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Meet our collaborative community driving the future of equitable public health. Together, these interdisciplinary experts are pioneering data science advancements while prioritizing data equity.

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DSDE Task Force

  • Senior Associate Dean of Public Health Data Science and Data Equity; Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of Biostatistics; Professor of Epidemiology (Chronic Diseases) and of Statistics and Data Science; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Professor Bhramar Mukherjee is the Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of Biostatistics and Professor of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH). Professor Mukherjee serves as the inaugural Senior Associate Dean of Public Health Data Science and Data Equity at YSPH. She holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Statistics and Data Science and is affiliated with the MacMillan Center and the Institute for the Foundations of Data Science. She serves on the Yale Cancer Center Director’s cabinet. Academic Background: Prior to joining Yale University in 2024, Dr. Mukherjee built a distinguished career at the University of Michigan from 2006-2024, where she was appointed as John D. Kalbfleisch Distinguished University Professor of Biostatistics (2023-2024), Siobán D. Harlow Collegiate Professor of Public Health (2023-2024), John D. Kalbfleisch Collegiate Professor of Biostatistics (2015-2023) and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics (2018-2024). She had several other significant leadership appointments at Michigan including an institutional appointment as the inaugural Assistant Vice President for Research for Research Data Services Strategy (2023-2024); Associate Director for Quantitative Data Sciences(2019-2024), Associate Director for Cancer Control and population Sciences (2015-2018) at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center. She also held professorial appointments in Epidemiology and Global Public Health. Professor Mukherjee was actively engaged with the U-M Precision Health initiative, as well as the Michigan Institute of Data Science (MIDAS). She served as the founding director of a flagship undergraduate summer program in big data from 2015-2024. She has supervised twenty doctoral students and three post-doctoral fellows Research Interests: Dr. Mukherjees’s research interests span statistical methods for analyzing electronic health records, gene-environment interaction studies, data integration, data equity, shrinkage estimation, and the analysis of environmental mixtures. Collaboratively, she contributes to areas such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, reproductive health, exposure science, and environmental epidemiology. Achievements: With over 415 publications in statistics, biostatistics, medicine, and public health, Professor Mukherjee is globally recognized for her research contributions in integrating genetic, environmental and health outcome data. She has served as the Principal Investigator on methodology grants funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF)and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Mukherjee is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, The Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Mukherjee has received numerous awards for her outstanding scholarship, service, and teaching at the University of Michigan and beyond. These include the Gertrude Cox award, the Adrienne Cupples Award, the Janet Norwood award, the Sarah Goddard Power award, the Karl E Peace Award, the Jerry Sacks Award, and the Marvin Zelen Statistical Leadership Award. In 2022 she was elected to the US National Academy of Medicine.
  • Research Scientist in Biostatistics

    Dr. Calvocoressi was the first researcher to measure family accommodation in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Family accommodation involves a set of family responses to patient symptoms that have been associated with poor treatment outcomes. The Family Accommodation Scales, developed by Dr. Calvocoressi and colleagues, have been translated into multiple languages and are used worldwide in research and clinical practice. Dr. Calvocoressi is currently overseeing a large psychometric study of the self-rated version of the scale. She and her colleagues are also developing a measure to examine relatives' motivations for engaging in accommodating behaviors. Dr. Calvocoressi also conducts research in cancer epidemiology and in psychosocial epidemiology. She has collaborated on studies examining the impact of genetic and environmental factors on the development of meningiomas, and on studies examining factors associated with prostate cancer severity. She has also investigated factors influencing mammography screening in diverse populations. She is currently collaborating on an FDA-funded project focused on promoting clinical trial participation among racial and ethnic minorities. Dr. Calvocoressi co-teaches the graduate biostatistics capstone course, Statistical Practice. And, she is the director of the Young Scholars Program and Internship in Biostatistics and Clinical Research, a program for gifted and talented high school students.
  • Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Environmental Health Sciences); Faculty Director, Yale Center on Climate Change and Health; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Dr. Chen received his Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering in 2016 from Nanjing University in China. During 2014-2015, he served as a Visiting Scholar at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Prior to joining the Yale School of Public Health faculty in July 2019, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoc Fellow at Helmholtz Zentrum München-German Center for Environmental Health.Dr. Chen’s research focuses on the intersection of climate change, air pollution, and human health. His work involves applying multidisciplinary approaches in climate and air pollution sciences, exposure assessment, and environmental epidemiology to investigate how climate change may impact human health. Much of this work has been done in China, Europe, and the U.S.
  • Kerry is a PhD student in the Chronic Disease Epidemiology Department at the Yale School of Public Health. She holds an MSc in Health Data Science from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and worked as a junior statistician at the Oxford Vaccine Group before coming to Yale. She is interested in using real-world data sources to explore treatment patterns and outcomes associated with emerging cancer therapies.
  • Professor of Epidemiology (Chronic Diseases); Associate Cancer Center Director for Research Training and Education, Yale Cancer Center; Co-Director, Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy and Effectiveness Research (COPPER) Center, Yale School of Medicine; Co-Leader, Cancer Prevention and Control, Yale Cancer Center

    Dr. Michaela Dinan is a Professor of Epidemiology in the Yale School of Public Health, Associate Cancer Center Director for Cancer Research Training and Education at the Yale Cancer Center (YCC) as well as Co-Director of the Yale Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy, and Effectiveness Research (COPPER) Center. She is also co-leader of the YCC Cancer Prevention and Control Research Program. Dr. Dinan has extensive research expertise in leveraging existing real-world data sources as well as novel data linkages to examine oncology outcomes. Dr. Dinan is a health services researcher by training and she specializes in using econometric and epidemiologic methodologies to analyze complex datasets. Specifically, Dr. Dinan's research examines advances in cancer care technologies, such as emerging treatments and diagnostics, and how these advances in technologies impact different cancer outcomes and experiences such as access, quality of care, cost of care, and health disparities. Dr. Dinan has led studies funded by the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. She is currently MPI of an NCI-funded R01 study examining broad genomic profiling in patients with lung cancer to determine how testing and test results impact treatment, survival, and costs of care. Dr. Dinan is also leading a study funded by the ACS to develop and validate risk prediction algorithms to inform efficient and high-quality care for long-term cancer survivors. In 2021, Dr. Dinan led the first linkage of the Medicare claims data to physical tumor specimens and cancer registry data. This proof-of-concept study was the first to demonstrate the ability to combine the detailed clinicopathologic data from the SEER Registry, the longitudinal follow-up provided by the Medicare claims data, with genomic sequence data obtained from the physical tumor specimen all into one dataset. Dr. Dinan is the PI of an ACS Research Scholar Grant building on this novel data linkage to determine the molecular etiology of aggressive screening-detected breast cancers.
  • Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and Professor in the Institute for Social and Policy Studies, of Investigative Medicine and of Public Health (Health Policy); Founder, Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE)

    Harlan Krumholz is a cardiologist and scientist at Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital. He is the Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine. He is a leading expert in the science to improve the quality and efficiency of care, eliminate disparities and promote equity, improve integrity and transparency in medical research, engage patients in their care, and avoid wasteful practices. Recent efforts are focused on harnessing the digital transformation in healthcare to accelerate knowledge generation and facilitate the delivery of care aligned with each patient’s needs and preferences. Dr. Krumholz is director of the Yale New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE), an organization dedicated to improving health and health care through research, tools, and practices that produce discovery, heighten accountability, and promote better public health and clinical care. He co-founded and co-leads the Yale University Open Data Access (YODA) Project, designed to increase access to clinical research data and promote their use to generate new knowledge. He also co-founded and co-leads medRxiv, a non-profit preprint server for the medical and health sciences. He was a founding faculty co-director of the Yale Center for Research Computing. Dr. Krumholz has been honored by membership in the National Academy of Medicine, the Association of American Physicians, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. He was named a Distinguished Scientist of the American Heart Association and received their Award of Meritorious Achievement and Clinical Research Prize. He served as a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Krumholz received the Friendship Award from the People’s Republic of China in recognition of his collaborative efforts to develop a national cardiovascular research network and was named by the Chinese Society of Cardiology as a Top-10 Distinguished International Cardiologist for his contributions to the development of cardiovascular medicine in China. He founded the American Heart Association’s Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Council and co-founded their annual conference. He was the founding editor of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes; founding editor of CardioExchange, a social media site of the publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine; and editor of Journal Watch Cardiology of the New England Journal of Medicine. He was a founding Governor of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. He is the Editor-in-Chief of JACC, a pre-eminent cardiovascular medical journal. He co-founded HugoHealth, a patient-centric platform that engages people as partners in research and clinical care, facilitates the secure acquisition and movement of digital health data, and promotes learning health communities. He also co-founded Refactor Health, an enterprise healthcare AI-augmented health data management company. Before joining the Yale faculty in 1992, Dr. Krumholz received a BS (Biology) from Yale, an MD from Harvard Medical School, and a Masters in Health Policy and Management (SM) from the Harvard University School of Public Health. At Yale, he directed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program from 1996-2017 and serves as Director Emeritus of the Yale National Clinician Scholars Program. Dr. Krumholz has published over 1500 articles and three books with an h-index of more than 240.
  • Assistant Professor of Biostatistics; Co-Training Director, Health Informatics MS

    Robert A. McDougal, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Health Informatics Division of Biostatistics with a secondary appointment in Biomedical Informatics and Data Science. His research focuses on the development of informatics methods to facilitate the computational study of neurological diseases of aging (e.g., Alzheimer’s, stroke), which require a multi-scale approach incorporating biophysical details at the level of receptors on neurons with large scale network effects, potentially including the body and the environment. He wrote and received two multi-PI R01s which are currently funding this work. His group maintains two major components of the computational neuroscience ecosystem – the model discovery tool ModelDB and -- together with its founder Michael Hines -- the NEURON simulator. He is on the NeuroML Scientific Committee (a standards organization for computational neuroscience) and is an elected board member for the Organization for Computational Neuroscience. Dr. McDougal earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from The Ohio State University in 2011. He did postdoctoral training at Yale in computer science, neurobiology, and medical informatics; during the later, he earned an MS in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics from Yale. From 2016 until joining the Department of Biostatistics in 2019, he was an Associate Research Scientist at Yale University in the Department of Neuroscience. He is affiliated with the Health Informatics (HI), Computational Biology and Biomedical Informatics, and Interdepartment Neuroscience graduate programs at Yale. He designed and teaches two "Computational Methods for Informatics" courses: EMPH 544 and BIS 634.
  • Associate Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences)

    Founder & Director, Society, Connectedness and Health (SOCAH) Lab "Guided by Spirit, Rooted in Experience, and Supported by Science." Transforming public health through a holistic well-being approach. Dr. Ransome's research integrates social connectedness, contemplative practices, and digital technology to address complex public health challenges. As a leading researcher at Yale School of Public Health, his innovative work focuses on creating sustainable pathways to health, wealth, and prosperity for historically underserved communities both in the United States and globally. Research Impact & Innovation At the forefront of the SOCAH Lab, Dr. Ransome directs a multidisciplinary team employing methodologies in unique ways that combine: Advanced quantitative survey analysis In-depth qualitative research through interviews and focus groups Geospatial data science applications Artificial intelligence tools for public health solutions Dr. Ransome's research has been featured in top-tier public health journals including the American Journal of Public Health and Social Science & Medicine. Dr. Ransome's commitment to accessibility ensures his findings reach beyond academia through community engagement events, digital storytelling initiatives, and practical well-being products that empower communities to thrive. Academic Excellence & Training Dr. Ransome brings extensive training to his work, including: Alonzo Smythe Yerby Postdoctoral Fellowship, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthDrPH in Public Health, Columbia University Mailman School of Public HealthMPH in Health Behavior & Health Education, University of Michigan School of Public Health Vision for Transformative Impact The SOCAH Lab's work addresses critical social determinants of health through innovative research-to-practice frameworks. By identifying and addressing root causes of sub-optimal health, Dr. Ransome's research provides actionable insights for policymakers, community organizations, faith-based institutions, government entities, and healthcare systems. Outside the lab, Dr. Ransome enjoys playing, watching soccer, and spending time at the beach.
  • Student Representative, Public Health Data Science and Data Equity

    Yi Ren is a second-year graduate student at Yale University, pursuing an MS in Biostatistics with a concentration in Data Science. He holds a BA. in Finance from Renmin University of China. Yi has gained diverse internship experience across business and healthcare sectors. Currently, he serves as a Research Analyst at a consulting firm founded by Yale alumni. His previous roles include equity research internships at two securities firms and a healthcare consulting internship.
  • Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Co-director, Public Health Modeling Concentration; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Dan Weinberger is a Professor in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at Yale School of Public Health. His research uses a combination of quantitative analysis, laboratory experiments and field work to understand the epidemiology and biology of respiratory infections. Recent work has focused on developing novel analytical methods for the evaluation of vaccines using time series and spatial data. He collaborates widely with public health agencies and academic organizations around the world on these issues. He earned his PhD in biological sciences from Harvard School of Public Health, with a focus on Infectious Disease Epidemiology, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Division of International Epidemiology and Population Studies in the Fogarty International Center at the NIH. Research: Our research is at the intersection of microbiology and epidemiology. We focus on understanding the biological and epidemiological drivers of respiratory infections, including pneumococcus, RSV, and influenza. Major research areas include understanding the biological drivers of the emergence of rare pneumococcal serotypes following vaccine introduction, developing novel statistical approaches to evaluate vaccine impact and effectiveness from observational data, and evaluating the importance of interactions among respiratory pathogens. We employ a variety of tools including experimental and quantitative approaches. Our work is funded by grants from the NIH/NIAID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Emerging Infections Program (a collaboration between the CDC, the Connecticut Department of Public Health, and Yale), and our work has been supported by a number of industry partners. You can learn more about our research here. Tool Development: I am the co-leader of PopHIVE.org, an innovative data platform that brings together diverse population health datasets from traditional surveillance sources, as well as healthcare data from Epic, Google Trends data, and more. With Stephanie Perniciaro, I developed and maintains a database of clinical trial data on pneumococcal vaccines (https://wisspar.com/). And with Jim Knight and Anna York, we developed Serocall, a software tool for quantifying the distribution of pneumococcal serotypes using whole genome sequence data. Teaching: I teach the Public Health Surveillance course at YSPH. This class uses a mix of lectures, cases studies, and hands on data analysis exercises. Students learn to perform common surveillance analyses including aberration detection (e.g., CUSUM), time series analysis, and spatial cluster detection (SATSCAN). Students learn to do these analyses in R.
  • Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Biostatistics, Professor in the Child Study Center and Professor of Statistics and Data Science, Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Dr. Zhang published over 410 research articles and monographs in theory and applications of statistical methods and in several areas of biomedical research including epidemiology, genetics, child and women health, mental health, substance use, and reproductive medicine. He directed a training program in mental health research that was funded by the NIMH. He directs the Collaborative Center for Statistics in Science that coordinates the Reproductive Medicine Network to evaluate treatment effectiveness for infertility. He is a fellow of the American Statistical Association and a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He was named the 2008 Myrto Lefokopoulou distinguished lecturer by Harvard School of Public Health and a Medallion Award and Lecturer by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. In 2011, he received the Royan International Award on Reproductive Health. Dr. Zhang was the president of the International Chinese Statistical Association in 2019. He is a former-editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association - Applications and Case Studies. He was the recipient of the 2022 Neyman Award and Lecture by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the 2023 Distinguished Achievement Award by the International Chinese Statistical Association. He was selected as a 2023 Highly Cited Researcher in cross field by Web of Science.

Staff

  • Data Scientist

    Shelby Golden is a data scientist with a background in computational mathematics, molecular biology, and biochemistry. She holds a Master of Science in Applied Computational Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University and dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology and Biochemistry with a minor in Engineering in Applied Mathematics. At Data Science and Data Equity, Shelby is responsible for managing the group's GitHub repository, ensuring compliance with data use Agreements and IRBs, overseeing data harmonization and warehousing efforts, providing AI/ML consultation, offering Python support, developing APIs, and collaborating on analytic projects. Her expertise in both computational sciences and biology allows her to effectively bridge the gap between data and domain knowledge.
  • Program Manager

    Jackson Higginbottom, MPH, is a public health practitioner working at the intersection of data science, health communication, and community engagement. As Program Manager for the Public Health Data Science and Data Equity (DSDE) initiative at the Yale School of Public Health and Assistant Director of the Yale Data Science Fellows Program, he leads research and academic programming, supports inclusive data infrastructure, and mentors students. His work is guided by the principle that data and communication only matter if they’re useful—and trusted—by the people most affected. He applies this through projects that strengthen community partnerships, inform equitable data practices, and build trust in public health communication.Outside of Yale, he serves as Director and Board President of Manos Juntas: OKC Free Clinic, a nonprofit free clinic in Oklahoma City providing care to more than 2,000 patients annually. He also serves on the boards of 1stGenYale and the Association of Yale Alumni in Public Health.
  • Statistician

    Yiren Hou joined the team as a statistician in June 2025. She holds a Master of Science in Biostatistics from the University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Science in Statistics from the University of Georgia, where she also minored in Mathematics and Computer Science. At the Data Science and Data Equity Initiative, Yiren is responsible for applying appropriate statistical methods to support data-driven projects and research studies. Her academic training enables her to make effective contributions to the design, programming, execution, and analysis of studies.