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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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 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 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.

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-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 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.

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.

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 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 (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 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 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.

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.

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.

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, 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 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.

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 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.

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.

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 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, 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

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.

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.

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.

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 (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.

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 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

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.

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.

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.

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 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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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. 

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 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.

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 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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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, 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.

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 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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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, 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.

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.

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 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 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. 

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. 

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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-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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.