Dr. Fan Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the Yale School of Public Health. He received his PhD in Biostatistics from Duke University in 2019, and joined the Yale Biostatistics faculty in July, 2019. Dr. Li’s research interests include statistical methods for randomized clinical trials, observational studies and a combination of both. He is an expert in the design, monitoring, analysis of parallel-arm, crossover and stepped-wedge cluster randomized trials, which are increasingly seen in pragmatic clinical trials embedded in the health care delivery systems. He has also contributed novel propensity score methods and software to estimate average causal effects with observational data, aimed at improving overlap and internal validity. His recent methods research include generalizability of randomized trials to external target populations, confirmatory or exploratory heterogeneity of treatment effects analyses, complex endpoints in cluster randomized trials, as well as novel study designs to address patient-centered clinical research questions. His methodological research has been supported by multiple NIH and PCORI grants/awards.

John Pachankis (he/him) is the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Public Health and directs Yale’s LGBTQ Mental Health Initiative, which serves as a home for scholarship devoted to understanding and improving the mental health of LGBTQ populations in the US and around the world.  His NIH-funded research program examines the efficacy of LGBTQ-affirmative mental health interventions delivered via novel technologies, in diverse settings, and across the spectrum of the LGBTQ community.  These treatments have shown often-times strong and sustained reductions in depression, anxiety, suicidality, substance use, and HIV risk across several randomized controlled trials.  He has published 150+ scientific papers on LGBTQ mental health and stigma and co-edited the Handbook of Evidence-Based Mental Health Practice with Sexual and Gender Minorities published by Oxford University Press. You can learn more about his research at https://medicine.yale.edu/lgbtqmentalhealth/

Catherine Weikart Yeckel, MS, Ph.D. is an Assistant Clinical Professor. She received a master’s degree in exercise physiology from the University of Pittsburgh and a doctoral degree from University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB)-Galveston in preventive medicine and community health in the areas of human metabolism and nutrition. In collaboration with researchers at UTMB-Galveston, and more recently with researchers and clinicians specializing in pediatric and adult endocrinology at the Yale School of Medicine, she focused her research interests along the spectrum of insulin resistance and ß-cell dysfunction. These interests broadly include cardiometabolic health issues and protection as a consequence of obesity from young to old age, and physical activity/fitness from sedentary to physically fit. She has used physiological challenge models to unmask the impact of arsenic exposure on blood pressure (stress) hyperreactivity, and most recently, to help innovate imaging for brown adipose tissue metabolism in human. Dr. Yeckel created and directs an integrative course for YSPH, Physiology of Public Health. She also initiated and co-directed The Art of Public Health workshops involving MPH and MA student match-ups between YSPH and YSA. She serves as a reviewer/scientific advisor and consultant for diverse entities, including government agencies, museums and companies.