Awards & Honors Fall 2021

Serap Aksoy, Ph.D., interim department chair and professor in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, was among 120 new members elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Aksoy was among a record 59 women in this year’s class.

Michelle Bell, Ph.D., the Mary E. Pinchot Professor of Environmental Health at the School of the Environment, was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine. She was also named to the newly reinstated Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Xi Chen, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Public Health and Policy Management and associate professor at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, was one of three scientists awarded the 2021 Kuznets Prize by the Journal of Population Economics. Their article, “Impacts of social and economic factors on the transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China,” was judged the best published by the journal in the previous year.

Denise Esserman, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Biostatistics, was appointed to a four-year term as a member of the board of directors of the Society for Clinical Trials.

Abigail Friedman, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, was presented with an Early Career Investigator Award by the Yale School of Public Health.

Ralitza Gueorguieva, Ph.D., senior research scientist in the Department of Biostatistics and director of Biostatistics in Psychiatry, was part of the research team in a scientific study that was named a leading research achievement in 2020 by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.

Four YSPH professors were among the newest group elected to the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering: Melinda Irwin, Ph.D., Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, associate dean of research at the Yale School of Public Health, associate director (Population Sciences) at the Yale Cancer Center, and deputy director (Public Health) at the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation; Linda Niccolai, Ph.D., professor of in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, director of the HPV Vaccine Working Group at Yale and director of the Connecticut Emerging Infections Program at Yale; Heping Zhang, Ph.D., Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Biostatistics in the Department of Biostatistics and professor in the Child Study Center; and Hongyu Zhao, Ph.D., Ira V. Hiscock Professor of Biostatistics in the Department of Biostatistics.

Melinda Irwin, Ph.D., whose research is focused on the areas of energy balance and cancer prevention and prognosis, has been appointed the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology.

Caroline Johnson, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology (Environmental Health Sciences), was awarded an American Cancer Society research scholar grant. She was also given the Career Enhancement Program Award by the National Cancer Institute (NCI)/Yale SPORE in Skin Cancer and the K12 Calabresi Immuno-Oncology Training Program Award by the NCI/Yale Cancer Center. In addition, she is a co-principal investigator on a team of Yale researchers that has received an $8.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the important role of microbial metabolites in our microbiota—the trillions of bacterial cells that colonize human intestines.

Albert I. Ko, M.D., an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist whose research focuses on the health consequences of rapid urbanization and social inequity, has been appointed the Raj and Indra Nooyi Professor of Public Health.

Tassos Kyriakides, Ph.D., associate research scientist in the Department of Biostatistics and director of the Cooperative Studies Program Coordinating Center at the Department of Veterans Affairs (West Haven, Connecticut), has been named to the National Institutes of Health Collaboratory, serving on an advisory panel on the future direction of clinical trials.

Jessica Lewis, Ph.D., associate research scientist in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, has been named to the editorial board of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. She is also deputy director of the Center for Community Engagement and Health Equity at the Yale Cancer Center, board member of the Dean’s Advisory Council for LGBTQI+ Af-fairs at Yale University and co-founder of Expect With Me.

Judith Lichtman, M.P.H. ’88, Ph.D. ’96, whose research focuses on the epidemiology of stroke and heart disease, has been appointed the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology.

Lingrui Liu , Sc.D., associate research scientist in the Department of Health Policy and Management, has been named a Yale Scholar in Implementation Science, a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded K12 program within the Yale Center for Implementation Science at the Yale School of Medicine.

Sarah Lowe, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management, received the 2021 Robins/Guze Early Career Award from the American Psychopathological Association.

Joan monin, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, was named a fellow at the Society of Experimental Social Psychology.

Melinda Pettigrew, Ph.D. ’99, whose research focuses on the molecular epidemiology of respiratory tract infections and the growing public health threat of antibiotic resistance, has been appointed the Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of Epidemiology.

Sten H. Vermund, M.D., Ph.D., dean of the Yale School of Public Health, has been appointed to a five-year term on the NIH Fogarty International Center Advisory Board by its director, Dr. Roger Glass.

Anne Wyllie, Ph.D., research scientist in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, was presented with the COVID-19 Research Award by the Yale School of Public Health.

Yale School of Public Health was given the New Haven Symphony Quartet Award for Innovation for helping arts organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The school was also presented with the 2021 Technology Innovation Award by the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce.

Heping Zhang, Ph.D., Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Biostatistics in the Department of Biostatistics and professor in the Child Study Center, was selected to give the 2022 Neyman Lecture by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Zhang will give his lecture, one of the highest honors in statistical societies, at the IMS annual meeting in London next June.

Hongyu Zhao, Ph.D., Ira V. His-cock Professor of Biostatistics in the Department of Biostatistics, has been named lead investigator of the newly launched Biomedical Data Fellowship Program, a joint effort between Yale University and Boehringer Ingelheim.