis. In addition to statistical methodological research, she has been actively collaborated with physicians and biologists in pediatric solid tumors areas and supported several phases I, II, or III solid tumors clinical trials at Children’s Oncology Group.
Trevor Pickering, PhD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
tpickeri@usc.edu
Dr. Trevor Pickering is an Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine and co-director the CTSI BERD biostatistics core. He has over 15 years of experience with study design and analysis and has worked on projects in areas including community health assessment, nutrition and exercise interventions, tobacco and drug evaluation, suicide prevention, and improving the effectiveness of health-related interventions. He frequently collaborates with investigators on aspects of research ranging from study design to grant and manuscript completion. He has experience in regression methods, longitudinal analysis, social network analysis, and latent variable methods such as factor analysis and structural equation modeling.
Malcolm Pike, PhD
Emeritus Professor Population and Public Health Sciences
mcpike@usc.edu
Janice Pogoda, PhD
Adjunct Research Associate Professor
janice.pogoda@outlook.com
Alexandra Portaro, PharmD
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
portaro@usc.edu
Navid Pour-Ghasemi, MD
Clinical Assistant Professor of Medical Education (Part-Time)
npourgha@usc.edu
Franklin Pratt, MD, MPHTM, FACEP
Adjunct Research Professor
fpratt@ph.lacounty.gov
Md Mostafijur Rahman
Postdoctoral Scholar – Research Associate
mostafij@usc.edu
Venezia Ramirez
Research Coordinator I
veneziar@usc.edu
Venezia Ramirez (she/ella) is Research Coordinator for the Breast health and the Environment among Latinas in Los Angeles (BELLA) study which aims to advance community research capacity and education through community engaged participatory research that studies the impact of oil drilling operations and toxic metal exposure on women’s health. She holds a B.S. in Environmental Science from UCLA and has actively engaged with her community to help build capacity to combat environmental racism and systemic barriers that uphold such inequity. Past collaborations include creating a space for community members to learn QGIS and share their stories on health impacts from oil drilling operations, helping partner UCLA students with K-12 students in Southeast Los Angeles for academic mentoring, teaching students in environmental science research program using traditionally informed Indigenous ecological knowledge systems, and researching potential of native plants to remediate lead contaminated soil caused by Exide Technologies. She resides with her family in Southeast Los Angeles (Tongva land) who originate from México and wishes to devote her life to continue to dismantle the environmental inequities impacting her community.
Sheela Rao, MD
Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics
srao@chla.usc.edu
Sheela Rao is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and the Keck School of Medicine. She has taught pediatric residents at all levels of training in both inpatient and outpatient clinical settings since joining the faculty at USC in 2006. Since beginning her career at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles she has worked in the interdisciplinary format of the CHLA Foster Hub clinic where pediatricians join with psychologists to complete initial health assessments of children entering the foster care system. She has conducted and published interdisciplinary research on populations traversing through child welfare systems. She has also served as a training presenter for training sessions for health professionals within the context of the Los Angeles Department of Public Health and Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services. She is very committed to facilitating education and advocacy for vulnerable populations of children.
JoMarie Reilly, MD, MPH
Professor Of Clinical Family Medicine (Educational Scholar)
jmreilly@usc.edu
Jo Marie Reilly, MD, MPH is a Professor of Family Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She is the Director of the Keck School of Medicine of USC Primary Care Initiative, Associate Director of the Introduction to Clinical Medicine Course and Family Medicine Pre-Doctoral Director. She graduated from Georgetown Medical School, completed her internship and residency in family medicine at the Kaiser Permanente Family Residency Program in Los Angeles and her fellowship in women’s health and obstetrics at the White Memorial Family Practice Residency Program, where she remained as faculty for 13 years. \n\nShe is the immediate past Chair of the American Academy of Family Physician’s commission on Education, Student and Resident subcommittee, on the Editorial Boards of Family Medicine, Family Systems and Health and PULSE. She is a USC-Eisner Family Medicine Residency faculty, the senior Family Medicine Student Advisor, and on the leadership team of the Society of Teacher’s of Family Medicine’s bioethics and humanities interest group. \n\nDr. Reilly’s publications and research interests include innovations in student and resident education, the primary care pipeline, physician well-being, care for the underserved, arts, humanities and narrative medicine and women and children’s health care.
Lindsay Renfro, PhD
Associate Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
Children’s Oncology Group Associate Group Statistician
lrenfro@usc.edu
Dr. Lindsay Renfro is an Associate Professor of Research at the University of Southern California and the Associate Group Statistician for Children’s Oncology Group (COG). COG is the pediatric cooperative group member of the NIH/NCI’s National Clinical Trials Network and the world’s largest organization dedicated exclusively to pediatric cancer research. Within COG, Dr. Renfro is also a faculty statistician for the Renal Tumors Committee, where she leads the design and analysis of therapeutic and biology-driven clinical trials for Wilms Tumor and related projects in pediatric renal cancer. Her expertise and methodological interests also include novel trial designs (e.g., adaptive, Bayesian, biomarker-driven, and master protocols), evaluation and validation of surrogate endpoints in clinical trials, and construction, validation, and implementation of disease-specific prognostic calculators for clinical use and decision-making. Dr. Renfro also enjoys teaching statistics to non-statisticians, mentoring students, traveling, and enjoying the mountains and beaches of Southern California with her son, Will.
Roshan Reporter, MD, MPH
Adjunct Research Professor
rreporter@ph.lacounty.gov
Jean Richardson, DrPH
Emeritus Professor
jean.richardson@med.usc.edu
Professor Emeritus, Dr. Jean Richardson, spent her 33-year career in Preventive Medicine at the USC Keck School of Medicine and was a program leader at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center in cancer prevention and control from 1989 to 2007. She designed behavioral intervention studies in clinical and community settings and conducted large multisite field trials. Among the issues she addressed were ways to improve compliance with chemotherapy for cancer patients and with antiretrovirals for HIV/AIDS patients, studies to decrease HIV transmission, studies of early detection screening among individuals at high risk of various cancers by virtue of familial and other risks, and studies to reduce risk of cancer due to tobacco use and sun exposure. She also assessed factors such as depression, side effects, and pain for patients with cancer and with AIDS as mediators of adherence and quality of life. She used registry data to assess ethnic and socioeconomic factors that contribute to late diagnosis. Her study of HIV prevention in clinical settings was adopted by the CDC as a national model and her intervention materials were used for training across the country. Her studies were supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the State of California, and the American Cancer Society. She received honors for her research and mentoring including the NCI Preventive Oncology Academic Award, the USC Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award for research, the UCLA School of Public Health Alumni Hall of Fame Outstanding Alumni Award, the USC Mellon Mentoring Award for her work with junior faculty, and the USC Lifetime Achievement Award.
Now as professor emeritus, she is active in supporting research on ovarian cancer. She is a national advocate leader for the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance (OCRA). She is a volunteer speaker for Survivors Teaching Students (an OCRA program) and for Camp Mak-A-Dream camps for women with ovarian cancer. She is a patient advocate for the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (OCAC) and for federally funded international studies examining the immunologic, genetic, clinical, and lifestyle factors that explain long or short survival after an ovarian cancer diagnosis. She recently published a book, “When Nothing Feels Predictable: A Path Through Cancer,” using her personal experiences with ovarian cancer and its treatment to provide guidance for women to adjust to the physical and emotional challenges this disease presents.
Kerresa Robinson
Student Worker Population and Public Health Sciences
kerresar@usc.edu
Louise Rohrbach, PhD, MPH
Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
rohrbac@usc.edu
Dr. Rohrbach is a Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences. For the past 35 years, she has conducted research on interventions to prevent adolescent risk behaviors, including substance use, tobacco use, unhealthy dietary and physical activity habits, and risky sexual behaviors. She has published more than 125 papers on these topics. She has been principal investigator on studies funded by NIH; Department of Health and Human Services; Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; Health Resources and Services Administration; California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, California Public Health Institute; American Cancer Society; and Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Recently, she completed an evaluation study of a multi-component teen pregnancy prevention intervention in Los Angeles County known as “Keeping it Real Together” (2010-2020).
Dr. Rohrbach has been a leader of education programs in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, directing the Master of Public Health program for 12 years (2010-2021) and the Health Behavior Research program for 9 years (2001-2009); She has served on numerous committees related to public health and education in university, government, and community settings. She is the recipient of the Translational Science Award from the Society for Prevention Research and the Excellence in Mentoring Award from USC.
Dr. Rohrbach received a B.A. in Psychology from Indiana University, M.P.H. in Community Health Sciences from UCLA, and Ph.D. in Health Behavior Research from USC.
Mansour Rostami, MD
Clinical Assistant Professor of Medical Education (Part-Time)
mrostami@usc.edu
Sarah-Jeanne Salvy, PhD
Adjunct Research Associate Professor
Sarah.Salvy@cshs.org
Jonathan Samet, MD, MS
Research Professor (Voluntary) Department of Population and Public Health Sciences Keck School of Medicine Director, Institute for Global Health University of Southern California
JON.SAMET@CUANSCHUTZ.EDU
Dr. Samet is a leading authority on the health effects of smoking and air pollution. He has worked actively to promote tobacco control worldwide, and has addressed some of the most critical issues in environmental epidemiology, particularly in relation to air pollution. As the director of the Institute for Global Health, Dr. Samet is a catalyst for enhancing collaboration among USC faculty in addressing global heath problems. The Institute for Global Health creates synergy among USC faculty across numerous schools, all with research and programmatic interests in the arena of global health. Background Professor and chairman of the Department of Epidemiology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, director of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control and co-director of the Risk Sciences and Public Policy Institute, Johns Hopkins University. Chair of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and of the Board of Environmental Studies and Toxicology, National Research Council. Consulting Editor and Senior Scientific Editor, Reports of the Surgeon General on Smoking and Health, including the 1985, 1986, 1990, 2004 and 2006 reports.
Gary San Angel
Distance Education Operations Specialist
gary.sanangel@med.usc.edu
Jessica Santos
jessicgs@usc.edu
Jessica Santos is a fourth year undergraduate Chemical Engineering student in the Viterbi School of Engineering and first year Master of Public Health candidate at the Keck School of Medicine from Dallas, TX. Her passion for environmental and climate justice was sparked after working with communities impacted by urban oil drilling throughout Los Angeles. Jessica currently serves as co-chair of the USC Institute of Inequalities in Global Health student advisory council. She is a recipient of the USC Mork Family Scholarship and the Viterbi Undergraduate Fellowship, as well as a candidate for the National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges Scholars Program. She wants to synthesize her research and advocacy experience with her
engineering/ public health background to practice regulatory environmental law. Her favorite color is ultramarine.
Veronica Setiawan, PhD
Population and Public Health Sciences
vsetiawa@usc.edu
Dr. V. Wendy Setiawan is Professor of Population & Public Health Sciences and Professor of Medicine at USC, Co-Leader of the Cancer Epidemiology Program in the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Associate Director for Population Sciences in the USC Research Center for Liver Diseases. She is a cancer epidemiologist focusing on understanding the determinants of ethnic differences in cancer incidence and mortality and identifying populations at highest risk because of genetic and biologic factors, environmental exposures, or a combination of both. Her research goal is to identify effective modalities for disease prevention for population at risk and ultimately reduce cancer health disparities. Her primary research interest in cancer study is focused on liver, pancreatic and endometrial cancer. \n\nDr. Setiawan received her BS in Biochemistry from UCLA, MS and PhD in Epidemiology from UCLA School of Public Health and completed her postdoctoral fellowship in Cancer and Genetic Epidemiology at Harvard and USC. Dr. Setiawan has been leading many projects in large epidemiologic studies including the Multiethnic Cohort Study and the NCI Epidemiology of Endometrial Cancer Consortium (E2C2), and the NHGRI Population Architecture Using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) study. She received an NCI’s career development award (K07) early in her career, and she is currently Principal Investigator of four active NCI and NIMHD-funded R01s and co-investigator of multiple NIH grants. Her studies utilize multi-level data integration encompassing genetics, biomarkers, lifestyle, and social/contextual factors to elucidate factors associated with differences in cancer incidence and outcome across racial/ethnic groups. She has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers as well as book chapters and review articles. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of National Cancer Institute, Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, and Cancer Causes and Control. She is also a standing member of the NIH/NCI Career Development K award study section.
Pooja Shah
Undergraduate Research Assistant
pnshah@usc.edu
Pooja Shah is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S in Human Biology and a minor in Substance Abuse Prevention, set to graduate in 2023. At USC, Pooja serves on the board of the Inter-Health Council and is an active member of her sorority. She also volunteers for Dr.Ricky Bluthenthal’s preventative medicine lab where she is assisting on research regarding injection drug and opioid usage patterns. Outside of USC, she is also a member of Harm Reduction Los Angeles, a nonprofit organization aimed at educating and advocating for harm reduction in medicine, and is a registered EMT. Pooja hopes to one day take her experience into the medical field and advocate for underrepresented populations. In her free time, Pooja enjoys cooking, painting, listening to music, and spending time with friends and family.
Yahya Shaikh, MD, MPH
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
yahyasha@usc.edu
Paras Sharma
ISE – Student Worker
psharma6@usc.edu
Paras Sharma was a research assistant in SOMA Lab in 2021. After earning a master`s degree in computer science from the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC, he went on to take a position as a Software Engineer at Amazon. Prior to that he completed his B.Tech. degree in Computer Science and Engineering with honors at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Dhanbad. His research interests fall in the intersection of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). He has great enthusiasm to apply his NLP and HCI knowledge to understand people`s behavior and emotions. His future goals include pursing his Ph.D. and continuing to work in academia and research. Paras worked with Jon-Patrick Allem to build tools to analyze the use and impact of tobacco-related products, using video data from social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube.
Steven Siegel, MD, PhD
Professor of Psychiatry & the Behavioral Sciences
siegels@usc.edu
Dr. Steven Siegel was appointed Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC in July 2016. He is a physician-scientist specializing in the treatment of psychosis. \n\nDr. Siegel came to USC after 20 years at the University of Pennsylvania, where he had roles in research, teaching and clinical care. He received his B.A. in Neuroscience at Colgate University in 1986, and his M.D. and Ph.D. in Neurobiology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1996. He later completed a MacArthur Foundation Training Fellowship before completing his residency in Psychiatry and a Fellowship in Neuropsychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. \n\nPrior to joining USC, Dr. Siegel was involved in, medical, undergraduate and graduate education. He was Associate Director of Masters in Translational Research for 6 years at the University of Pennsylvania. He directed a course on Therapeutics and Commercialization at Penn, based on his experience with technology transfer. Other major educational roles at Penn included Director of the Clinical Training Program that spanned 6 clinical specialties. He was named one of the nation’s outstanding clinicians by the National Association for Mental Illness. \n\nDr. Siegel has made contributions to understanding the neurobiology of schizophrenia, autism, and drug dependence. His laboratory uses animal models to evaluate EEG, combined with behavioral and molecular studies. Additionally, he invented, patented, and licensed a new method of treatment for schizophrenia using biodegradable implants, which successfully completed a pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial and has been submitted as an NDA to the FDA for consideration. \n\nIn his current role as Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, Dr. Siegel oversees operations for a department comprised of 200 faculty members, 50 staff members and 100 residents, fellows, and trainees; more than tripling the size of the department in 5 years since he arrived. His department provides a broad range of mental health services to children and adults at LAC+USC Medical Center including Emergency, Inpatient, and Outpatient Services. Additionally, he has expanded and improved the quality of mental health services at Keck Medicine and USC Care, with an emphasis on consultation liaison and specialty services. During his first year at USC he designed and oversaw the incorporation of student mental health services into Keck Medicine of USC. He continues to lead and guide the evolution of student mental health services at USC, both within Student Health, and in the new Keck Medicine student outpatient practice that launched in late 2019. He was named the inaugural Chief Mental Health and Wellness Officer for Keck Medicine of USC in 2021, with responsibility and oversight of mental health services across the Keck enterprise as well as leadership of wellness program as part of Keck Medicine’s nationally acclaimed Care for the Caregiver program. \n\nOver his career at Penn and USC, Dr. Siegel has mentored more than 150 graduate and undergraduate trainees in neuroscience and bioengineering. His research has been supported by federal, state, foundation, and industry sources for more than 25 years. He has published approximately 150 manuscripts as well as multiple book chapters, and one book spanning topics related to drug abuse, basic research in schizophrenia and autism, as well as clinical aspects of schizophrenia.
Kimberly Siegmund, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
kims@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-siegmund-5759373a/
/KimSiegmund1
Dr. Siegmund is a biostatistician with expertise in cancer modeling and the statistical analysis of epigenetic data in human disease. She has published numerous papers studying DNA methylation, and teaches a course on the statistical analysis of high-dimensional data. Her current research focuses on developing mathematical models to understand the growth and spread of cancer. These models address fundamental questions about aging through modeling cell division processes from a molecular phylogenetic approach.\n\nDr. Siegmund is interested the analysis of DNA methylation and gene expression data. She is developing mathematical models that will allow the identification of disease sub-types based on DNA methylation profiles. Other interests and skills relate to the design and analysis of family studies for gene characterization.
Gopal Singh, PhD, MS, MSc, DPS
Adjunct Research Professor
gksingh59@gmail.com
Neeraj Sood, PhD
Professor
Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs
Vice Dean for Research
nsood@usc.edu
Neeraj Sood, Ph.D., is Director of Research at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and Associate Professor at the Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Economics & Policy at the University of Southern California. His prior work has focused on the economics of innovation, HIV/AIDS, health care financing, and global health. \n\nHis research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals and books including leading journals in economics, medicine and health policy. Dr. Sood’s work has also been featured in several media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, U.S. News and World Report, Scientific American, C-SPAN, and Univision. Dr. Sood was the finalist for the 16th Annual NIHCM Health Care Research Award, recognizing outstanding research in health policy. He was also the 2009 recipient of the Eugene Garfield Economic Impact Prize, recognizing outstanding research demonstrating how medical research impacts the economy. \n\nDr. Sood is on the editorial boards of Health Services Research and Forum for Health Economics and Policy. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and standing member of the Health Services Organization and Delivery study section at NIH. Prior to joining USC, Dr. Sood was a senior economist at RAND and Professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School.
Claradina Soto, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
toya@usc.edu
https://ipr.usc.edu/index.php/aian-needs-assessment/
Dr. Claradina Soto (Navajo/Jemez Pueblo) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine in the Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research. She has over 20 years working with American Indian and Alaska Native populations in public health, collaborating with urban and Tribal communities in CA to reduce and prevent mental health disparities, cancer prevalence, commercial tobacco use, and substance use and opioid use disorders. She collaborates on several research projects funded by NIH/FDA, Tobacco Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP), Department of Health Care Services, California Tobacco Control Programs and the Office of Health Equity. She teaches courses in the Master of Public Health and Health Promotion programs at USC and mentors undergraduate and graduate students. Dr. Soto is a longtime advocate for the AI/AN communities and other priority populations to advance health equity and reduce health disparities.
Melanie-Gwen Sta. Maria
CSP Data Collection Specialist III
mmaria@usc.edu
Chrysovalantis Stafylis, MD, MPH
Postdoctoral Scholar – Research Associate
stafylis@usc.edu
Chrysovalantis (Chrys) Stafylis is a Postdoctoral Research Associate. His main focus is syphilis, HIV prevention through telehealth and COVID-19 epidemiology. He enjoys mentoring students and junior researchers. Chrys studied in Greece, and he received his MD from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Thessaly, Larisa, Greece and his MPH from the Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, University of Thessaly, Larisa, Greece.
Jane Steinberg, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
janestei@usc.edu
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rjV0ogsAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
https://dailytrojan.com/2021/04/09/keck-professor-shares-coronavirus-work-with-white-house-task-force/
https://www.youtube.com/embed/w7o25bWr2OA
Jane K. Steinberg, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor in the Department of Population Sciences and Public Health in the Keck School of Medicine at USC. Trained as a behavioral scientist, her research interests include determinants of multiple risk behaviors (alcohol/drug use, HIV/STDs) among youth and young adults, and development of educational interventions to reduce health risks. She also conducts research on the public health impacts of local and state tobacco and cannabis policies on product use, particularly among low-income, ethnically diverse youth. Current/recent research projects: examination of proximity to cannabis retailers and cannabis use among adolescents; evaluation of the adoption, implementation and impact of tobacco policy and system change campaigns in California; development and evaluation of a community-based COVID-19 educational intervention to mitigate risks of disease acquisition and transmission among high-risk Latino residents in LA County; Dr. Steinberg is the Director of Public Health Practice for the MPH Program. She received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Davis, and her MPH and PhD in Community Health Sciences from the University California, Los Angeles.
Mariana Stern, PhD
Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences and Urology
the Ira Goodman Chair in Cancer Research
marianas@usc.edu
https://care2healthequitycenter.org
@MarianaStern
Dr. Stern obtained her undergraduate training in Biology at the University of Buenos Aires, School of Sciences, in Argentina with a focus on molecular and evolutionary genetics. She obtained her PhD in Cancer Biology at the University of Texas-MD Anderson Cancer Center and pursued postdoctoral training in molecular epidemiology at the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health. At USC, she is currently Director of the Applied Biostatistics and Epidemiology and the Molecular Epidemiology MS Programs and teaches to undergraduates students. She also serves as Associate Director for Population Science at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. She is also a program director for the Florida-California Cancer Research Education and Engagement (CaRE2) Health Equity Center, an NCI-funded partnership dedicated to supporting and fostering research on cancer disparities among Black and Latinx, doing community outreach among these two minority populations, and training the next generation of underrepresented minority scientists. Her overall research interests cut across the following main themes: diet and cancer, clinical epidemiology of prostate cancer, and cancer health disparities in Black and Latino populations.
Daniel Stram, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
stram@med.usc.edu
My research is on general biostatistical issues in epidemiology, and I am a long time collaborator on a number of important prospective (cohort) studies of cancer and other diseases. These include the Atomic Bomb Survivors Study, the Multiethnic Cohort Study, and the Children’s Health Study. I participate in many other projects in the Preventive Medicine Department at USC. I have particular interest in measurement error issues in dosimetry for radiation epidemiology and in dietary assessment for nutritional epidemiology. I have recently begun working on association-based testing for the influence upon cancer risk of genomic variation in candidate genes using nested case-control studies within the MEC, with special emphasis on haplotype-based risk estimation and haplotype-tagging SNP selection. See the publications and software development list below, for further information.
Steven Sussman, PhD, FAAHB, FAPA
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
ssussma@usc.edu
https://www.facebook.com/steve.sussman.106
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXXbnVjr0Cg
http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=y-OkQvAAAAAJ&hl=en
Steve Sussman, Ph.D., FAAHB, FAPA, FSPR, received his doctorate in social-clinical psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1984. He is a professor of preventive medicine, psychology, and social work at the University of Southern California (USC), and he has been at USC for 36 years. He studies etiology, prevention, and cessation within the addictions arena, broadly defined, as well as translation research and program development. He has over 500 publications. His programs include Project Towards No Tobacco Use (young teen tobacco use prevention), Project Towards No Drug Abuse (older teen drug abuse prevention), and Project EX (older teen tobacco use prevention/cessation), which are considered evidence-based programs at numerous agencies (i.e., CDC, NIDA, NCI, OJJDP, SAMSHA, CSAP, Colorado and Maryland Blueprints, Health Canada, U.S. DOE and various State Departments of Education). He received the honor of Research Laureate for the American Academy of Health Behavior in 2005, and he was President there (2007-2008). Also, as of 2007, he received the honor of Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Division 50, Addictions). Also, as of 2019, he received the honor of Fellow of the Society for Prevention Research. He is the current Editor of Evaluation & the Health Professions (SAGE Publications; since 2010). His newest texts are: Substance and Behavioral Addictions: Concepts, Causes, and Cures (Cambridge, 2017) and The Cambridge Handbook of Substance and Behavioral Addictions (Editor; Cambridge, 2020).
Kruthika Swaminathan
Population and Public Health Sciences Student Worker
kruthika@usc.edu
Alayna Tackett, PhD
Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
alaynata@usc.edu
Dr. Tackett is a pediatric psychologist and Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California, and faculty member in the USC Health, Emotion, and Addiction Laboratory and the USC Institute for Addiction Science. She is also a current Pediatric Research NIH Loan Repayment recipient. After receiving her BA in Honor’s Studies and Psychology from Northern Kentucky University (2009), Dr. Tackett worked as a research coordinator at the Center for Adherence and Self-Management at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (2008-2012). Dr. Tackett received her MS and PhD in Clinical Psychology from Oklahoma State University (2012-2017) under the mentorship of Drs. Larry L. Mullins and Theodore L. Wagener. Dr. Tackett completed her clinical psychology internship/residency and postdoctoral fellowship training (2016-2018) in pediatric asthma and allergic disorders under the primary mentorship of Elizabeth L. McQuaid, PhD, ABPP at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University.
Dr. Tackett’s research follows a team-science model to examine the respiratory effects of e-cigarettes and other electronic nicotine/cannabis delivery devices (e.g., heat not burn, cannabis) among youth and young adults. Dr. Tackett is also interested in developing and testing novel methods to a) incorporate objective measurements of respiratory health and symptoms; b) reduce children’s exposure to secondhand aerosol from non-combustible tobacco products; and c) contribute scientific evidence to regulate tobacco products to protect public health.
Joshua Tapia
Project Specialist
tapiajos@usc.edu
Yara Tapia is a Project Specialist in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences. Before leading Proyecto FACIL, Yara has worked years in the space of HIV prevention and is deeply passionate about improving healthcare systems to better serve marginalized communities. As a Latinx transwoman, they value the importance of engaging communities in research and policy. They received their Bachelor’s in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Duncan Thomas, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
Verna R. Richter Chair in Cancer Research
dthomas@usc.edu
My primary research interest has been in the development of statistical methods for genetic and environmental epidemiology, with wide involvement in numerous studies in both areas. My statistical contributions include methods for analysis of nested case-control studies, approaches to modeling exposure-time-response relationships and interaction effects, exposure modeling and measurement error, and the use of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods and Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) methods in genetics.On the environmental side, I have been particularly active in air pollution and radiation carcinogenesis. I was one of the founding investigators of the Southern California Childrenâ?’s Health Study, a major cohort study of the health effects of air pollution on schoolchildrenâ?’s lung development. I have also collaborated on studies of cancer in residents downwind of the Nevada Test Site, uranium miners, medical irradiation, and the atomic bomb survivors. I was a member of President Clintonâ?’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, as well as the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR V), and radiation advisory committees for numerous other governmental agencies. Other environmental activities include studies of asbestos, malathion spraying in California, electromagnetic fields, and air pollution; I am a Co-Director of the Southern California Environmental Health Research Center.On the genetic side, I have numerous publications in the area of statistical genetics and am collaborating on family studies of breast and colon cancer, pathway based modeling, several genome-wide association studies, next generation sequencing, and epigenetics. I chaired organizing committees for the Genetic Analysis Workshop, and am a Past President of the International Genetic Epidemiology Society.I have authored two textbooks: Statistical Methods in Genetic Epidemiology (Oxford University Press, 2003) and Statistical Methods in Environmental Epidemiology (Oxford University Press, 2009).I feel that these three broad areas of interest make me uniquely qualified to address methodological challenges in studying gene-environment interactions.
Karen Thomas
Director of Development, Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
karentho@usc.edu
Paul Thomas, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
Director, Division of Bioinformatics
Director of the Gene Sequence, Function, and Health Laboratory Initiative
pdthomas@usc.edu
https://sites.google.com/usc.edu/thomaslab/
Trained in computational biology (specifically computational protein folding using statistical-mechanics based techniques with Dr. Ken Dill), Dr. Thomas turned to genomics as soon as the Human Genome Project began pilot work in 1995. The culmination of this early work was the publication of the paper describing the sequencing of the first human genome in 2001; Dr. Thomas led the work described in the 10-page section of the paper entitled \An overview of the predicted protein coding genes in the human genome.\ Since that time, Dr. Thomas’s group has continued to innovate in the area of computational analysis of genomic data, with an emphasis on gene function and evolution. In addition to founding and continuing development on the PANTHER phylogenomics project, Dr. Thomas is a director of the Gene Ontology Consortium, one of the largest and best-known bioinformatics projects in the world.
Mariann Tobar
mariannt@usc.edu
Mariann Tobar is currently a third-year undergraduate student double majoring in Biological Sciences and East Asian Language and Culture (EALC). Her primary interest in this research project is to gain a better understanding of the socio-economic impacts in vulnerable communities in regard to environmental justice and access to healthcare. Her secondary research interest is utilizing Epidemiology to evaluate public health issues in local populations and cancer biology.
Claudia Toledo-Corral, MPH, PhD
Adjunct Research Assistant Professor
claudia.toledo-corral@csun.edu
Stella Tommasi, PhD
Assistant Professor of Research Population and Public Health Sciences
tommasi@med.usc.edu
Jennifer Tsai, PhD
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
tsaijy@usc.edu
Jennifer Tsui (Kim), PhD, MPH
Associate Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
tsuijenn@usc.edu
@JenniferTsuiPhD
I am a health services researcher and cancer population scientist. My research focuses on disparities in cancer care delivery and cancer outcomes, particularly among racial/ethnic minority and low-income populations. I currently lead a five year study funded by the American Cancer Society to investigate health care organizational and delivery factors that impact care transitions among breast and colorectal cancer patients with Medicaid coverage. My other areas of research focus on HPV vaccination and barriers to uptake in low-income minority communities as well as disparities in cancer screening in racial/ethnic minority populations at the local, state, and national levels.My work utilizes cancer registry information, population-based surveys, geographic/spatial data, and administrative health care data to understand multilevel influences on patterns of care and care quality for cancer patients.
Chyna Tucker
Project Specialist
cjtucker@usc.edu
Chyna Tucker recently graduated from the University of Southern California, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a minor in Business. Her research interests include mental health related disparities abroad, and the intersection between culture and mood disorders. She plans to pursue a doctoral degree in clinical or counseling psychology, where she hopes to investigate and develop culture specific therapeutic interventions. Outside of research, Chyna enjoys fashion, cooking, yoga, and visiting family in her home country, Jamaica.
Kim Turner, MBBS, MS
Clinical Assistant Professor of Medical Education (Part-Time)
turnerk@usc.edu
Victoria Umana
Project Assistant
vumana@usc.edu
Victoria Umana graduated from California State University, Los Angeles in 2020 with an M.A. in Psychology. During her time in CSULA, she was a Research Assistant for the Social Psychology Laboratory, where her main research focus was on religion and religiosity. She has also worked on research studies related to human memory and LGBTQ groups. As a project assistant, she works on the Smoking Cessation in Sexual Minority Couples Study. Victoria enjoys playing/writing music and creating art.
Jennifer Unger, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
Associate Training Director
unger@usc.edu
https://www.facebook.com/jenniferunger
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3aPViZgAAAAJ&hl=en
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferunger/
Jennifer B. Unger, Ph.D. is a Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the psychological, social, and cultural influences on health-risk and health-protective behaviors among diverse populations. She currently serves as an Associate Director of the USC Coronavirus Pandemic Research Center (CPRC) and co-leads studies of rapid antigen testing in schools and vaccine hesitancy among college students. She and her colleagues have conducted longitudinal studies of acculturation, cultural stress, and substance use among Hispanic adolescents, highlighting the role of discrimination in health-risk behaviors. Her research also has examined cultural influences on tobacco use among American Indian adolescents, Chinese adolescents, and African American adults and neighborhood influences on adolescent cannabis use. She has collaborated on the design and evaluation of fotonovelas and telenovelas about secondhand smoke exposure in multiunit housing; diabetes; asthma; immunization; and kidney transplantation. She is a Project Leader in the USC Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS), where she studies diffusion of messages about emerging tobacco products to vulnerable populations through social media and leads the Population Core, which conducts annual surveys of three longitudinal cohorts of adolescents and young adults. She is a Program Leader of the Cancer Control program at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and Director of the Ph.D. program in Population and Public Health Sciences / Health Behavior Research. She teaches predoctoral courses in research methods and grantwriting.
Thomas Valente, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
tvalente@usc.edu
Thomas W. Valente, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine, Institute for Prevention Research, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. He is author of Social Networks and Health: Models, Methods, and Applications (2010, Oxford University Press);Evaluating Health Promotion Programs (2002, Oxford University Press); Network Models of the Diffusion of Innovations (1995, Hampton Press); and over 200 articles and chapters (as of January 2021) on social networks, behavior change, and program evaluation. Valente uses social network analysis, health communication, and mathematical models to implement and evaluate health promotion programs designed to prevent tobacco and substance abuse, unintended fertility, and STD/HIV infections. He is also engaged in mapping community coalitions and collaborations to improve health care delivery and reduce healthcare disparities.
David Van Den Berg, PhD
Clinical Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences (Part-Time)
dvandenb@usc.edu
Yoshira Van Horne, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar – Research Associate
yvanhorn@usc.edu
Yoshi is the first Latina to receive a PhD in Environmental Health Sciences from the Mel and Enid Zuckerman School of Public Health at the University of Arizona. As part of her dissertation, she worked with the Diné communities impacted by the Gold King Mine Spill to develop a community-based risk assessment and collaborated with multiple partners to ensure the dissemination of culturally appropriate results report back materials. Her research combines community engagement with exposure assessment to address environmental health concerns.
Kate Vavra-Musser
vavramus@usc.edu
Kate Vavra-Musser is a PhD Candidate in the Population, Health, and Place program with the USC Spatial Sciences Institute, Department of Preventative Medicine, and Department of Sociology. Her research interests focus on environmental health and environmental justice. Dr. Jill Johnston is one of Kate’s two doctoral co-advisors – along with Dr. An-Min Wu – and supports her research on soil lead contamination in East Los Angeles and its relationship to human health. Kate previously received an MS in Global Health and Environment in 2015 from the University of California, Berkeley and BS in Biology with a specialization in Ecology and Evolution in 2009 from the University of Chicago. She is originally from Southwest Michigan.
Sivarama Vinjamury, MPH
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
svinjamu@usc.edu
Erin Vogel
Research Associate, Senior
erinvoge@usc.edu
Erin Vogel, PhD, is a social psychologist and senior research associate in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences of the Keck School of Medicine. She holds a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Toledo (2017). She completed postdoctoral fellowships at UC San Francisco (2017-2019) and Stanford University (2019-2021) prior to joining USC.
Erin’s research interests include youth tobacco use, social media use, and digital health interventions. Her recently completed postdoctoral fellowship, funded by the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, explored the effects of vaping-related social media content on teenagers’ thoughts and intentions around vaping. She has contributed to clinical trials testing LGBTQ-tailored, social media-delivered smoking cessation interventions and testing a chatbot for reducing problematic substance use.
Erin regularly speaks with parents, youth, and media outlets about social media, well-being, vaping, and other substance use. She also enjoys cooking, hiking, and exploring all that Southern California has to offer.
Niquelle Wadé, PhD
Adjunct Research Assistant Professor
niquelle.bw@gmail.com
Noah Wald-Dickler, MD
Clinical Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
walddick@usc.edu
Shirlene Wang
Research Assistant
shirlenw@usc.edu
Shirlene is a 4th year PhD student in the Health Behavior Research Program at USC. After receiving her B.A. in Psychology and Medicine, Health, and Society from Vanderbilt University, she has been conducting research testing approaches to increasing physical activity, improving diet, smoking cessation, and treatment adherence using wearable devices and apps. Her current research focuses on increasing engagement and improving the quality of longitudinal data collected using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). She has worked with the DUB Lab since 2019 analyzing data from the SCOR and SYNC studies. The first smoking study Shirlene designed involved daily counts of the number of cigarette butts in a Wendy's parking lot.
Richard Watanabe, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
Associate Dean for Health and Population Science Programs
rwatanab@usc.edu
I have a primary interest in the pathophysiology and genetics of type 2 diabetes mellitus. My research program focuses on genetics, pathophysiology (and the correlation with genetics), and mathematical modeling of physiologic systems.\n\nIn the area of complex disease genetics, I am focusing on both positional cloning of susceptibility genes for type 2 diabetes and diabetes-related traits and understanding the gene-phenotype relationships and how they are impacted by environmental exposures.
Reid Whaley
Research Coordinator I
rwhaley@usc.edu
Reid Whaley graduated with a B.A. in Communication from University of California, Santa Barbara in 2017 and an MPH from University of San Francisco in 2019. As a graduate student, Reid worked on research projects ranging from investigating the various deleterious effects (e.g., substance use, anxiety, depression) of fear of violent victimization, violent crime, bullying, and discriminatory violence among university students, to the adverse behavioral risk outcomes among Latinx youth exposed to the juvenile justice system. These experiences allowed her the opportunity to author and present three abstracts at the American Public Health Association’s 2019 national conference and serve as third author on several manuscripts, driving her passion for public health research. Reid’s research interests concern the complex relationship between social and behavioral determinants of health, as well as the impact of policies and regulations on the health and wellbeing of marginalized and under-served communities. In her free time, she enjoys exercising, trying new recipes, and exploring Los Angeles.
Joseph Wiemels, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
wiemels@usc.edu
The causes of most human cancers are unclear, but appear to be related to miscues in normal tissue developmental pathways, mutations (genetic and epigenetic) in critical genes caused by errors, infection, and chemicals, and a failure of recognition and removal of tumors by the immune system. Dr. Wiemels studies these factors as potential causes of hematopoietic and brain tumors. Large population-based studies of human cancer in California populations form a basis for examining the origin of these cancers, with a focus on future prevention. This type of research is highly collaborative, and Dr. Wiemels works with several epidemiologists, geneticists, clinicians, biologists, and statisticians.
Gregory Wilkerson
Programmer Analyst II
wilkerso@usc.edu
Mr. Wilkerson is an information technology professional and is responsible for collecting, managing, storing, and processing various forms of social media data. Mr. Wilkerson has experience with SQL databases, and scripting knowledge to create small tools to aid in the research needs of SOMA Lab. He helps facilitate the research efforts performed by all members of the research team, including identifying new packages and algorithms that can analyze million rows of text data.
John Wilson, PhD
Professor of Sociology, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Computer Science, Architecture and Population & Public Health Sciences
jpwilson@usc.edu
Melissa Wilson, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
melisslw@usc.edu
https://www.facebook.com/Hellp-Syndrome-Research-at-USC-163745723652843/
Melissa L. Wilson, MPH, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Pittsburgh, her MPH degree in Epidemiology from the University of California at Los Angeles, and her Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2005.
After completing her postdoctoral research at USC, she joined the faculty of the Obstetrics and Gynecology department. In 2012, then moved to the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences to pursue other research and teaching opportunities. Dr. Wilson’s research interests focus on pregnancy and include the molecular epidemiology of preeclampsia and HELLP Syndrome, the genetics of nausea and vomiting of pregnancy, subsequent effects of in utero exposure to nausea and vomiting of pregnancy on the offspring, long term effects of preeclampsia on offspring, and the effects of air pollution on obstetric outcomes.
Heather Wipfli, PhD
Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences and International Relations
hwipfli@usc.edu
https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-wipfli-a037284/
https://globalhealth.usc.edu
https://www.rayunitedfc.org
https://apruglobalhealth.org
http://facebook.com/heather.wipfli
@hwipfli
Heather Wipfli, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Preventative Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine with a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science and International Relation at the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences at the University of Southern California (USC). Dr. Wipfli holds a Ph.D. in International Studies from the Graduate Institute of International Studies at the University of Geneva. Her research focuses on international cooperation and governance approaches to improve health, specifically in regards to global chronic disease control including tobacco use, obesity, and exposure to air pollution, as well as adolescent-focused community-based interventions. She has conducted research in dozens of countries throughout the world and currently focuses much of her efforts in East Africa, namely Uganda. She is also a member of the California Thirdhand Smoke Research Consortium, in which she serves as the co-Director of the Thirdhand Smoke Research Center (www.thirdhandsmoke.org). \n\nPrior to joining USC, Dr. Wipfli directed research and training for the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and worked on the development of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control as a technical officer at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva. She has published work on global tobacco control, globalization and health, capacity building in low- and middle-income countries and health security. In 2008, Dr. Wipfli earned the Alumni Laurent Prize of the University of Geneva for her dissertation on the global diffusion of tobacco control policies, which as the basis of her first book, The Global War on Tobacco, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2015.
Mellissa Withers, PhD, MHS
Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
Co-Director for the MPH Online Program
mwithers@usc.edu
Dr. Mellissa Withers is an Associate Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and is based at the USC Institute for Global Health. She is Director of the Global Health Program of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities, a non-profit network of 50 universities in the region. \n\nShe earned a PhD in community health sciences from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health with a minor in cultural anthropology. She also holds a Master’s in International Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a BA in international development from UC Berkeley. \n\nHer primary research interests lie in community participatory research, immigrant health, mental health, maternal health, women’s empowerment, gender-based violence, and global sexual and reproductive health. \n\nShe teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses in global health, leadership, ethics, community organizing, and qualitative research methodology.
Melissa Wong
Statistician I
mwong237@usc.edu
Melissa received her MS in Biostatistics from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a BA in Applied Mathematics. As a graduate student, Melissa gained extensive skills and knowledge involving the application of statistical methods in public health research. For her graduate thesis, she developed an application that allows users to dynamically implement and analyze substance use models. In her role as the statistician for HEAL, Melissa is responsible for data analysis for several projects.
Anna Wu-Williams, PhD
Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences
annawu@usc.edu
Dr. Wu’s research focuses on the epidemiology of cancer with emphasis on understanding the increase of various (e.g., breast, ovarian, colon) cancers among Asian migrants to the US. A unifying theme of my research is to identify modifiable lifestyle and environmental factors to reduce the risk of specific cancers and to improve outcomes among those diagnosed with cancer. In addition to observational epidemiologic studies, I have conducted a series of controlled intervention studies to investigate the short-term effects of dietary (e.g., soy, green tea) and hormonal (e.g., oral contraceptives) agents on breast-tissue (e.g., mammographic density) and circulating sex hormones and other biomarkers.\nSince 2014, I began to use the well-established Multiethnic Cohort (MEC) to address research questions on environmental exposures (e.g., air pollution, endocrine disrupting chemicals) that have been challenging to study. In addition, I am participating in two multicenter survivorship studies on breast cancer and ovarian cancer.
Alina Yang
Undergraduate Research Assistant
awyang@usc.edu
Alina Yang is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention with a minor in Gender and Social Justice, set to graduate in 2024. At USC, she is a member of the Chinese American Student Alliance, as well as the USC chapter of Dear Asian Youth, an Asian American advocacy group. After college, Alina plans on pursuing a Masters in Public Health, and a career in public health research. In her free time, Alina enjoys horseback riding, baking, and spending time with friends and family.
Jenny Yu, LAS
Part-Time Lecturer for the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences
jennycyu@usc.edu
Andrew Zaw, MPH
Programmer Analyst IV
andrewz@usc.edu
https://andrewzaw.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-zaw/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-zaw
https://andrewzaw.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtx6OfRJ2b5rANapH9FD9Bg
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Brendan Grubbs, MD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Obstetrics & Gynecology
Co-Director of Fetal Maternal Center
bgrubbs@usc.edu
Daphne Walker, MD
Assistant Professor Of Clinical Radiology
daphne.walker@med.usc.edu
Dr. Daphne Walker worked as a community diagnostic radiologist for nine years before joining the clinical faculty at USC. Prior to her appointment she worked with MEMRAD Medical Group at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, where she was recognized for her contributions in breast health and her efforts in helping to create a state-of-the-art digital breast center. Dr. Walker has special clinical interests in women’s and body imaging. Her current research interests include thyroid ultrasound imaging in fetal and maternal medicine.
Frederick Lurmann, MS
Chairman / Manager of Exposure Assessment Studies
fred@sonomatech.com
Fred joined STI in 1989 and served as President from 1999 to 2006. With more than 35 years of professional air quality experience, he is a nationally recognized expert in air quality and exposure assessment. Fred provides technical direction and program management for projects sponsored by government agencies, universities, and nonprofit organizations. He frequently applies his expertise to determine prospective and retrospective air pollution exposure assignments for subjects participating in epidemiologic studies of air pollution health effects. His research involves measurements, data analysis, and modeling of air pollution exposures and human time-activity. Much of his work in recent years focuses on neighborhood-scale assessments, where proximity to mobile source emissions can have large effects on exposure. Fred is keenly interested in study design, especially the problem of optimally matching exposure data with health outcome data to answer specific questions. He maintains strong interests in regional air quality and emission control strategies. Outside of STI, Fred enjoys the outdoors and is an avid skier and hiker.
Fred has co-authored 75 peer-reviewed articles and is a member of several state and local air pollution agency advisory committees. Currently, he is a member the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s Science, Technical, and Modeling Peer Review Advisory Group. He is a member of numerous professional associations, including the Air and Waste Management Association, American Association for Aerosol Research, American Geophysical Union, American Chemical Society, and International Society of Exposure Analysis. Fred is chairman of the American Lung Association’s Regional Advisory Board for the San Francisco Bay Area. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MS in Mechanical and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Sree Uppu
Research Assistant
priyankauppu2308@gmail.com
Sree Uppu was a research assistant in SOMA Lab in 2017. She is currently a Software Engineer at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and works on building real time data streaming pipelines to study customer cache profiles and perform anomaly detection on the network data. Prior to that she was a Performance Engineer with the Traffic and Performance Management Team at Verizon Digital Media Services.
Youshan Zhang
Research Assistant
yoz217@lehigh.edu
Youshan Zhang was a research assistant in SOMA Lab in 2018. From SOMA Lab he went on to earn his Ph.D. in computer science from Lehigh University. Today, he is postdoctoral fellow at Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine. His research interests lie in computer vision, artificial intelligence, text, image, and shape analysis. Specifically, he is interested in developing computational methodologies for image understanding problems in the fields of medical image analysis (such as using machine learning methods to discover the underlying mechanisms of diseases) and computer vision (such as identifying the position of an object).
Ashkon Vaghei
Research Assistant
vaghei@usc.edu
Ashkon Vaghei was an undergraduate student in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at USC. He was a research assistant in SOMA Lab in 2019 and helped with studies on tobacco-related marketing strategies (e.g. cartoons) on Instagram and its impact on youth. Ashkon is currently preparing for dental school.
Sheila Bonyadlou
Research Assistant
sheilabo@usc.edu
Sheila Bonyadlou was an undergraduate student in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at USC. She was a research assistant in SOMA Lab in 2019 and helped the research team to identify the concentration of cannabis retailers in Los Angeles with the use of social media data. Sheila is in the process of preparing for graduate school to pursue a degree in Global Medicine, with a long-term goal of becoming a radiologist.
Dahee Woo
Research Assistant
daheewoo@usc.edu
Dahee Woo was an undergraduate student in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at USC. She was a research assistant in SOMA Lab in 2019 and worked on identifying cartoon logos and tobacco-related marketing strategies on Instagram and its impact on e-cigarette appeal among youth. Dahee Woo is currently a graduate student in occupational therapy.
Yannie Hoang
Research Assistant
gianhiho@usc.edu
Yannie Hoàng was an undergraduate student in Journalism at USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism and minored in Health Care Studies at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She was a research assistant in SOMA Lab from 2020 to 2021 and helped with research projects focused on analyzing Twitter posts about cannabis use during pregnancy and postpartum. During her time at USC Yannie was an active contributor to Annenberg Media`s new Health and Wellness Desk and worked on projects addressing student mental health needs on campus as Vice President of Internal Relations at Inter-Health Council.
Ashley Hill
Research Assistant
hillashl@usc.edu
Ashley Hill was an undergraduate student in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at USC. She has worked as a teaching assistant in a special education classroom through the Joint Education Project and is on USC`s Varsity Women`s Lacrosse team. During her time as a research assistant, she worked on qualitative coding and analysis of social media data, specifically on tobacco-related conversations on Twitter. Ashley is currently a graduate student in occupational therapy.
Vanessa Rivera
Postbaccalaureate Fellow
vriver32@calstatela.edu
Vanessa Rivera was SOMA Lab`s second Postbaccalaureate Fellow. Prior to working with SOMA Lab, Vanessa earned a B.A. in Child Development at California State University Los Angeles (CSULA). During her time at SOMA Lab, she co-authored several publications focusing on public attitudes towards e-cigarette devices, such as Puff Bar, and public responses to policies restricting the availability of flavored e-cigarettes.
Thalida Em Arpawong, PhD
Research Assistant Professor Bioinformatician
arpawong@usc.edu
Thalida Em Arpawong, PhD, is a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California (USC), in the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. Through her post-doctoral training, she was funded by an individual NRSA from the National Institute on Aging and began her research career through a pre-doctoral Intramural Research Training Award Fellowship at the National Cancer Institute. She received her Ph.D. and M.P.H. from the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at USC, and her B.A. from Oberlin College. Dr. Arpawong’s research interests revolve around disentangling how risk and resilience processes combine to influence psychosocial and cognitive health throughout aging. She focuses on using longitudinal data to identify pathways that combine environmental, genetic, and behavioral factors. Additionally, she examines how these pathways result in differences in outcomes across ethnicity and sex.
Isabel Lagomasino, MD
Assistant Professor
Vice Chair for Education
Residency Training Director
Director, Adult Outpatient Clinic at LAC+USC Medical Center
lagomasi@usc.edu
Maya Chu
Research Assistant
mvchu@usc.edu
Maya Chu is an undergraduate student in Health and Human Sciences at USC Dornsife School of Arts and Sciences, minoring in Spanish and East Asian Area Studies. Her future goals include attending medical school to become a physician. Currently, she is striving to make an impact within the Los Angeles community by working towards better understanding an individual`s health from a sociocultural perspective and applying this knowledge in various volunteering activities.
Nalin Virameteekul
Research Assistant
viramete@usc.edu
Nalin Virameteekul is an undergraduate student in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at USC. She was a research assistant in SOMA Lab in 2020 working remotely on a project that used Twitter data to examine user experiences with new tobacco products. She continues to pursue her passions for public health, new health technologies, and ways to encourage healthy lifestyles among youth.
Barbara Turner, MD, MSEd, MA, MACP
Professor of Clinical Medicine
barbara.turner@med.usc.edu
Barbara Turner, PhD, is a professor of medicine in the Gehr Family Center for Health Systems Science at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. She is a practicing general internist with 35 years of experience in health disparities research and community-partnered research. In 2010, she established the Center for Research to Advance Community Health (ReACH) as a partnership between the University of Texas (UT) Health San Antonio and the UT School of Public Health (UTSPH). ReACH now has 29 Scholars from multiple disciplines and institutions who share the mission of improving health outcomes through community-oriented research focusing on the low-income, Hispanic residents of South Texas. Her research has focused on health disparities through administrative database studies, randomized trials, and implementation & dissemination projects. The subject areas for her health disparities research are diverse including preventive care, chronic disease management, community-engagement, and implementation of evidence-based models of care. Recently, Dr. Turner has been principal investigator (PI) on four federal- and state-funded projects to implement HCV screening and management in diverse primary care practices. She has over 175 peer-reviewed publications and editorials from research funded by the NIH, the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (AHRQ), Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) Foundation, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). She is the lead author on a Handbook for Community Engagement of Underserved Populations completed as part of a PCORI grant which is being published by the Society of Public Health Educators. For eight years, Dr. Turner served as director of a primary care physician-scientist fellowship funded by Health Resources and Services Administration’s National Research Service Award at the University of Pennsylvania. She has mentored over 50 individuals at all levels of training from college to faculty. In regard to leadership positions, She has served as Regent of the American College of Physicians (ACP) and President of the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM). Dr. Turner completed an MD (1987) and a MSEd (1984) at the University of Pennsylvania, an MA (1973) from Harvard University and a BA (1972) from Wellesley College.
Rani Kotha, JD, MPH
Senior Strategist, USC Schaeffer Center
rkotha@usc.edu
Rani Kotha, JD, MPH is a Senior Strategist at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics. Rani has over 28 years of experience in public health, global health, maternal/child health, human rights, humanitarian assistance, and economic/social development and has served as a senior administrator/research academic with expertise in program design and management, resource development, strategic planning, marketing, and communications and public health education and training. Prior to joining USC, Rani served as the Senior Strategist in Global Health, for the University-wide Institute for Global Health Equity & Innovation (IGHE&I) at the University of Toronto; Executive Director of the University of Michigan Center for Global Health (UMCGH); and Director at Oxfam America (a global humanitarian non-governmental organization based in Boston). Rani began her career at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Throughout her career, Rani has made significant contributions to expanding global health initiatives: 1) At IGHE&I, she led an 18 month strategic planning process culminating in a Global Health Summit and the launch of 5 main programmatic foci areas and the establishment of the Institutes's mission, vision and strategic objectives, 2) She developed and/or deepened the University of Toronto and Government of Canada health initiatives in China, Gaza, Ethiopia, Thailand, Vietnam and led an innovative academic NGO collaboration with the Shanti Ashram in southern India, 3) Rani served as a co-organizer, collaborator and co-author on a Lancet Series on Health Equity and Women's Cancers, 4) At University of Michigan, Rani oversaw the initial visioning process that led to the establishment of the University-wide Center for Global Health, and worked with faculty to leverage a 25-year relationship between the University of Michigan, University of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana for a successful application of a multi-million dollar Gates Foundation grant of the newly formed UMCGH, focused on human resources for health and health systems strengthening in Ghana 5) At Harvard, Rani's efforts contributed to the creation of the Botswana-Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership (BHP), a collaborative research and training initiative between the Government of Botswana and Harvard; and the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), an initiative designed to create independent schools of public health to meet the shortfall of public health professionals in India.
Rani holds a JD from Boston College Law School, an MPH in International Health and Health Services from Boston University School of Public Health, and a BA (magna cum laude) in International Relations from Boston University.
Michael Hochman, MD, MPH
Associate Professor Of Clinical Medicine
mhochman@usc.edu
Cindy Pérez
Project Assistant
cperez129@calstatela.edu
Cindy Pérez is a Project Assistant in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Child Development at California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA). Through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and CSULA, she was awarded a Summer Program for Research Opportunities for Undergraduate Training (SPROUT) fellowship. Cindy decided to complete her 15-week SPROUT fellowship with SOMA Lab because of her interest in the effects of tobacco marketing on children and adolescent tobacco-related behaviors. Cindy plans to pursue a graduate degree in Counseling Psychology to provide bilingual mental health services in her community.
Jonathan Chun Nok Lam, PhD, MPH
Research Scientist
Department of Preventive Medicine
Department of Emergency Medicine
chunnok.lam@med.usc.edu
Olivier Pernet, PhD
Assistant Professor of Research Pediatrics
Maternal, Child and Adolescent Center for Infectious Diseases and Virology
Keck Medicine/Department of Pediatrics
Bishop Medical Teaching and Research
pernet@usc.edu
Dr. Olivier Pernet is a virologist with 15 years of research experience in the field of emerging zoonotic viruses, with a special attention on bat related diseases (Nipah Virus, Ebola Virus, SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2,…). Dr. Pernet work focuses on host-virus interactions and how to use them for biomedical applications (outbreak preparedness, surveillance, high-throughput serology, drug discovery, gene therapy,…).
After a brief period at bioMérieux where he worked on SARS-CoV-1 detection assay, Dr. Pernet moved to Paris and completed a Master Degree in Medical Virology at the Paris Diderot University and the Institut Pasteur. He then joined the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon for his PhD under the mentorship of Dr. Robin Buckland. There he studied Henipaviruses cellular entry in the Bio-Safety Level 4 Jean Mérieux "P4" laboratory. During his time in Lyon, he unraveled a new entry model for Paramyxoviruses and identify drugs with the potential to treat the dreaded Nipah Virus. He also worked on antivirals targeting Ebola Virus and Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Virus. Additionally, while in France Dr. Pernet worked on outbreak prevention and mitigation by studying viral shedding in bats from France and Mali.
Dr. Pernet then moved to the US on a joint position at UCLA and UTMB/Galveston National Laboratory. Under the supervision of Dr. Benhur Lee and Dr. Alexander Freiberg, he continued his work on viral entry, using the Henipavirus glycoproteins to design new vectors for gene therapy. While at UCLA, Dr. Pernet also documented the first human cases of Henipavirus on the African continent and identified risk factors for zoonotic transmission in Cameroon. He has since moved on to become a faculty at Keck Medicine of USC, in the department of Pediatrics where he works on immune response toward viral infections in LA’s highly diverse population.
In 2018, with a group of UCLA alumni, Dr. Pernet founded EnViro International Laboratories, a nonprofit organization that studies viral dynamics in emerging hot areas, and provides resources for outbreak preparedness at the local level, especially in Gabon. Dr. Pernet is currently serving as President of EnViro International Laboratories.
During the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, Dr. Pernet has continued his work at Keck Medicine of USC, where he developed a highly sensitive saliva-based assays against SARS-CoV-2 in order to increase hospitals testing capacities in the early days of the pandemic. Dr. Pernet is now working viral dynamics during the course of the diseases, and especially focuses on long term effect of COVID-19 infection, co-infection, and vaccine response.
Since 2017, Dr. Pernet teaches Virology (MIMG XL-102) and Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology (MCDB XL-100) at UCLA Extension.
Cindy Zhuang
Post-Bacc Research Assistant
cindyi.0324@gmail.com
Cindy recently earned her Bachelors degrees in psychology and neuroscience from the University of Southern California. She is passionate about the brain and addiction and hopes to pursue a career in medicine to help people with mental health concerns.
Maren Jorgensen
Undergraduate Research Assistant
mtjorgen@usc.edu
Maren is currently a junior at the University of Southern California majoring in Psychology and minoring in Italian. She hopes to get a degree in marriage and family therapy after graduating, but can as easily see herself working in the music industry. Her research interests include interpersonal relations, eating disorders, and addiction. She is a proud member of USC’s first and only all-female a cappella group, The USC Sirens, and enjoys baking and running in her free time.
Elizabeth Gonzalez
Undergraduate Research Assistant
gonz110@usc.edu
Elizabeth Gonzalez is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, set to graduate in 2021, majoring in Health and the Human Sciences, an interdisciplinary approach to understanding health care. She is passionate about supporting the development of underserved communities and did so through her position as a Session Leader in the organization Science Outreach. She taught science experiments at elementary schools filled with high numbers of those historically underrepresented in STEM. In addition to her interests in education, Elizabeth enjoys working at a nonprofit feral cat shelter helping medically and socially rehabilitate street cats. She is aspiring to become a veterinarian who works within the field of public health.
Morgan Rogers
Undergraduate Research Assistant
morganro@usc.edu
Morgan is a senior majoring in Human Biology and minoring in Spanish. She hopes to become a pediatrician eventually but in the year off between medical school applications and graduation, she aims to work for a health magazine. Her vast interests have taken her to volunteering in a juvenile detention center to working in athletic medicine to being an active member of her sorority. When not studying, you can find Morgan working for LA Yoga magazine or exploring LA’s vegetarian restaurant scene.
Sarah Noe
Undergraduate Research Assistant
sarahnoe@usc.edu
Sarah is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and a progressive master’s degree in Public Health at Keck School of Medicine, set to graduate in 2023. After graduation, she hopes to continue her studies in Public Health in a PhD program. Sarah is interested in the psychological and sociocultural underpinnings of public health behavior, and aspires to work to promote health equity in Los Angeles in the future.
Elaine Qian
Undergraduate Research Assistant
eqian@usc.edu
Elaine is currently a junior at the University of Southern California studying Health Promotion and Disease Prevention with minors in Healthcare Studies and Natural Sciences. After graduation, she plans on attending medical school with interests in emergency and family medicine. She hopes to practice medicine bilingually, in Chinese and English, in order to care for the underserved Asian population and beyond. At USC, Elaine is a TA for CIRCLE, a coordinator for Freshman Dance Off, and an active board member for Global Medical Brigades and Mobile Clinic. Her personal interests include gymnastics, dance, baking and cuddling with cats.
Walter Dyer
Project Assistant
walter.dyer@usc.edu
Walter joined the HEAL team as a research assistant after earning degrees in Biology and Kinesiology cum laude from Westmont College in 2017. His formative work as an undergraduate shaped his interest in the neural mechanisms underlying addictive behaviors (e.g. anhedonia, distress tolerance) and integrating related advancements into novel intervention strategies. Additionally, he is interested in examining associations between psychopathology and substance use in groups experiencing health disparities, particularly related to lower socioeconomic status.
As a current staff member, he is engaged in studies looking to better understand dynamics between mental health and nicotine dependence, and is excited to apply this experience to future contexts in graduate school and beyond. Outside of the lab, Walter enjoys making music, playing sports, and scuba diving along the California coastline.
Carly Callahan
Undergraduate Research Assistant
cecallah@usc.edu
Carly is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California studying Health and Human Sciences with a minor in Occupational Science, set to graduate in 2019. After graduation, she plans on attending medical school and is interested in the field of emergency medicine. In the future, Carly hopes to work in clinics abroad and practice global medicine and health, with hopes of one day joining Doctors Without Borders. At USC, Carly is on the executive board for Trojans for Neurodiversity and Panhellenic Delegate for her sorority. In her spare time she enjoys cooking, hiking, and fostering puppies.
Brooke Upchurch
Undergraduate Research Assistant
bupchurc@usc.edu
Brooke Upchurch is a senior at the University of Southern California studying neuroscience. She is also pursuing a progressive master’s degree in the field of Global Medicine at Keck School of Medicine. After graduation, Brooke plans to attend medical school with hopes of a career as a physician. She is most interested in working with children and combatting health disparities in local communities. At USC, Brooke is involved in Camp Kesem, USC Global Brigades, and Project Malawi. In her spare time she enjoys running, spending time with friends, and talking about how much she misses her home state of Texas.
Elizabeth Vasi
Undergraduate Research Assistant
evasi@usc.edu
Elizabeth Vasi is currently an undergraduate at the University of Southern California majoring in Health in Human Sciences with minors in both Nutrition and Health Promotion and Occupational Science, set to graduate in 2021. At USC, Elizabeth is a Residential Assistant at the Parkside International Residential College and a member of Trojan Health Volunteers through which she volunteers at the Women’s Health Center in downtown Los Angeles. Elizabeth is interested in the biological and sociocultural aspects of maladaptive behaviors such as those seen in mental illness. As such, after graduation, she plans to study Occupational Therapy at the graduate level with aspirations of opening her own clinic as an Occupational Therapist focused on mental health and well-being. In her free time, Elizabeth enjoys exploring different cultures through traveling; when she is not abroad, you can find her practicing yoga or hiking with friends.
Lorraine Kelley-Quon, PhD
Assistant Professor of Surgery and Preventive Medicine
lkquon@chla.usc.edu
Dr. Lorraine Kelley-Quon is an Assistant Professor of Surgery and Population and Public Health Sciences at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) and the University of Southern California. She obtained her B.S. in Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the University of California, San Diego and completed her M.D. and General Surgery training at the University of California, Los Angeles followed by a fellowship in Pediatric Surgery at Nationwide Children’s Hospital at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. During residency, she completed the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and obtained a Master’s in Health Services Research from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
Dr. Kelley-Quon’s research interests include identifying and eliminating health care disparities for children, optimizing pediatric surgical health care delivery and translating health services research into health policy. In partnership with HEAL, she is developing a pilot project to explore postoperative opioid use in adolescents and identify predictors of use, abuse, diversion, and conversion to chronic use. Her goal is to create physician decision support tools to optimize opioid prescribing for children and to inform policy makers of prudent initiatives regarding pediatric opioid legislation.
Kelsey Simpson
Doctoral Student
kasimpso@usc.edu
Kelsey Simpson is a 2nd year doctoral student in the Health Behavior Research Ph.D. program at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Prior to entering her Ph.D. program, Kelsey received an MA in Clinical Psychology from California State University, Northridge (Spring 2016). There, she worked as Lab Coordinator of a neuropsychology lab that focused on the neuropsychological, cognitive, and psychosocial consequences of HIV infection. Prior to her enrollment at USC, Kelsey worked as an Interventionist on a community-based RCT testing the efficacy of a behavioral intervention on reducing injection initiation risk behaviors among people who inject drugs. Kelsey's primary research interests are grounded in investigating the underlying mechanisms of addictions in diverse and marginalized populations. Additionally, she is interested in program evaluation and intervention development to address health-related disparities and prevention from further risk behaviors in substance using populations.
Jackson Barrett
Undergraduate Research Assistant
jwbarret@usc.edu
Jackson is a junior at USC studying Computational Neuroscience and pursuing a Progressive Masters in Global Medicine. He has passions for both medicine and technology and after graduation plans on attending medical school with an interest in becoming an anesthesiologist. Outside of the lab and classes he enjoys traveling, cooking and playing volleyball.
Christie Ngo
Project Assistant
christie.ngo@usc.edu
Christie Ngo graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2018 with a B.A. in Psychology and a B.S. in Nutritional Science. As an undergraduate, she worked on research projects ranging from public health intervention and policy to examining the social and psychological processes that may contribute to discipline disparities in schools. These experiences were formative in shaping her passion for working with youth and disadvantaged, minority populations to analyze factors that contribute to health disparities. Christie is especially interested in studying the social and behavioral determinants of health and health behavior, particularly how socioeconomic status, cultural factors, and environment play a role in shaping a person’s life trajectory. In her free time, she enjoys writing, traveling to new destinations, and exploring all of the coffee shops LA has to offer.
Kailyn Koh
Post-Bacc Research Assistant
knkoh@usc.edu
Kailyn is a 2017 graduate of Johns Hopkins University where she majored in Public Health. After graduating, she worked in a skid-row clinic coordinating care for Hepatitis C and HIV positive patients, as well as compiling data for Gilead’s HCV and HIV FOCUS study. She is currently a part of the pre-medical post baccalaureate program at USC, with the goal of providing addiction medicine care in skid-row in the future.
Ashley Sue
Undergraduate Research Assistant
ashleysu@usc.edu
Ashley is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Computational Neuroscience and hoping to minor in Foundations of Data Science, set to graduate in 2021. She is on the executive board of USC’s National Alliance on Mental Illness, which strives to destigmatize and raise awareness about mental health on campus. After graduation, she plans to continue her studies in graduate school and ultimately work in research or the biotech industry. Outside of class, Ashley enjoys yoga, going to concerts, and trying new foods in LA.
Willis Tang
Undergraduate Research Fellow
willista@usc.edu
Willis Tang is currently an undergraduate at the University of Southern California with a major in Human Biology and minor in Healthcare Studies, set to graduate in 2022. At USC, Willis is the Founder and President of the Association of Integrative Medicine, a tutor for Teach For Los Angeles, and an EMT for the Emergency Medical Services of USC. He is also involved with geospatial analytics research at the Lever Institute and neuroscience research at the Infant Motor Control Lab at USC’s Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy. Willis hopes to continue his education in medical school, with aspirations of working in the field of emergency medicine. In his free time, he enjoys drumming, going on hikes, and exploring the mosaic of culinary selections around Los Angeles.
Colleen Feng
Undergraduate Research Assistant
hongfeng@usc.edu
Colleen is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and a B.A. in Biological Sciences. She is also currently applying to pursue a progressive Master’s degree in Public Health, set to graduate in 2023. She is passionate about studying drug-use and abuse, more specifically with how psychoactive drugs chemically affect brain function, life quality, and how individual backgrounds influence the start and continuation of their usage. In the future, she hopes to help those with a substance use disorder. On campus, she is an active executive board member in the Chinese American Student Association and the Asian Pacific American Student Assembly.
Komal Patri
Undergraduate Research Assistant
kpatri@usc.edu
Komal is a sophomore at the University of Southern California and is pursuing a B.S. in Computational Neuroscience with a minor in Applied Analytics, set to graduate in 2023. Outside of the classroom, she serves as Director of Activities on the Executive Board of Synapse, a club dedicated to exploring neuroscience research and building community with peers. Currently, Komal is also a member of the Center of Artificial Intelligence in Society (CAIS++) and a part of the Resident’s Honors Program. After graduation, Komal hopes to work in the biotech or pharmaceutical industry or pursue graduate studies.
Kristin Amadasun
Undergraduate Research Assistant
amadasun@usc.edu
Kristin is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Human Biology with a minor in Health Care Studies, set to graduate in 2021. At USC, she is on the executive board of African-American’s in Health, which strives to support African Americans on campus in their pursuit of careers in the health industry. She also is involved with USC Jumpstart and interns at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center. Kristin hopes to continue her education in medical school, with aspirations of working in the field of pediatrics. In her free time, she enjoys going to the beach, swimming, and baking.
Chloe Chose
Undergraduate Research Assistant
cchose@usc.edu
Chloe is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California studying Neuroscience, with a minor in Psychology, set to graduate in 2022. After graduation, she plans on attending medical school and is interested in pursuing pediatrics. Chloe has volunteered at local elementary schools and the Keck Hospital of USC through Trojan Health Volunteers, as well as being on the executive board for her sorority. In her spare time she enjoys running, hiking, and going to the beach.
Fiona Yin
Undergraduate Research Assistant
hongyuyi@usc.edu
Fiona is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, majoring in Psychology and Business Administration with a minor in applied analytics, set to graduate in 2022. After graduation, she plans to continue her studies in graduate school focusing on behavioral economics. At USC, Fiona volunteers at Bet Tzedek, assisting in the process of providing legal helps to people in need, to become more involved in the community. She is also on the executive broad of her sorority doing finance and works as the director of community service for her professional fraternity. Outside of class, Fiona enjoys traveling, spending time with her friends, and she is in the training process to become a yoga instructor.
Danielle Madden
dmadden@usc.edu
Danielle Madden, PhD is an Assistant Research Professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. She earned her B.A. in Psychology at Denison University and both a MSW and Ph.D. in Social Work at The Ohio State University where she was awarded the Merriss Cornell Distinguished Researcher Award and the Board of Trustees Student Recognition Award for her scholarship. Dr. Madden arrived at USC for postdoctoral training in 2017 and accepted a faculty position in 2019. To date, Dr. Madden’s research has examined dangerous event-level substance use with a primary focus on the alcohol consumption and tobacco use behaviors of young adults. She has experience implementing studies utilizing mobile phone-based ecological momentary assessment via commercial applications to study behaviors such as mood, substance use, sleep, and activity. Her work aims to leverage the ubiquity of smartphones and wearables to study behavior in real-world contexts and to develop mobile health interventions that could limit acute substance use problems. Dr. Madden has also expanded her research to explore how certain product characteristics of e-cigarettes (e.g., flavors, added organic acids) may impact patterns of nicotine use and thus addictive liability of young adult smokers.
Lucas Lebovitz
llebovit@usc.edu
Lucas Lebovitz is a 4th-year medical student from Los Angeles, CA currently pursuing a career in Psychiatry at Keck School of Medicine of USC. His research interests include addiction medicine and psychosis.
Lina D’Orazio, PhD
lina.dorazio@med.usc.edu
Dr. Lina D’Orazio is a neuropsychologist and clinical psychologist, who, as an Assistant Professor of Neurology in the Keck School of Medicine of the USC, is the Founding Director of the USC Cross-Cultural Neuropsychology Program which provides research and clinical services designed to understand and assess how cultural contexts shape behavioral and cognitive outcomes across the diversity spectrum. After graduating from Brown University and working in behavioral medicine research in Columbia University Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry, Dr. D’Orazio earned her master’s and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from USC. A multi-year American Psychological Association Minority Fellow, Dr. D’Orazio specializes in minority health psychology, cultural neuropsychology, and in working with Latinx and Spanish-speaking communities. Dr. D’Orazio also works as a clinical consultant for research across the medical school and in various national consortia, and currently serves as a member of HEAL’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee while providing social justice and anti-racism training.
Michael Guenoun
Research Assistant
guenoun@usc.edu
Michael Guenoun graduated from the University of Southern California in 2020, receiving a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Natural Sciences. He is spending his gap year doing numerous activities from applying to medical school, research, teaching tennis and even volunteering at institutions performing magic for underprivileged individuals! In his spare time he enjoys working out or watching tv.
Sharon Tu
Undergraduate Research Assistant
sharontu@usc.edu
Sharon is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Biological Sciences and a minor Health Care Studies, set to graduate in 2023. At USC, Sharon is a student mentor for first-generation students and a member of the Chinese American Student Association. After graduation, she hopes to continue her education in medical school, with a specific interest in the field of internal medicine. In her free time, Sharon enjoys eating food and playing board games with her friends.
Zacari Tatum
Undergraduate Research Assistant
ztatum@usc.edu
Zacari Tatum is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, set to graduate in 2022, and is applying for the progressive Master’s degree in Public Health. She is on the executive board for Keck Student Ambassadors, working with other members to bring social justice change to Keck Undergrad programs. At USC, she also works with CHIP and the McMorrow Neighborhood Academic Initiative. She is passionate about providing health services to underserved communities and work addressing racial disparities. In her free time, she enjoys going to concerts and finding different brunch and vegan restaurants in LA.
Ariana Coba Clementel
Undergraduate Research Assistant
cobaclem@usc.edu
Ariana is a sophomore at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Human Biology and a minor in Health Care Studies, set to graduate in 2023. At USC, Ariana is an active member of The Helenes, an organization that supports the university community through acts of volunteerism, hospitality and service. She also volunteers with Spanglish, where she teaches English to Spanish-speaking students in Peru, and volunteers as a patient interviewer at a Free Health Clinic, translating between physicians and patients during appointments. In her free time, she practices competitive Taekwondo for the USC team, and loves to spend time outside in nature exploring as many mountains as possible. After graduation, Ariana hopes to continue her education in medical school, and aspires to pursue a career in Orthopedics and Sports Medicine.
Lila Jones
Undergraduate Research Assistant
lilajone@usc.edu
Lila is an undergraduate student and Presidential Scholar at the University of Southern California, where she is pursuing a major in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention with a minor in Science and Management of Biomedical Therapeutics, set to graduate in 2022. Lila has worked for over two years as a student writer for the USC Viterbi magazine, and she also works as an intern for a start-up that is pursuing research on alternative therapies for treating mental illness. She also serves as a mentor in Trojan Scholarship Society and volunteers through Project Sunshine and Scholars Helping Scholars. Lila loves writing, listening to music, running, dancing, and spending time with friends. After graduating, she hopes to attend medical school or dental school.
Masha VanDreal
Undergraduate Research Assistant
masha.vandreal33@gmail.com
Masha is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California and is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with a minor in Neuroscience, set to graduate in 2022. She is passionate about research in psychopharmacology, particularly the potential therapeutic benefits of psychoactive drugs and dismantling the stigma and misinformation surrounding them. In the future she plans to pursue a Master’s degree and Ph.D., and finally a career in research. At USC she is a member of the Troy Tones A Cappella group, and in her free time she enjoys playing music, crocheting, hiking, and travel.
Jing Yao Pook
Undergraduate Research Assistant
msnyao123@gmail.com
Jing Yao Pook is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Biological Sciences and a minor in Health Care Studies. He is also currently applying for a progressive Master’s degree in Healthcare Decision Analysis, and is set to graduate in 2023. He is passionate about research in Pharmaceuticals, and also has an intersecting interest in healthcare policy. After graduation, Jing hopes to obtain another Master’s degree in Immunology, and ultimately a career in drug research. At USC, he is a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. During his free time, he enjoys binging Netflix shows, baking, and trying new restaurants across the city of Los Angeles.
Garrett Wagner
Undergraduate Research Assistant
gtwagner@usc.edu
Garrett Wagner is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California and is pursuing a B.S. in Biochemistry and a minor in Public Health, set to graduate in 2023. A navy veteran and community college transfer student, he was the treasurer for the Veteran Student Council and Pre-Med Society prior to transferring to USC. Garrett is also a graduate of the COPE Health Scholar Program, where he volunteered over 300 hours of his time at Hoag Presbyterian Hospital in Newport Beach and Irvine, providing patient comfort tasks in numerous departments over an 18-month period. After graduation, Garrett plans to pursue medical school and a career in Emergency and Wilderness Medicine. In his free time, he enjoys working out, rock climbing, hiking, and reading novels on Cold War Era conflicts and military history.
Tony Ding
Undergraduate Research Assistant
xiayidin@usc.edu
Tony Ding is an undergraduate and Presidential Scholar at the University of Southern California, where he is double majoring in Neuroscience and Data Science with a minor in Consumer Behavior, set to graduate in 2022. He is especially interested in applying data-driven methods to discover insights regarding issues in mental health and emotion, and he is also passionate about conducting research in topics of addiction and neurodegenerative diseases. At USC, he is a Health Educator for Engemann Student Health Center and an Orientation Leader for USC Off-Campus Orientations. After graduation, he plans to obtain a Master’s degree in Health Data Science and pursue a career in the pharmaceutical or biotechnology industry. In his free time, he loves playing basketball, hanging out with friends, and listening to music.
Catherine Ramos
Undergraduate Research Assistant
ramoscat@usc.edu
Catherine Ramos is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.A in History and a minor in Health Care Studies, set to graduate in 2022. At USC, Catherine is a member of Mobile Clinic, which works with Keck School of Medicine and JWCH to provide care and build rapport with residents at homeless shelters throughout Los Angeles. Catherine is on the executive board of Latino Students in Medicine, which is an on-campus organization that works to empower and facilitate resources for underrepresented students interested in healthcare careers. Catherine also works as an EMT at an inpatient rehabilitation center in Hollywood for adults diagnosed with substance use disorders. Her other interests include exercising, attending concerts, and spending time with friends. Catherine hopes to continue her education in medical school.
Maricar Ordonez
Undergraduate Research Assistant
maricar@usc.edu
Maricar Ordonez is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Human Biology with a minor in English, and a progressive Master’s degree in Public Health, set to graduate in 2023. At USC, she is on the executive board of SC Global Impact, which strives to support non-profit organizations abroad through various consulting services. She also actively volunteers with Music Inspiring Community to provide musical education to elementary students and assists with basic care for patients alongside members of a care delivery team as a Health Scholar. She hopes to pursue a career related to medicine and public health. In her spare time, she enjoys writing chapters for a draft of her novel, playing with her poodle, and spending time with friends and family.
Nicholas Wong
Undergraduate Research Assistant
wongnj@usc.edu
Nicholas Wong is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Human Biology and minoring in Health Policy, set to graduate in 2022. On campus, Nicholas is an executive board member in both his fraternity and WorldMed. He hopes to further his education with a progressive degree in Health Administration or Health Policy, and eventually pursue a career in the medical field, whether it be through medicine or health administration. In his free time, Nicholas loves playing tennis, producing music, attending music festivals, and cooking.
Suren Martirosyan
Research Assistant
smartiro@usc.edu
Suren Martirosyan graduated from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Human Biology in 2018. While at USC, Suren decided to pursue medicine to fulfill his own scientific curiosity and for the purpose of addressing social injustices in the medical field. After graduating, he worked as a surveyor, which required him to apply theoretical knowledge to solve tangible problems – one of which included constructing durable, temporary homes for the homeless. Thereafter, Suren began work as a medical scribe at an urgent care facility, where he aided in the documentation of medical physical exams and patient history. He was eventually promoted to the position of a Scribe Ambassador which entails training and recruiting prospective scribes. Moreover, Suren volunteered at multiple hospices where he served a supportive role: providing the patients help with their daily chores. And finally, in the summer of 2017, Suren volunteered at a local kindergarten as a science instructor. In his free time, Suren enjoys hiking, spending time with friends and family, and watching movies.
Paul Martines
Undergraduate Research Assistant
paulmart@usc.edu
Paul Martines is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Human Biology and is hoping to pursue a B.A. in Health and Human Sciences, set to graduate in 2024. After graduating, he plans to attend medical school and is interested in pursuing addiction psychiatry. Paul has also volunteered with his local ambulance corps as an EMT since his junior year of high school and plans to get involved with the Emergency Medical Services of USC when he arrives on campus. In his free time, he enjoys traveling, watching any A24 film, and playing the latest board game with his friends.
Emily Anthone
Undergraduate Research Assistant
eanthone@usc.edu
Emily is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Human Biology with a minor in Spanish, set to graduate in 2022. At USC, Emily has been involved with the Red Cross Club and served on the board of the Health and Sciences Education Program. She is a member volunteering for the Holistic Health Advocates who provide aid and spread awareness regarding homelessness in the greater Los Angeles area. She is also an active member of her sorority. After graduation, she hopes to attend medical school and pursue a career in healthcare. In her free time, Emily enjoys painting, baking, and listening to music and podcasts.
Erika Azpeitia
Project Specialist
eazpeiti@usc.edu
Erika graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a B.S. in Molecular Environmental Biology and expects to receive her Master’s in Public Health from the University of Southern California in August 2021. Prior to joining the HEAL team, Erika worked closely with adolescents at USC Student Health and a Federally Qualified Health Center before that. Her public health interests lie in adolescent health and addressing health disparities among disadvantaged youth and minority groups through healthcare access and health equity. As Project Specialist, Erika supports project operations, assists with data collection and study procedures for the cohort studies focused on young adults, substance use, and emotional well-being. In her free time, she enjoys working out, hiking, reading, and sharing meals with friends and family.
Chris Rogers
Doctoral Student
Teaching Assistant
cbrogers@usc.edu
Chris is a first year PhD student in the Health Behavior Research program. He earned his MPH in Applied Epidemiology from California State University, Northridge. He is currently working with Dr. Jenifer Unger, seeking to inform policy decisions related to tobacco and marijuana use, with current projects assessing the effects of adverse childhood experiences, financial strain, and discrimination. Because of his background as an Emergency Medical Technician, Chris also works with data related to prehospital care policy and emergency preparedness and is working to identify knowledge gaps related to children with special health care needs.
Jared Yuan
Research Assistant
jaredyua@usc.edu
Jared Yuan was a research assistant in SOMA Lab in 2021, focusing on identifying and describing tobacco- and marijuana-related Snapchat ads. Previously, Jared was a part of a research team at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles that studied traumatic head injuries and bronchiolitis. After completing his Bachelor of Science in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at USC, Jared plans to pursue medical school.
Nikki Jafarzadeh
Undergraduate Research Fellow
jafarzad@usc.edu
Nikki Jafarzadeh is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Addiction Science, set to graduate in 2022. At USC, Nikki serves on the Executive Board of Interaxon and plays on the USC Women's Ultimate Frisbee Team. She is also involved with smoking research at the Health, Emotion, and Addiction Laboratory and mental health research at the Race, Disparities, and Interventions Laboratory. After graduation, Nikki plans to continue her education by obtaining a doctorate in Health Behavior Research, and hopes to ultimately pursue a career in research. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, spending time with friends, and hanging out with her cat.
Hanna Raskin
Student Research Assistant
hraskin@usc.edu
Hanna Raskin is a rising undergraduate senior at the University of Southern California pursuing a degree in Neuroscience at the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. On campus, Hanna has served on the executive board at USC Hillel for three years working to create mental health and wellness programming for students. Hanna is also training to become a postpartum doula so that she can support new parents in their healing process and parenting journey. In the future, Hanna hopes to attend medical school and pursue a career in Obstetrics and Gynecology. In her free time, Hanna enjoys reading, cooking, hiking, practicing yoga, lifting weights, and gardening.
Eden Mohabber
Student Research Assistant
emohabbe@usc.edu
Eden Mohabber is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California perusing a degree in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention in the Keck School of Medicine, set to graduate in 2022. At USC, Eden works within the Mind-Body Medicine Lab focusing on biobehavioral research. Eden is also involved in "SunSmart", a sun safety program for adolescents developed by the Keck School of Medicine of USC. On campus, he is a member of AED, a pre-medical honor society dedicated to creating a community of individuals with a passion for medicine and promoting personal and professional growth. He is also a volunteer mentor at the Lifespan Psychological Center. In the future, Eden hopes to attend medical school and pursue a career in pediatric emergency medicine. Outside of school, Eden enjoys spending time with his friends and family, going to the beach, playing basketball, cooking, and exploring nature.
Amelia Dibbo
Undergraduate Research Assistant
dibbo@usc.edu
Amelia Dibbo is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California studying Global Health with a minor in Occupational Science, set to graduate in 2022. At USC, Amelia is involved with Share A Meal, an organization that provides food and supplies to those experiencing homelessness, and is a member of their executive board. She is also a DJ with her own radio show and serves as the office manager for the student run radio station on campus, KXSC. After graduation, she plans on attending dental school and is interested in pediatric dentistry. Outside of school, she loves traveling, camping, and going surfing with her friends!
Brittany Ngo
Undergraduate Research Fellow
brittapn@usc.edu
Brittany Ngo is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California majoring in Health and Human Sciences and minoring in Occupational Science, set to graduate in 2022. At USC, Brittany serves on the executive board of the Pre-Occupational Therapy Club and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), and is a health educator for Peer Health Exchange. Outside of HEAL, she is also involved in the NICU Therapy research lab under the Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy as a volunteer research assistant. After obtaining her undergraduate degree, Brittany hopes to continue her education in graduate school to become an Occupational Therapist and be involved in Occupational Science research. Outside of school, Brittany enjoys traveling, photography, and spending quality time with family and friends.
Vassilios Papadopoulos
Dean, USC School of Pharmacy
John Stauffer Dean\’s Chair in Pharmaceutical Sciences
Professor, Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences, USC School of Pharmacy
Senior Fellow, USC Schaeffer Center
vpapadop@usc.edu
Vassilios Papadopoulos, DPharm, PhD, DSc (hon), was named dean of the USC School of Pharmacy in fall 2016. Before joining USC, he served as executive director and chief scientific officer of the Research Institute of McGill University Health Centre in Montreal.
A noted scientist and innovative leader, Papadopoulos has published more than 300 papers, holds numerous patents, and serves on many national and international advisory committees. He is an elected foreign member of the National Academies of Medicine and Pharmacy in France, fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.
For nearly a decade, Papadopoulos led initiatives at McGill University Health Centre’s research arm, which resulted in more than $300 million in federal and provincial grants to build a state-of-the-art facility for clinical and biomedical research. He established the Desjardins Centre for Advanced Training to foster the development of future scientists and clinicians, and a business development office to facilitate knowledge transfer and assist in the commercialization of technologies. Under his leadership, the Research Institute launched numerous international collaborations. In addition to his leadership roles, he held a Canada Research Chair in Biochemical Pharmacology and the Phil Gold Chair in Medicine.
A School of Pharmacy graduate of the University of Athens in Greece, Papadopoulos holds a PhD in health and life science from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, and he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in France and Australia. In 1988, he joined the faculty of Georgetown University School of Medicine, rising to become professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. In 2004, he was appointed associate vice president for research and then director of the Biomedical Graduate Research Organization at Georgetown University Medical Center. He moved to McGill in 2007.
Papadopoulos’ research focuses on understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms responsible for the initiation and maintenance of steroid biosynthesis in the adrenal, gonads and brain, in health and disease. He also examines the regulation of steroid biosynthesis, intracellular compartmentalization and homeostasis by hormones, chemicals, drugs, natural products and environmental factors. His goal is to understand the pathophysiology of steroidogenesis and develop new tools for the treatment of diseases related to elevated or low steroid levels or alter subcellular steroid compartmentalization as a means to block disease acquisition and/or progression.
His research has direct applications in reproduction and development, cancer, stress-related disorders, aging and brain-related dysfunction, such as Alzheimer’s disease pathology, and infectious diseases, such as HIV. His work has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, private foundations, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Canadian Foundation of Innovation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, as well as the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
Jesse Jesse Goodrich
Post-Doc
Jesse.Goodrich@Colorado.edu
Jesse obtained his PhD in the Integrative Physiology department at the University of Colorado Boulder. During his PhD, he performed a variety of interventional and observational human research studies examining factors related to glucose metabolism and cardiorespiratory fitness. Jesse’s current research focuses on using metabolomic measures to understand the biological mechanisms underlying the relationship between exposure to persistent organic chemicals and susceptibility to Type 2 diabetes in children and young adults.
Joyce Richey
Associate Professor of Clinical Physiology & Neuroscience
Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion (Education)
Chief Diversity Officer
jrichey@usc.edu
Dr. Richey is currently a faculty member in the department of Physiology and Biophysics at Keck School of Medicine of USC and a member of the diabetes and obesity research groups. Dr. Richey conducts research examining the relationship between diabetes, obesity and hypertension.
She has received research grants from the National Institute of Digestive, Diabetes and Kidney Disorders; National Institute of Heart, Lung and Blood; American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association. Her research has resulted in publications in peer-reviewed medical journals. She is the immediate past president of the Los Leadership Council of the American Diabetes Association; chairperson of the Los Angeles African American Diabetes Task Force; and a peer grant reviewer for the Western and National Affiliates of the American Heart Association.
Rohan Minocha
Undergraduate Research Assistant
minocha@usc.edu
Rohan Minocha is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, set to graduate in 2024. At USC, he is involved in Project Sunshine, which works to provide joy to pediatric patients through programming in hospitals. He also volunteers time to mentor younger students as they transition to college through USC’s Trojan Scholars Society. After college, he aims to pursue a career in clinical medicine and health administration. In his free time, Rohan enjoys surfing, hiking, skateboarding, playing piano, and spending quality time with friends.
Halle Greenbaum
Student Research Assistant
hallegre@usc.edu
Halle Greenbaum is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing her B.S. in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention in the Keck School of Medicine. At USC, Halle is the founder and president of the Food SC'ience & Nutrition Club which she started to spread awareness about the expansive field of food science, as well as to address food-related disparities in the nearby LA area. Halle hopes to obtain her MPH at USC before going on to study food science and work in the industry.
Nayeli Ayala
Student Research Assistant
ndayala@usc.edu
Nayeli Ayala is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and a minor in Business Administration, set to graduate in 2023. At USC, Nayeli serves on the Executive Board of GlobeMed and is also a member of Delta Delta Sigma, a pre-dental honors society. After graduation, Nayeli hopes to attend dental school and pursue a career in Dentistry. In her free time, Nayeli enjoys painting, spending time with friends, and trying new food around LA.
Kelvin Nguyen
Student Research Assistant
kelvinng@usc.edu
Kelvin Nguyen is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a degree in Health and Human Sciences with a minor in Public Health, set to graduate in 2023. At USC, Kelvin is Assistant Director of Trojan Health Volunteers (THV), an organization under the Joint Educational Project (JEP) whose goal is to provide students with opportunities to receive volunteer experience in clinics and hospitals within LA County. Furthermore, he is on the executive board for the USC Emergency Medical Services organization (EMSC), working as a volunteer EMT during campus events. Lastly, Kelvin is the lead research associate at the Center for Health Financing, Policy, and Management, working on topics such as healthcare utilization. In the future, Kelvin hopes to attend medical school and pursue a career in primary care. In his free time, Kelvin enjoys cooking, physical exercise, and spending time with friends and family.
Anna Miner
Student Research Assistant
acminer@usc.edu
Anna Miner is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and a minor in Addiction Science, set to graduate in 2024. At USC, Anna is a senior health educator within Peer Health Exchange, an organization that provides a skills-based health curriculum to students in under-resourced high schools. Anna also develops content for USC Kidney Disease Screening and Awareness Program, a club which offers kidney health screenings and education to the surrounding Los Angeles community. She is also involved with neonatal research at Children's Hospital Los Angeles and type 2 diabetes research within the environmental health division of the Keck School of Medicine, USC. In the future, Anna hopes to obtain her MPH at USC. In her free time, Anna volunteers in the disaster management sector of the American Red Cross and enjoys spending time with her friends and family.
Andrew Otterson
Student Research Assistant
aotterso@usc.edu
Andrew Otterson is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California perusing a degree in Global Health in the Keck School of Medicine, set to graduate in December 2021. At USC, Andrew has served as a member of the American Red Cross, AIESEC, and the LGBTQ+ Peer Mentoring Program. Andrew is also a regular volunteer at Being Alive, a HIV service organization serving all of Los Angeles County by providing low to no-cost mental health, and health and wellness programs. Andrew has also volunteered as a COPE Health Scholar at California Hospital Medical Center in Downtown LA. In the future, Andrew hopes to obtain a master's degree at USC in Neuroimaging and Informatics. His long-term goal is to attend medical school and explore the mind-body health connection through a career in neuroscience. In his free time, Andrew enjoys exploring the outdoors, surfing, practicing meditation, and spending time with his friends and family.
Maina Atluri
Research Assistant
matluri@usc.edu
Maina Atluri is an undergraduate student in Global Health Sciences at USC. Maina is on the pre-medical track and will pursue an MD degree after completing her bachelor's. In her free time, she likes to read, swim, run, play the violin, and dance. Currently, she is a research assistant at SOMA Lab working on content-analysis of tobacco-related content on Instagram.
Muhammad Omer Zaffer
Intern
mzaffer@usc.edu
Muhammad Omer Zaffer received his bachelor’s degree in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at USC. He is an aspiring pre-medical student who is also the co-director of the Shaukat Initiative, which is a student-led organization at USC that aims to create a space where children of USC staff members and other local high school students can develop their academic interests. Currently, he is an intern at SOMA Lab working on content-analysis of tobacco-related content on YouTube. In his free time, Omer loves to play tennis, cricket, football, and study comparative religion.
Arbor Quist
Postdoctoral Fellow
arborqui@usc.edu
Arbor is a postdoctoral fellow who is currently examining the health effects of oil drilling in south Los Angeles and metal mixture exposure patterns in residents living near oil wells. Arbor completed her PhD in epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation examined how hurricane flooding and industrial swine operations affect acute gastrointestinal illness and the ways in which climate-related disasters exacerbate health disparities. Arbor seeks to conduct community-driven research that addresses climate injustice and environmental health issues.
Megan Saghian
Research Assistant
msaghian@usc.edu
Megan Saghian is an undergraduate student in the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention program at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She was a research assistant in SOMA Lab in the fall of 2021 and assisted in a content-analysis of tobacco-related images. After graduation, she plans to pursue a master’s degree in Brain Sciences and a doctoral degree in Physical Therapy. Megan is passionate about early childhood development and would like to apply her studies to physical therapy. She is also the president of both Chabad on campus and Olami JHealth. In her free time, she loves to exercise, go on walks outdoors, try new vegan restaurants, coach youth basketball, tutor and go boutique shopping.
Gisselle Soto
Undergraduate Research Assistant
sotoriva@usc.edu
Gisselle Soto is an undergraduate student at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.A. in Health and Human Sciences with a minor in Addiction Science set to graduate in 2023. At USC, Gisselle is the Spanish Curriculum Coordinator for Science Outreach (SCout), an organization that teaches science lessons to students at local elementary schools, and the community service chair for Hermanas Unidas de USC. She is also a research volunteer for the Better Together Dementia Care Study. After graduation, she hopes to attend medical school and pursue a career in pediatrics, where she hopes to be able to apply her knowledge of addiction in order to aid in prevention and rehabilitation efforts. In her free time, Gisselle enjoys watching baseball, going on walks with her dog, trying new coffee shops, and spending time with friends and family.
Erin Bell
Undergraduate Research Assistant
enbell@usc.edu
Erin is an undergraduate student at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Global Health, set to graduate in 2023. At USC, she is an Orientation Advisor, a Student Ambassador in the Keck School of Medicine, and serves as the Accessibility Chair of the Undergraduate Student Government. Erin is passionate about returning the right to health and autonomy to disenfranchised demographics and hopes to explore the intersection of policy and healthcare accessibility for marginalized folks through USC’s progressive Master’s degree program. In her free time, Erin enjoys skateboarding, listening to true crime podcasts, and teaching her cat tricks (with marginal success).
Jacqueline Trinh
Research Assistant
jttrinh@usc.edu
Jacqueline Trinh is an undergraduate student in the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention program at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She is interested in the field of public health and is eager to utilize social media to understand the public’s perception of tobacco products. She is currently a research assistant at SOMA Lab, working on content-analysis of tobacco-related content on TikTok. Her current hobbies include reading fantasy novels and crochet.
Ali Elmashat
Research Assistant
alielmas@usc.edu
Ali Elmashat is a second-year undergraduate student in the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention program at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Ali is on the pre-medical track and aspires to attend medical school to become a physician. Outside of class, he enjoys working with the community through the USC Youth Scientist Program where he tutors at local elementary schools. Currently, Ali is a research assistant at SOMA Lab, assisting in content-analysis of tobacco-related videos on TikTok. In his free time, he likes to play soccer, go to the beach, and hang out with friends.
Ryan Lui
Research Assistant
rtlui@usc.edu
Ryan Lui is an undergraduate student in the Health and Human Sciences program at USC. He is on the pre-medical track with aspirations of becoming a physician. As a research assistant at SOMA Lab, he analyzes content from tobacco brand and vendor websites to document their age verification process and marketing strategies. He enjoys traveling, snowboarding, and watching professional and collegiate sports.
Sarah Donahue
Research Assistant
sjdonahu@usc.edu
Sarah Donahue is an undergraduate and progressive master’s degree student at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Her current research interests focus on promoting accurate health information on social media and analyzing marketing strategies of tobacco products. She plans to pursue dental school after graduation and dreams of running her own clinic. Outside of SOMA Lab, she is active in her pre-dental society and provides music lessons and science education to local elementary students. In her free time, she loves to surf, camp, and play the guitar.
Heather Lopez
Research Assistant
hclopez@usc.edu
Heather Lopez is an undergraduate student in the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention program at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She is passionate about Latinx health advocacy, addressing gender and minority health disparities, and volunteering in her community. As a research assistant at SOMA Lab, she is analyzing TikTok posts related to Backwoods Cigars. In her free time, Heather enjoys learning new instruments, creating comic books, taking long bike rides, and reading.
Chloe Debow Krawitz
Research Assistant
debowkra@usc.edu
Chloe Debow Krawitz is an undergraduate student in the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention program at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and is currently on the pre-medical track. Previously, Chloe worked as a research assistant on a study investigating the effectiveness of the minimally invasive VATS lobectomy procedure for lung cancer patients. Currently, she is a research assistant at SOMA Lab, analyzing content from tobacco brand and vendor websites to document their age verification process and marketing strategies. In her free time, Chloe enjoys dancing, cooking, and volunteering.
Oumayma Benyoussef
Research Assistant
obenyous@usc.edu
Oumayma Benyoussef is an undergraduate student double majoring in Global Health and Business Administration. After graduating, she plans on attending law school and later specializing in international corporate law. She is interested in the impacts of tobacco regulation and marketing on youth use. Oumayma has studied the impacts of health disparities on oncology patients as a student researcher at USC Keck. Previously, she interned at the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and performed extensive research on business law, business ethics, and strategy. Currently, she is a research assistant at SOMA Lab content-analyzing tobacco-related content on TikTok. In her free time, she enjoys reading, playing tennis, and baking.
Anuja Majmundar
SOMA Lab Affiliate
anuja.majmundar@usc.edu
Anuja Majmundar is a Principal Scientist at the American Cancer Society. She earned her doctoral degree in Health Behavior Research from the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She completed her M.B.A. in Communication Management from Symbiosis International University, and a M.A. in Communication from San Diego State University. As a doctoral student, Anuja was awarded USC TCORS` pre-doctoral fellowship (2019-2020) and was also a recipient of USC`s Provost Fellowship (2016-2017). During her doctoral training, she worked closely with members of SOMA Lab on projects related to understanding user experiences with tobacco products like KandyPens, as well as on projects that described the promotional practices of companies across various industries, determining how such practices affect offline health-related behaviors. Today, Dr. Majmundar uses data science methods along with social media data to explore research questions that address the e-cigarette epidemic at scale.
Amanda Jimenez, M.S., M.SC.
amandji@usc.edu
Amanda brings a background in Environmental Management and Sustainability, Integrated Science and Technology, and Environmental Engineering. Her work includes data management and content development around air toxics, low-cost sensors, land use, and urban oil drilling. As a bilingual Spanish study coordinator, Amanda currently leads the BELLA and Health and Neighborhood Air pollution community-based research projects.
Brandon Brown
Co-Investigator
brandon.brown@medsch.ucr.edu
Dr. Brandon Brown teaches public health and medical ethics, mentors students, leads the campus Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (CAMP) program at UCR, and conducts community based participatory research on HIV and aging. He is also an equity advisor, an honors faculty fellow, and a member of the campuswide institutional review boards. He earned his bachelor's degree in applied mathematics from the University of California, Irvine, followed by a M.P.H. in epidemiology from UCLA. He then attended the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to earn his Ph.D. in international health with a focus on epidemiology.
Ronald Brooks
Co-Investigator
rabrooks@mednet.ucla.edu
Dr. Ronald Brooks is an Assistant Professor and Principal Investigator. His research efforts focus on the development, implementation and evaluation of HIV prevention and treatment interventions for LGBT populations and people of color. He also provides training and technical assistance to health jurisdictions and community-based organizations involved in HIV prevention and treatment. Dr. Brooks earned his PhD in Urban Planning from UCLA and completed his postdoctoral training here in the School of Public Health.
Margaret Canady
Project Assistant
mcanady@usc.edu
Margaret graduated from Harvard University in 2020 with a B.A. in Psychology. As an undergraduate, Margaret worked on a variety of research projects, ranging from conducting a dance therapy intervention with adolescents to supporting research focused on identity, emotion regulation, and self-destructive behaviors. Margaret’s research interests focus on understanding and implementing mental health treatment that is accessible, equitable, and inclusive, especially for marginalized populations and communities. Ultimately, Margaret plans to further her education by pursuing a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. In her free time, Margaret loves dancing/choreographing, reading, going to the beach, and exploring Los Angeles with friends.
Devaki Patel
Student Research Assistant
djpatel@usc.edu
Devaki Patel is a graduate student at the Keck School of Medicine of USC pursuing a Master’s in Public Health, set to graduate in 2022. Devaki received her B.S. in Public Health and Global Health from the University of California, San Diego. Devaki is passionate about global tobacco control and hopes to further her education to pursue a career in research and academia focused on tobacco addiction and prevention. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, trying new foods, and spending time with friends and family.
Jacqueline Lutz-Hibbard
Undergraduate Research Assistant
lutzhibb@usc.edu
Jacqueline Lutz-Hibbard is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, pursuing a B.S. in biochemistry, set to graduate in 2023. She transferred to USC in 2020 and currently works as a transfer ambassador with the USC admissions department to help guide prospective transfer students through their transferring journey. She is also a member of the club USC KDSAP, which strives educate the Los Angeles community about chronic kidney disease. After graduation, she plans on attending medical school and is interested in pursuing pediatric psychiatry. In her free time, she enjoys baking, listening to podcasts, and spending time with family and friends.
Peiyao Li
Student Research Assistant
lipeiyao@usc.edu
Peiyao Li is a graduate student in Spatial Economics and Data Analysis program at the University of Southern California. In this program, she is involved in Spatial Analysis and Modeling project, studying the accessibility of San Francisco’s health care services. She is also interested in conducting research about the relationship of substance use and mental health. During her undergraduate time, she worked as an assistant of stock analyst in Topsperity Sercurities, Ltd. After obtaining her Master’s degree, Peiyao hopes to pursue a career in the real estate market as a data analyst. In her free time, she enjoys playing basketball and spending time with friends.
Paul Adamson, MD, MPH
Affiliated Researcher
padamson@mednet.ucla.edu
Paul Adamson is an affiliated researcher with the group. He is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he specializes in Infectious Diseases. He is interested in global health, sexually transmitted infections, and antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Currently, he is collaborating with our group on a research project aimed at improving the diagnosis of C. trachomatis and N. gonorrhoeae infections, as well as identifying the prevalence and risk factors for AMR in N. gonorrhoeae, among people in a HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) program in Hanoi, Vietnam. He attended UC Berkeley for his undergraduate and MPH degrees and completed medical school at UC San Francisco. He did residency training in Internal Medicine at Yale-New Haven Hospital before completing his fellowship training in Infectious Diseases at UCLA.
Lucy Schuler
Project Assistant
lschuler@usc.edu
Lucy Schuler graduated from UC Berkeley in 2021, receiving a B.A. in Psychology (Highest Honors) and Linguistics. At Berkeley, Lucy was a research assistant in the Language and Cognitive Development Lab. Her senior honors thesis examined the role of financial stressors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic on children's language environments and exposure. As a project assistant in the DUB Lab, her main work is on the Smoking Cessation in Sexual Minority Couples Study. Outside of research, Lucy enjoys going on walks with her dog, discovering new podcasts, and exploring all over Los Angeles.
Sarah Axeen, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, Keck School of Medicine
axeen@usc.edu
Antoine Bechara, PhD
Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Arts, Letters and Sciences
Neuroscience of Decision-Making
Addiction
Substance Misuse
Gambling
bechara@usc.edu
Rael Cahn, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry & the Behavioral Sciences
Mindfulness
Meditation
Substance Use Disorders
Anxiety
Depression
rael.cahn@usc.edu
Julie Cederbaum, PhD, MSW, MPH
Associate Professor of Social Work
Department of Children, Youth and Families
HIV/ AIDS
Health Disparities
Children and Youth
Behavioral Health
jcederba@usc.edu
Alice Cepeda, PhD
Associate Professor of Social Work Dept. of Adult Mental Health and Wellness
HIV/ AIDS
Mental Health
Substance Misuse
Diversity/ Cross Cultural
Social Development
Policy
alicecep@usc.edu
Terry Church, DrSc
Assistant Professor in the Department of Regulatory and Quality Sciences, USC School of Pharmacy
Regulatory Sciences
AYA
Addiction
Ethics
Policy
tdchurch@usc.edu
Pearl Doan
Student
pdoan501@g.ucla.edu
Pearl Doan is an undergraduate student at UCLA majoring in Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics and minoring in Professional Writing. Pearl’s main areas of research include PrEP-TECH, a study evaluating the impact and efficacy of the online prescription of PrEP, and the qualitative analysis of self-collected STI tests. Pearl hopes to become a physician-scientist in the future. Outside of research, Pearl volunteers as an HIV testing counselor and leads a feminist-oriented mentorship program for middle-schoolers.
Kevin Yang, B.S.
Student
kjyang@usc.edu
Kevin is a first year medical student at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. He graduated from UC Berkeley in 2020 with a B.S. in Molecular Environmental Biology and a minor in History. Outside of research with Dr. Klausner's lab, Kevin is a board member of the Keck Human Rights Clinic (KHRC), which connects asylum seekers awaiting trial to volunteer physicians for medical evaluation.
Michael Akaolisa
Student
akaolisa@usc.edu
Michael (Mike) Akaolisa is a medical student at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Before coming to the west coast, Michael received his Bachelors in Science and Arts in Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin with minors in English and Sociology. He has interests in population health and aspires to work with underserved populations in metropolitan areas.
Emily Ruttledge
Student Research Assistant
er_047@usc.edu
Emily Ruttledge is a Clinical Psychology Master’s student at the Graduate School of Education and Psychology at Pepperdine University. At Pepperdine, she works as a research assistant with the mentorship of Dr. Jennifer Franczak. She graduated from Arizona State University in 2020, with a Bachelor of Science in Human Development and Family Studies, and a minor in Psychology. Emily has supported research efforts studying the neuropsychological impact of pediatric cancer and is passionate about public health. She is interested in contributing to research related to psychosocial and pharmacological effects for individuals with substance use disorder. Emily hopes to examine the comorbidity of mental health disorders and substance use.
Teri Hill
Undergraduate Research Assistant
tkhill@usc.edu
Teri Hill is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Human Biology with a minor in Economics, set to graduate in 2023. After graduation, she plans to attend medical school and pursue a specialty in primary care. At USC Teri has volunteered at local elementary schools through the joint education project (JEP). She has also volunteered at a local food pantry as a member of the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA). In her free time, she enjoys rock climbing, spending time with her friends, and trying new foods.
Anna Schenkel
Undergraduate Research Assistant
aschenke@usc.edu
Anna Schenkel is an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, pursuing a B.S. in Human Biology, set to graduate in 2025. At USC, Anna is involved in the Womxn RISE Pre-Health Organization, which allows for female STEM students to explore pre-health opportunities and volunteer in the greater community. Additionally, she volunteers weekly with the organization WaterDrop LA, which aids the unhoused population by providing them with food, water, and clothing on a weekly basis. After graduating, Anna hopes to attend medical school and work in pediatric otolaryngology. In her free time, Anna enjoys reading, going to the beach, concerts, and spending time with her dogs.
Anne Fehrenbacher, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor Of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences
afehrenb@usc.edu
Dr. Fehrenbacher is a social epidemiologist specializing in biobehavioral HIV prevention with sex workers and sexual and gender minority populations. Dr. Fehrenbacher received her PhD and MPH in Community Health Sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and her BA in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Fehrenbacher completed postdoctoral training in the HIV Combination Prevention Program at UCLA and a Fogarty GloCal Fellowship sponsored by the UC Global Health Institute with the Public Health Research Institute of India and Ashodaya Samithi in Mysore, Karnataka.
Dr. Fehrenbacher’s current research focuses on harnessing technologies to improve PrEP uptake, adherence, and retention among stigmatized populations, particularly among transgender sex workers in India. Dr. Fehrenbacher is the PI for two international pilot studies on PrEP acceptability and adherence barriers among sex workers in India and Co-PI for a study on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihoods of sex workers in India. Dr. Fehrenbacher is currently preparing to launch a new study on PrEP implementation science with hard-to-reach populations in India evaluating policy, structural, and organizational barriers to widespread rollout of PrEP. In addition to her research in India, Dr. Fehrenbacher has also collaborated on several global health studies to improve access to sexual and reproductive health services among sex workers and migrant populations in Cambodia, France, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.
Sabrina Navarro, B.S.
Student
san51678@usc.edu
Sabrina "Bree" Navarro is currently a Master of Science in Global Medicine student at Keck School of Medicine of USC. She graduated from UCLA in 2020 with a B.S. in Physiological Science, where she worked in neuromuscular research. She is interested in medicine and aspires to increase equity in healthcare and health outcomes for underserved communities.
Ethan Ong
Student
eaong@usc.edu
Ethan Ong is an undergraduate student at USC majoring in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, and minoring in Natural Science. He has interests in public health studies and aims to apply to medical school in future years. Outside of research, Ethan is an E-board member of Science Outreach at USC and a volunteer for Flying Samaritans at USC, which aim to educate local elementary students and provide healthcare for underserved populations in Tijuana, Mexico, respectively.
Shaleen Sunesara
Student
sunesara@usc.edu
Shaleen Sunesara is currently an undergraduate student at USC majoring in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and minoring in Applied Analytics. Shaleen has conducted research on the public health impact of COVID-19 under the mentorship of physicians and scientists. She has also presented her research at the Critical Care Congress and the CHEST Annual Meeting. Outside of research, Shaleen is a mentor-tutor for the USC Joint Educational Project and is a member of the USC Delta Delta Sigma Pre-Dental Honor Society.
Peter Kerndt, MD, MPH
Affiliated Researcher
kerndt@usc.edu
Dr. Kerndt graduated from Marquette University, obtained his medical training at the University of Iowa, completed a medical Internship at San Francisco General Hospital, an Internal Medicine Residency at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, IL, a Preventive Medicine Residency/EIS Fellowship at the CDC, obtained an MPH in Epidemiology from UCLA and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Preventive Medicine and Public Health.
Dr. Kerndt worked for over 25 years in the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health where he served as Director of the HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Program, Sexually Transmitted Disease Program, and Tuberculosis Control Program.
He has been the Principal Investigator on numerous CDC and NIH-funded research studies and has published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals. He was a Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Department of Infectious Disease at LAC+USC Medical Center where he saw patients in the Rand Schrader HIV Clinic (5P21) for thirteen years. He currently is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, Fielding School of Public Health where he has co-taught a graduate-level course on HIV/STDs.
Dr. Kerndt re-joined the CDC Center for Global Health, Division of HIV and Tuberculosis in November 2015 and worked in the PEPFAR Program in Maputo, Mozambique as Associate Director of Programs and Associate Director for Science through June 2020.
He currently serves as a Senior TB and HIV Medical Advisor to USAID under the Public Health Institute STAR Fellowship Program in USAID's Bureau for Global Health, Office of Infectious Diseases, Tuberculosis Division.
Kelika Konda, PhD, MHS
Affiliated Researcher
kkonda@mednet.ucla.edu
Kelika Konda, PhD, MHS is an Assistant Professor in the UCLA Department of Medicine's Division of Infectious Diseases. Dr. Konda is based in Lima, Peru and her research focuses on strategies to prevent HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) within the local social and epidemiologic context. Dr. Konda has worked on multiple social and behavioral HIV prevention trials with men who have sex with men and male-to-female transgender women in Peru. Her primary research interests include understanding the partnership characteristics and patterns among MSM populations to be able to design better HIV/STI prevention interventions. Additionally, Dr. Konda is working on a cohort study to understand the patterns of syphilis infection and reinfection in a cohort of high-risk MSM in Lima, Peru. Currently Dr. Konda is working on a study of sexual relationships between gay men in Peru. The information from this study will be used to develop an HIV prevention intervention for gay men, taking into account their sexual relationships and HIV status.
Aditya Tadanki, B.A.
Student
at_736@usc.edu
Aditya Tadanki is currently a post-baccalaureate premedical student at Scripps College in Claremont, CA. Aditya’s main areas of research include genital herpes, COVID-19 epidemiology, and HIV prevention through telehealth. Previously, Aditya worked at Microsoft in Seattle, where he was the finance lead for Microsoft’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) business, Dynamics 365. Aditya received his B.A. in Global Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and will be attending the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell to start his medical education this coming summer.
Bijan Hosseini
Student
bahossei@usc.edu
Bijan Hosseini is currently a PDP student working towards a Bachelor’s in Neuroscience and a Master’s in Global Medicine at USC. Bijan has research experience volunteering at Purdue’s Cognition and Learning Lab and helping with the Microdrop HIV Sequencing Project in the Lee Lab at USC. His current interests include the impact of COVID-19 on mental health and underserved communities. He aspires to become a physician to help serve patients in resource-limited settings.
Sofia Stellar
Student
sstellar@usc.edu
Sofia Stellar is currently a pre-med undergraduate student working toward a bachelor of science in Human anatomy and minoring in philosophy. She is planning on applying to medical school in spring of 2023 and aspires to one day be a physician. Outside of research, Sofia volunteers in the emergency department of Huntington hospital, she is a mentor-tutor for the US Joint Educational program, and she is currently working on a project to help younger students gain effective learning habits post online learning.
Jessica Perez, B.A.
Student
jperez85@usc.edu
Jessica Perez is a medical student studying at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Prior to this, Jessica received her Bachelor of Arts in Biology with a concentration in Cell/Molecular Biology and Genetics from Boston University in 2018, where she did research in sickle cell disease. She is interested in reproductive health and infectious disease, and aspires to work with underserved communities as a future physician. Currently, Jessica is involved with research in the areas of genital herpes and syphilis in pregnancy. She is a recipient of a Grant for Emerging Researcher/Clinician Mentorship Program award from the IDSA Foundation and HIV Medicine Association for her research in syphilis. Outside of research, she is part of the leadership for Reproductive Healthcare for People of Color and Latino Medical Student Association at Keck.
Ephrata Abate
Research Assistant
ephrataa@usc.edu
Ephrata Abate received her bachelor`s degree in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She will complete her master`s degree in Global Medicine at Keck School of Medicine of USC in December 2022. As a research assistant at SOMA Lab, she analyzes content from tobacco brand and vendor websites to document their age verification process and marketing strategies. She is interested in closing the gap in health disparities for underrepresented populations, as well as eliminating bias and disparities in relation to race and gender. Her hobbies include creative content creation digitally and experientially, with skills in front and behind the camera as well as insight analysis, content organization, and modeling.
Sarayu Jaladanki
Research Assistant
jaladank@usc.edu
Sarayu Jaladanki is an undergraduate student in Human Biology on a pre-medical track at USC, minoring in Health Care Studies and Applied Analytics. She is involved in Project RISHI, a student run non-profit that comes up with sustainable solutions for the development of rural Indian villages. Also, as a part of Madhatter Knits, a non-profit organization dedicated to supplying knit hats for premature babies, she has helped expand donations to homeless shelters. She also volunteers at the LAC+USC Emergency Department and works under Dr. Allison Luu, researching patient falls and injuries in hospitals.
John Clapp, PhD
Executive Vice Dean and Lenore Stein-Wood and William S. Wood Professor of School Behavioral Health
johnclapp@usc.edu
JOHN D. CLAPP is a professor at the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at the University of Southern California. Clapp is known internationally for his research and translational work in the field of alcohol problem prevention. A fellow in the American Academy of Health Behavior, Clapp is currently studying the system dynamics of drinking events with a team of engineers and computer scientists with the goal of developing “smart” real-time prevention applications. He has published more than 100 journal articles, with his work appearing in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, Addiction, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, among numerous other top research journals. Clapp has been awarded more than $32 million in grants and contracts (NIAAA, NIDA, U.S. Department of Education, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation) and has been principal investigator on over 20 funded projects. Clapp was the founding co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research. As a leader in the prevention of alcohol-related problems experienced by college students, he served six years as the director of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Drug Misuse Prevention and Recovery. He also served on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention National Advisory Council. Clapp’s work and expertise has been featured in numerous international media outlets, with coverage in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph, ABC National News, among numerous others. To reference the work of John Clapp online, we ask that you directly quote their work where possible and attribute it to "John Clapp, a faculty at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work” (LINK: https://dworakpeck.usc.edu)
Daryl Davies, PhD
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education & Professor of Clinical Pharmacy Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy
ddavies@usc.edu
h2>Daryl L. DaviesPhD
Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education & Professor of Clinical Pharmacy
Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy
Daryl Davies is associate dean for undergraduate education and a professor in the Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy at the USC School of Pharmacy. As associate dean, he is responsible for the ongoing development and management of the school’s undergraduate majors and minors. Davies is also the director of the master’s program in management of drug development in the Department of Regulatory and Quality Sciences and undergraduate faculty adviser for the Trojan Admission Pre-Pharmacy (TAP) program. He is a mentor in the STAR program—a cooperative venture in science education between the USC Health Sciences Campus and Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in East Los Angeles—after several years serving as the program’s director.
In addition to his educational activities, Davies leads a research team at USC that is working to discover and develop novel therapeutics for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and alcoholism. He is considered a pioneer by his peers in the field of purinergic receptors and their role in central nervous system regulation of alcohol-induced changes in alcohol intake and signaling. He also is one of the lead faculty members in the USC Institute for Addiction Science.
Davies is a firm believer in using an interdisciplinary approach. To this end, his group works with a team of collaborators that use a combination of pharmacological, toxicological, electrophysiological, molecular, computational chemistry, molecular modeling and regulatory expertise to discover and develop new drugs.
John Monterosso, PhD
Associate Professor of Psychology
johnrmon@usc.edu
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Rosalie Pacula, PhD
Elizabeth Garrett Chair in Health Policy, Economics, and Law, and Professor
rmp_302@usc.edu
strong>Rosalie Liccardo Pacula PhD holds the Elizabeth Garrett Chair in Health Policy, Economics & Law at the Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California and is a Senior Fellow with the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, where she co-directs the RAND-USC Schaeffer Opioid Policy Tools & Information Center of Excellence (OPTIC) in addition to leading numerous National Institute of Health funded studies examining the impact of federal, state and local laws on the supply, demand and access to treatment for intoxicating substances. Previously she spent 21 years at the RAND Corporation, serving as co-director of RAND’s Drug Policy Research Center for 15 of those years, working on drug policy studies for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, European Commission, and the U.K. Home Office. She served on NIDA’s National Advisory Council Cannabis Policy Workgroup (2017), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA’s) technical advisory committee on preventing cannabis use among youth (2020-present), the World Health Organization’s Technical Expert Committee on Cannabis Use and Cannabis Policy (December 2019-2020), the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine Committee on the Review of Specific Programs in the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (2021 – present), the CDC’s National Injury Prevention’s Board of Scholarly Counsellors (2021- present), and is currently President of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy (2019- present). Dr. Pacula is a graduate from the Santa Clara University and received her doctorate in economics from Duke University.
Jungeun Olivia Lee, PhD
Assistant Professor (Social Work)
lee363@usc.edu
Jungeun Olivia Lee joined the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work in 2014. Prior to her appointment at USC, she was a research scientist at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work and Social Development Research Group after receiving her doctoral degree in 2009. Dr. Lee seeks to disentangle a complex relationship among socioeconomic status, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and behavior health, particularly substance use and its comorbid mental health, during the life course and across generations. Conceptually anchored in the life course perspective, Dr. Lee’s research focuses on (a) the impacts of socioeconomic status, both at individual- and neighborhood levels, on problematic substance use and their underlying mechanisms; (b) associated gender differences; and (c) the intergenerational impacts of parental substance use, socioeconomic status, and ACEs on children. She has contributed to multiple grants as an investigator. She is currently principal investigator for a grant funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The study seeks to identify developmental timing and dynamic changes in maternal substance use and socioeconomic status among low-income young mothers, link them to child developmental outcomes, and then link those back to maternal exposure to ACEs. She is also the lead investigator at the USC site of a multi-campus consortium that seeks to understand ACEs, intimate partner violence, and substance use. She is a member of the Society for Social Work and Research and the Society for Prevention Research. Lee is interested in quantitative methodology for longitudinal data and has expertise in four general areas of advanced statistics, including mixture modeling (often referred to as the “person-centered approach”), structural equation modeling, categorical data analysis and techniques for handling missing data. To reference the work of Jungeun Olivia Lee online, we ask that you directly quote their work where possible and attribute it to "Jungeun Olivia Lee, a faculty at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work” (LINK: https://dworakpeck.usc.edu)
Jennifer Lewis, PhD
Clinical Associate Professor
lewi573@usc.edu
Jennifer Lewis is an experienced mental health clinician with a passion towards transdisciplinary care. She is adept at conducting and teaching neurobiologically informed evidence based practices. She translates those clinical skills to develop, implement and evaluate innovative mezzo level programs within health care organizations and creates innovative solutions to wicked societal problems. As a professor in the Suzanne Dworak Peck School of Social Work she promotes integrated social work curriculum and has been a leader in the vertical and horizontal mapping of the school's curriculum as Vice Chair of Curriculum Council, Chair of the Adult Mental Health and Wellness Department Curriculum Committee, University Task Force on Interdisciplinary Communities and as a Center for Excellence in Teaching Fellow. Before entering academia, Lewis was the Chief of Social Work at University of California, San Diego, Health System Department of Pediatrics Infectious Disease where she authored and implemented a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grants for HIV-positive mothers who are abusing substances to prevent the abuse, neglect and abandonment of children. She was Program Director at Southwest Center for HIV and AIDS, where she authored and oversaw Ryan White funding for programming for HIV-positive men, women and youth. She worked for the O’Connor House with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Avon Program for Women and Justice addressing interpersonal violence. She was the Director of Mental Health and Social Services at the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, New York City's only LGBT health clinic. She is the owner of Mosaic Psychotherapy, LLC, a psychotherapy practice that provides consulting and counseling services to individuals and families. She is currently working on research on opioid abuse in collaboration with the Dornsife Center for Self Report Science and Center for Economic and Social Research, and qualitative research with individuals who are "Not Parent Expected". She recently published a book, with her co-author and Founder of the Bridge Rail Foundation, Organizing for Suicide Prevention: a case study at the Golden Gate Bridge (2020) San Diego, CA. Cognella Inc.
Adrian Huerta, PhD
Assistant Professor of Education
ahhuerta@rossier.usc.edu
Adrian H. Huerta, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of education in the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on boys and young men of color, college access and equity, and gang-associated youth. His research has been funded by the ECMC Foundation, Center for Research on College to Workforce Transitions, Volunteers for America, and others. His scholarship appears in Boyhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Journal of The First-Year Experience & Students in Transition, Teachers College Record, The Urban Review, Urban Education, and other practitioner and scholarly journals. He is a past receipt of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Minority Dissertation Fellowship.
Amanda Burkhardt, PhD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacy Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy
aburkhar@usc.edu
h2>Amanda BurkhardtPhD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacy
Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy
Prior to joining the USC School of Pharmacy faculty, Amanda M. Burkhardt was an adjunct assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine, in the School of Medicine, Department of Physiology & Biophysics; and lecturer in the Department of Biological Sciences at California State University, Long Beach. She holds a BS in microbiology from the University of California, San Diego, and a PhD in immunology from the University of California, Irvine.
Her research career has focused on the development of novel vaccines and adjuvants, discovery of cytokines and chemokines, and tuning immune responses to vaccine formulations using adjuvants based on Toll-like receptors and nanoparticles.
Burkhardt has lectured and mentored doctoral, undergraduate and medical students, developed engaging course curriculum, and authored multiple patents and journal articles based on her findings.
She is also co-director of the STAR program, a cooperative venture in science education between the USC Health Sciences Campus and Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in East Los Angeles.
Ashraf Elmashat, PhD
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences (Clinician Educator) Associate Medical Director of Keck Outpatient Psychiatry and Behavioral Health Services
ashraf.elmashat@med.ucs.edu
Dr. Elmashat is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry. His clinical and research focuses primarily on treatment-resistant mood disorders and the application of non-psychopharmacological treatment approaches using Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) and Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS). He is double board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN) both Adult and Child & Adolescent psychiatry. Prior to joining USC Department of Psychiatry in 2020, he was a faculty member at UC San Diego, Department of Psychiatry since 2002. Dr. Elmashat is involved in training medical students, residents and fellows in psychiatry. He is focused on a variety of research projects, mainly clinical psychopharmacology for schizophrenia and mood disorder. He serves as the primary PI on several clinical trials. His practice delivers compassionate, expert care in treating children, teens and adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia and anxiety disorders. He also cares for individuals with treatment-resistant depression using transcranial magnetic stimulation, Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) and Ketamine
Avelardo Valdez, PhD
Cleofas and Victor Ramirez Professor of Practice, Policy, Research and Advocacy for the Latino Population
avelardv@usc.edu
AVELARDO VALDEZ is currently a professor. He was previously a professor at the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston and Director of the Center for Drug & Social Policy Research. He obtained his Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. A primary focus of his research has been on the relationship between substance abuse and violence and health issues among high-risk groups. His research projects have been among “hidden populations” such as youth and prison gang members, heroin users, sex workers, aging drug users, and crack users. He is a nationally and internationally recognized scholar with an extensive publication record in his field of research. His most recent book is entitled Mexican American Girls and Gang Violence: Beyond Risk. He is a recipient of federal grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Two of his NIH funded grants focus on examining the long-term consequences of adolescent gang membership among Mexican Americans. Dr. Valdez is also a recipient and director of the NIDA Interdisciplinary Research Training Institute on Hispanic Drug Abuse. Dr. Valdez received the Award for Excellence in Mentorship from the National Hispanic Science Network on Drug Abuse (NHSN). He is the recipient of numerous other awards including the Senior Scholar Award for the Society for the Study of Social Problems, National Award of Excellence Senior Research Scientist, National Hispanic Science Network, and Outstanding Senior Scholar for the American Sociological Association. He has served as a member of the Committee for National Academy of Sciences Study of High Rates of Incarceration in the United States (2013-2014) and recently served on Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom‘s Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Law and Policy in California (2015) and recently was appointed to the Advisory Cannabis Working Group by the Los Angeles County Office of Cannabis Management. To reference the work of Avelardo Valdez online, we ask that you directly quote their work where possible and attribute it to "Avelardo Valdez, a faculty at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work” (LINK: https://dworakpeck.usc.edu)
Bradley Peterson, MD
Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry Division Chief of Psychiatry & the Behavioral Sciences at CHLA
bpeterson@chla.usc.edu
Bradley S. Peterson, MD, is the inaugural director of the Institute for the Developing Mind at Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), as well as Vice Chair for Research and Chief of the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at the Keck School of Medicine and the University of Southern California. He joined CHLA and USC in July 2014 after 13 years at Columbia University, where he served as the director of the Center for Developmental Neuropsychiatry, the founding director of the MRI Research Program, and the Chief of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Before that, he spent 12 years at Yale University, where he served as Director of Neuroimaging at the Yale Child Study Center.
His research involves the development and use of neuroimaging technologies to identify the brain bases of psychiatric disorders and the mechanisms of therapeutic response across the life span. Specific disease processes that he studies include Autism, Depression, Bipolar Disorder, ADHD, Tourette syndrome, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Schizophrenia, eating disorders, stuttering, premature birth, and the effects of environmental toxins on brain development.
Dr. Peterson earned his medical degree from the University of Wisconsin Medical School in 1987. He then completed a residency in general psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1990, a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral research fellowship at the Yale Child Study Center in 1992, and a clinical fellowship in child psychiatry at Yale University in 1994. He also trained in adult and child psychoanalysis at Yale and Columbia from 1996-2008.
Brian Lee, MD
Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine
brian.lee@med.ucs.edu
Dr. Lee is a transplant hepatologist who specializes in caring for patients before and after liver transplantation. His research focuses on improving health for patients with alcohol-associated liver disease, through: 1) early liver transplantation for alcohol-associated hepatitis; 2) inequities in healthcare access; 3) health policy and advocacy; 4) novel therapeutics and translational study design. His research has resulted in first-author peer-reviewed publications in Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA Internal Medicine, Journal of Hepatology, Lancet Public Health, Gastroenterology, among others. His research has received national media coverage with NBC Nightly News, Today Show, NPR, CNN, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, among others. This research has led to changes in national transplant policy, and has been incorporated into national guidelines across North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia.