The Faculty

Dr. Altalib is the Chief of Neurology at the Veteran Administration (VA) Connecticut Healthcare System. He also serves as the Northeast Regional Director of the VA Epilepsy Centers of Excellence. He helped established a VA Neurobehavioral clinic, which provides clinical care for Veterans who suffer from emotional distress and/or behavioral problems associated with neurological conditions (such as traumatic brain injury, stroke, and epilepsy). At Yale University he also provides care for people with neurological injury that impact emotional processing. For instance, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, movement disorders (and their treatments) can affect brain circuits and chemistry and lead to mood, anxiety, and even psychotic disorders. Furthermore, neuropsychiatric conditions such functional movement disorder and psychogenic non-epileptic seizures are managed in his clinic. Dr. Altalib is also the Director of the Yale Epilepsy Outcomes Research Program, in which he oversees clinical trials and cohort studies related to epilepsy interventions. In addition to seizure control outcomes, his research explores psychiatric co-morbidity of neurologic disease. He is currently the primary investigator of a studies examining the neurologic substrates of depression in people with epilepsy; the burden of psychogenic non-epileptic seizures in the Veteran population; and measuring coordination of health care using social network analysis methods.

Paul T. Anastas is the Teresa and H. John Heinz III Professor in the Practice of Chemistry for the Environment. He has appointments  in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Department of Chemistry, and Department of Chemical Engineering. In addition, Prof. Anastas serves as the Director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale. Anastas took public service leave from Yale to serve as the Assistant Administrator for the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Agency Science Advisor from 2009-2012. From 2004 -2006, Paul Anastas served as Director of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute in Washington, D.C. He was previously the Assistant Director for the Environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy where he worked from 1999-2004. Trained as a synthetic organic chemist, Dr. Anastas received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University and worked as an industrial consultant. He is credited with establishing the field of green chemistry during his time working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as the Chief of the Industrial Chemistry Branch and as the Director of the U.S. Green Chemistry Program. Dr. Anastas has published widely on topics of science through sustainability including eleven books, such as Benign by Design, Designing Safer Polymers, Green Engineering, and his seminal work with co-author John Warner, Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice.

Mayur M. Desai, PhD, MPH, is a Professor of Epidemiology and the inaugural Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) at the Yale School of Public Health. Professor Desai received both his MPH in health policy and his PhD in epidemiology from Yale. He then served for two years as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer at CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, before returning to New Haven to join the Yale faculty. Professor Desai’s expertise is in the application of epidemiologic methods to clinical and health services research. The overarching goal of his work – across various content areas – is to improve health equity in access, quality, and outcomes of care in a broad range of populations and settings. Professor Desai has extensive experience (1) conducting studies at the interface of mental health and primary care; (2) developing risk-adjusted quality-of-care measures for the Medicare program; (3) determining the incidence, trends, and outcomes of surgical procedures; (4) examining the health, health beliefs, and healthcare utilization of marginalized and stigmatized populations, including immigrants, refugees, and incarcerated individuals; (5) contributing to numerous projects in low- and middle-income settings on a range of topics, including child health, prisoner health, diagnosis and treatment of both non-communicable and infectious diseases, and health systems strengthening; and (6) examining DEIB-related issues in the biomedical workforce. Professor Desai directs the accelerated, 11-month Advanced Professional MPH Program and is a core faculty member in Yale’s National Clinician Scholars Program and Global Health Leadership Initiative. He has a long and sustained history of global public health capacity-strengthening, having developed and taught innovative short courses and workshops on a range of topics – including epidemiology, biostatistics, monitoring and evaluation, strategic problem solving, and research mentorship and leadership – in over a dozen countries. He received the 2022 Drs. Anvar and Pari Velji Global Health Award for Teaching Excellence from the international Consortium of Universities for Global Health and is a 4-time recipient of YSPH’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

Martin Klein, Ph.D., M.P.H. served as Senior Advisor to three deans at the Yale School of Public Health. He is currently the Senior Advisor for Career Management, Admissions and Curriculum. He led the creation of the Executive MPH, a hybrid degree program and served as its inaugural director, stepping down in July 2024; he continues to serve as director of the Critical Topics track.. He was the Executive Director of the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health, a program he co-founded. He also founded and directed InnovateHealth Yale, a program in social impact and entrepreneurship, the first program of its kind at a school of public health. He previously served as the Associate Dean for Development and External Affairs at the Yale School of Public Health, and was responsible for the offices of development, alumni relations, and communications. Martin came to the School from Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences where he was Associate Dean for Student Services and Administrative Operations. Prior to joining Yale, he was the Associate Dean for Primary Care at New York Medical College, where he co-founded and co-led the Center for Primary Care Education and Research. He was an Assistant Professor of Community and Preventive Medicine and taught a variety of topics, including managed care, medical informatics, and physician communication skills. Earlier in his career, Martin held positions with the New York City Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget and the New York City Department of Health. He received his M.P.H. from Yale and his Ph.D. in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University. In 2015 he was placed on the Winslow Centennial Honor Roll for Excellence and Service, awarded to 100 Yale School of Public Health alumni and faculty who made outstanding contributions during the school’s first 100 years.

Vasilis Vasiliou, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. He received his BSc in Chemistry (1983) and PhD in Biochemical Pharmacology (1988) from the University of Ioannina, Greece. He then trained in gene-environment interactions, molecular toxicology and pharmacogenetics at the Department of Environmental Health in the College of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati (1991-1995). In 1996, he joined the faculty of the University of Colorado School of Pharmacy where he rose through the ranks to become Professor and Director of the Toxicology Graduate Program. Since 2008, he was also Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. In July 2014, he joined the faculty of Yale University in his new position. Professor Vasiliou has established an internationally-recognized research program that has been continuously funded by NEI/NIH and NIAAA/NIH since 1997, and recently NIEHS. His research interests include the etiology and molecular mechanisms of environmentally-induced human disease, such as liver disease, obesity & diabetes, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases. His research focuses on the means by which the exposome (total exposures throughout life), metabolism (specifically aldehyde dehydrogenases and cytochrome P-450s) and antioxidants (glutathione and catalase) contribute to human health and disease. His laboratory utilizes state-of-the-art integrated system approaches that include metabolomics, lipidomics, exposomics, tissue imaging mass spectrometry, deep-learning, as well as human cohorts and genetically-engineered mouse models in order to elucidate mechanisms, and to discover biomarkers and novel interventions for human disease. Dr Vasiliou is the director of the NIEHS-funded P42 Yale Superfund Research Center and also the director of the NIAAA-funded R24-Resource Center for Mouse Models and Metabolomics Tools to Investigate Alcohol Metabolism and Tissue Injury. Dr. Vasiliou has published over 250 papers and edited three books on Alcohol and Cancer. Dr. Vasiliou is the editor of Human Genomics and serves on the editorial boards of several toxicology and visual sciences journals. Professor Vasiliou is committed to training the next generation of scientists. At the University of Colorado, he was the Director of the Environmental and Molecular Toxicology Graduate Program for 15 years. At Yale he leads an NIAAA-funded T32 Translational Alcohol Research Program (TARP) Training Program for post-doctoral fellows, and an NIHES -funded R25 Summer Research Experience in Environmental Health (SREEH) Training Program that introduce undergraduate students in Connecticut (CT) to Environmental Health Research. Dr. Vasiliou has trained mentored and advised more than 60 trainees ranging from MPH and PhD students to postdoctoral fellows and junior faculties.

Paul T. Anastas is the Teresa and H. John Heinz III Professor in the Practice of Chemistry for the Environment. He has appointments  in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Department of Chemistry, and Department of Chemical Engineering. In addition, Prof. Anastas serves as the Director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale. Anastas took public service leave from Yale to serve as the Assistant Administrator for the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Agency Science Advisor from 2009-2012. From 2004 -2006, Paul Anastas served as Director of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute in Washington, D.C. He was previously the Assistant Director for the Environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy where he worked from 1999-2004. Trained as a synthetic organic chemist, Dr. Anastas received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University and worked as an industrial consultant. He is credited with establishing the field of green chemistry during his time working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as the Chief of the Industrial Chemistry Branch and as the Director of the U.S. Green Chemistry Program. Dr. Anastas has published widely on topics of science through sustainability including eleven books, such as Benign by Design, Designing Safer Polymers, Green Engineering, and his seminal work with co-author John Warner, Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice.

Kali Bechtold is the Director of Strategy and Experience Design at UCHealth, an academic medical center in Colorado, and Lecturer of Health Policy and Management at the Yale School of Public Health. Ms. Bechtold teaches Design Thinking/. She has over 15 years of experience in project management, implementation and global health delivery. In her role, Ms. Bechtold has provided management coaching to individuals and teams on a diverse array of public health challenges including vaccine introduction and financing in Tanzania and Myanmar, development of referral networks for children with autism in Ghana and Japan, wellness programs for pediatricians in the Ms. Bechtold has designed and managed diverse projects focusing increased human resources for health in Bangladesh, Myanmar and India, prevention of mother to child HIV transmission and prevention and care of tuberculosis in South Africa, integration of community health workers into primary care services in Eastern Cape, South Africa and HIV prevention and care for key populations in Cameroon, Senegal, Lesotho and South Africa. Ms. Bechtold received her MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, her MBA from Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business and is certified in Design Thinking through MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Dr. Bothwell is an ethicist and historian of public health. Her research examines social, historical, and ethical dimensions of epidemiology with a particular focus on randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Her current book project examines how international and national policies have influenced trial rigor and ethics, protections of vulnerable trial subjects, and participant diversity in RCTs. She also does work at the intersection of climate change, epidemiology, and ethics. She completed a PhD in the History and Ethics of Public Health and Medicine from the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Health Policy, Law, and Ethics in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She has also had visiting appointments at Oxford University, Foundation Brocher, the Karolinska Institutet, and National Taiwan University. She teaches public health ethics and the history of public health, and provides pre-departure ethics training in global health practice. She holds a secondary appointment in the Section of the History of Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine.

Maureen E. Canavan, Ph.D., is an epidemiologist at Yale Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy and Effectiveness Research Center (COPPER) since 2017. In addition to working the MCBS data, she works as part of the Yale Cancer Center’s Cancer Care Innovations Lab (CaCIL) team evaluating quality metrics for cancer care.  Her research interests include health management, employment, and end of life care. Prior to her work at COPPER, she was a member of the Global Health Leadership Institute (GHLI) team, she conducts qualitative and quantitative data analysis of GHLI studies in countries including Ghana, Ethiopia and China. She received an M.P.H. from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, School of Public Health and a B.S. from Pennsylvania State University.

Kei-Hoi Cheung, PhD has distinguished himself as a researcher and educator in the field of Biomedical Informatics with a growing national and international reputation. A particular strength is Dr. Cheung’s ability to forge strong, productive collaborations with a range of different bioscience researchers at Yale, in which his contributions include the development of complex databases and informatics tools that are critical for the research projects being performed. In the context of these collaborations, Dr. Cheung is simultaneously able to carry out his own informatics research on issues involved in robust interoperation and integration of databases and tools in the biosciences. In addition to giving talks and presentations at national and international meetings, he has published his own informatics research in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, as well as contributing to publications focused on his collaborators’ research. He has established a broad base of collaborations with faculty in different departments at Yale, including Genetics, Pathology, Computer Science, Biostatistics, Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, and Biology. He was Director of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Core of the NIDA Proteomics Center, focused on collaborative informatics support of neuroproteomics research at Yale. In addition to being a collaborator on numerous grants, Dr. Cheung has been PI on several federal grants (NIH and NSF). Dr. Cheung is also a core faculty member of Yale's Ph.D. Program in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. Dr. Cheung’ s research interests include the semantic web using the next generation of web technologies to integrate life science data and tools, and is co-editor of two books for Springer-Verlag titled: “Semantic Web: Revolutionizing Knowledge Discovery in the Life Sciences” and “Semantic e-Science”, respectively. Dr. Cheung also led the BioRDF task force (2008-2010) of the Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group that is an international community engaging in the creative use of Semantic Web in biomedicine. In addition, Dr. Cheung has recently embarked on natural language processing (NLP) projects in annotating, extracting and retrieving information from clinical text as part of the Veteran Administration (VA) electronic medical records. In summary, Dr. Cheung’s biomedical informatics expertise in database/semantic web research and NLP tool development, his national and international recognition as a researcher/educator, and his research contributions in these areas exemplify the attributes of a prominent researcher in biomedical informatics.

Dr. Davis an associate professor and Vice Chair of Medical Informatics in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging. She completed her BA in Chemistry and Psychology at Wellesley College in Wellesley, MA. In 2009 she received her medical degree from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, SC. Subsequently she completed a Diagnostic Radiology residency and a Neuroradiology fellowship at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, NC. Dr. Davis obtained her MBA in 2017 from Yale University with a focus in healthcare management. Dr. Davis' academic areas of interest include organizational change and innovation within the healthcare space.

Dr. Deziel obtained a Master’s of Industrial Hygiene and Doctorate in Environmental Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research is focused on applying statistical models, biomonitoring techniques, and environmental measurements to provide comprehensive and quantitative assessments of exposure to traditional and emerging environmental contaminants in population-based studies. Her research uses a combination of large, administrative datasets and detailed community-focused studies to advance understanding of environmental exposures to chemicals, particularly carcinogens and endocrine disruptors. This research also serves to illuminate exposure mechanisms underlying associations between environmental chemicals and disease, thereby informing more effective policies to reduce exposures and protect public health. Dr. Deziel's contributions have been directed at two main areas: (1) exposure and human health impacts of unconventional oil and gas development (“hydraulic fracturing”) and (2) residential exposure to chemicals in common consumer products (e.g., pesticides, flame retardants) and cancer risk (particularly thyroid cancer). In addition, she consider disproportionate burdens of exposures (“environmental justice”) and the combination of environmental and social stressors in the context of her work.

Samah Fodeh-Jarad, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine, with a secondary appointment in the Yale School of Public Health. She is also affiliated with the Yale Institute for Global Health (YIHG) and the VA Connecticut Healthcare System. Dr. Fodeh has distinguished herself as researcher in the field of Biomedical Informatics and Big Data Science with a growing national and international reputation. Her contributions include the development of complex computational methods and tools that are critical for advancing biomedical informatics research and data science. Through her work, Dr. Fodeh demonstrates the utility of exploiting and combining multiple data modalities by employing methods from data mining, machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing. Her research is focused on health and social media data mining to answer critical health related questions to suicide risk, opioid addiction, migraine diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Fodeh is also interested in studying patient-centered aspects of care including communications in clinical settings between patients and healthcare providers, stigmatizing language, social determinants of health and their impact on health-related outcomes.

Dr. Ginsberg is the director of the Center for Environmental Health for the New York State Dept of Health and has a Clinical Professor appointment at the Yale School of Public Health. He serves on a number of national committees including US EPA’s Science Advisory Board (2008-present) and the National Academy of Sciences (Biomonitoring committee 2004-2006; USEPA Risk Methods committee which produced Science and Decisions, 2006-2008; Inorganic Arsenic Risk Assessment committee, 2012-2015, Emerging Science committee 2016-present). He also served on USEPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee (2004-2009) and has been an external reviewer on a number of USEPA IRIS documents. Dr. Ginsberg has been called on by other federal agencies to provide reviews including OSHA (silica workplace standard), CPSC (cadmium in children’s jewelry) and FDA (dental amalgam). His risk assessments on fish contaminants, synthetic turf fields, acrylamide, cadmium, and assessments pertaining to risks in children and those with genetic polymorphisms have been published in peer review journals. Dr. Ginsberg co-authored a book for the lay public called “What’s Toxic What’s Not” (Berkeley Books, 2006).

Laurie Graham works at the intersection of healthcare, business and technology. She has 15+ years experience in consulting for national health plans, state and federal government. Her experience ranges from on-the-ground implementation of value-based payment and payer-provider partnerships to setting a vision for healthcare system transformation. Laurie spent her formative years working in product strategy at Athenahealth Inc. before serving as Senior Policy Analyst to Connecticut's Lt. Governor Nancy Wyman, in the Office of Health Reform and Innovation (currently CT's Office of Health Strategy). In 2018, Laurie joined Optum as Senior Director of Corporate Strategy where she facilitated the development of enterprise growth initiatives within Optum and United Health Group. At Optum, Laurie gained exposure to the nation's foremost leaders in healthcare driving transformative change in the U.S. healthcare system. She served as Vice President of Growth at Cotiviti in 2021-2022 before joining ARPA-H, a new federal agency aimed at funding breakthroughs in health. As a contractor at ARPA-H, she advises the agency on helping to ensure funded research will "survive in the wild" of the the greater U.S. healthcare ecosystem. She holds a B.A. in Geography from George Washington University, and M.P.H. in health policy management from Yale University. In addition to consulting work, Graham is a lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health and an adjunct professor at Boston University School of Public Health, where she also sits on the Advisory Board for the Health Policy and Management Department.

Jason Hockenberry is a health economist and health services researcher with expertise in using econometric techniques to analyze administrative, registry and electronic health record data to investigate the impacts of public health policies and to assess factors affecting the quality, efficiency, and cost of healthcare. HIs work is published in leading health policy and health economics outlets including JAMA (and affiliated journals), Health Affairs, Journal of Health Economics, and Journal of Public Economics. His research has been funded by the NIH, AHRQ, VA HSR&D, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Commonwealth Fund.

Dr. Humphries has a broad background in public health research and practice. She has been a consultant in the areas of diet and physical activity behavior change, sustainability of community health programs, program monitoring and evaluation, and training in participatory monitoring and evaluation for organizations in Vietnam, Africa and in the United States. She has extended that reach through her Practice-based Community Health Research course which places student groups with agencies in the State of Connecticut to plan and evaluate programs. Sample projects include: Determining the Best Time to Implement Routine HIV Testing in Jails; Barriers to Accessing Health Care and Health Needs of Undocumented Immigrants; Evaluation of HIV/AIDS prevention, testing and care in Connecticut Correctional Facilities; and Strategies to Reduce Low Birth Weight in New Haven: An Evaluation of the Outreach Strategy of the New Haven Maternal and Child Health Department. Humphries is also a member of the Community Research Engagement steering committee at Yale.Dr. Humphries’ research addresses interactions between nutrition and infectious disease, as well as programmatic approaches to improving public health. This work has taken her to Asia and Africa where she has studied environmental factors and intestinal helminth infections and their relationship to anemia as well as effectiveness of intervention programs. She is currently collaborating on a longitudinal study to characterize parasite and host factors affecting response to deworming in Ghana.

Jeannette R. Ickovics is the Samuel and Liselotte Herman Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Professor of Psychology at Yale University. She served as Dean of Faculty at Yale-NUS College in Singapore from 2018-2021, responsible for faculty development and curriculum across the Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities. At the Yale School of Public Health, Dr. Ickovics was Founding Director of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the School of Public Health (2002-2012) and Founding Director of CARE: Community Alliance for Research and Engagement as part of Yale's inaugural Clinical and Translational Science Award (2007-2017). She was also Deputy Director for the Yale Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS where she was Director of an NIH training program for pre- and post- doctoral fellows for 15 years (now in its 24th year). Dr. Ickovics’ research investigates the interplay of complex biomedical, behavioral, social and psychological factors that influence individual and community health. She uses this lens to examine challenges faced by those often marginalized by the health care system and by society. She has expertise running large, scientifically rigorous clinical trials in community settings. Her community-based research – funded with more than $40 million in grants from the NIH, CDC, and private foundations – is characterized by methodological rigor and cultural sensitivity. In addition to other grants, she has been Principal Investigator on two NIH-funded multi-site randomized controlled trials on an innovative model of group prenatal care, demonstrating >33% reduction in preterm birth and other positive health outcomes for mothers and babies. Based on these results, The United Health Foundation funded a dissemination study of group prenatal care, with an eye toward national scale-up. Dr. Ickovics also was Principal Investigator of a public-private evaluation with Merck for Mothers (evaluating the use of community health workers for pregnant women with chronic disease), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, and an NIH-funded randomized controlled obesity prevention trial at 12 middle schools in collaboration with the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health and the New Haven Public Schools. She is author of more than 225 peer-reviewed publications. Her newest work, funded by NASA, the Rockefeller Foundation, Yale Planetary Solutions, and the Hecht Faculty Network Award at the Yale Institute for Global Health, focuses on climate resilience, health, and equity. She is working in a close transdisciplinary collaboration with the Resilient Cities Network, representing 100 cities and 220 million residents globally, in low-middle and high-income countries. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Eden Project (United Kingdom, educational charity and social enterprise, nature-based solutions). Dr. Ickovics is recipient of national awards and recognition, including most recently the Martha May Elliot Award honoring extraordinary health services to mothers and children from the American Public Health Association (2023), the Strickland-Daniel Mentoring Award from the American Psychological Association (2018), and elected a Fellow of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. She is Chair of the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association, and an inaugural member of their Climate Change Advisory Group.

Dr. LaDrea Ingram is a Senior Health Services Researcher at Atrium Health. She is a behavioral scientist and certified health education specialist (CHES). She earned her doctoral degree in Health Education & Behavioral Studies from Columbia University, Teachers College. She received a Master of Arts in Government from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Science in Health and Medical Policy from George Mason University.Dr. Ingram's primary research focuses on the biological, behavioral, and psychological factors that help to define health outcomes across the course of a person's life. She is interested in racial/ethnic disparities in HIV-related health and mental health outcomes and understanding the biopsychosocial factors that contribute to HIV risk, as well as the social, racial (racism/oppression), historical and cultural factors that impact HIV risk behaviors. She is also interested in implementation science and developing evidenced based interventions that improve psychological wellness and health enhancing behaviors in young women of color.Dr. Ingram is currently exploring the complex intersections of adverse childhood experiences and interpersonal relationships in African American women while integrating intergenerational constructs into a behavioral, and psychosocial framework that helps to define health outcomes across generations.

Dr. Martinez is an Associate Research Scientist in the Section of General Internal Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, core faculty at the Equity Research and Innovation Center, and Lecturer in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. Dr. Martinez is a maternal-child public health nutrition investigator and implementation scientist with a focus on translating effective interventions into public health policy and practice in disparity populations. She has extensive experience using social and behavioral theory in research design, piloting, implementation and evaluation. Dr. Martinez’s research focuses on how community-based behavior change, health communication, and systems-level interventions can be used to encourage healthy lifestyle behaviors and the effects these interventions have on reducing the risk of overweight and obesity across the life cycle. Her current work aims to improve maternal-child nutrition in the WIC population through breastfeeding protection, promotion, and support. Her current research also examines the role of food security in nutrition-related cardiometabolic outcomes in disparity populations.

Robert A. McDougal, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Health Informatics Division of the Department of Biostatistics. He is affiliated with the Computational Biology and Bioinformatics graduate program, the Yale Center for Medical Informatics, and the Center for Biomedical Data Science. His research focuses on developing methods for aggregating, computationally representing, analyzing, and modeling experimental data, with emphasis on understanding brain function and dysfunction.Dr. McDougal is currently a PI on an NIH grant seeking to build efficient methods for simulating the interaction of intracellular and network dynamics in the brain. Recent collaborations include a project to detect trends in the use of animal models and interventions in the Alzheimer's literature, and a project to use computational modeling to interpret magnetoencephalography (MEG) data. As member of the NeuroML Scientific Board, he supports the development of future standards for sharing computational neuroscience models.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.

Dr. Oladele is Assistant Professor in the Section of General Internal Medicine and Director of Research at the Equity Research and Innovation Center, at Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Oladele's research focuses on social determinants of cardiovascular health disparities, with specific focus on the role of nutrition, healthcare quality, food, and built environments. She has expertise in the development of dietary assessment methodologies for African descent populations. Her research aims to generate evidence to support health policies and interventions to improve cardiovascular outcomes among racial/ethnic and immigrant populations domestically and globally. Dr. Oladele’s current work examines the role of food insecurity and ultra-processed food on disparities in hypertension incidence and control.

Dr. Pollitt’s research explores the human exposome through characterisation of environmental and biological samples using analytical and mass spectrometry (MS) techniques. Her group has developed various mass spectrometry (ICP-MS, LC-MS and GC-MS) to measure exposure to complex mixtures of trace elements and organic compounds. She has applied these exposure assessment methods in numerous in epidemiological studies.  Visit our lab website: pollittlab.weebly.com

Rafael Pérez-Escamilla, Ph.D., is Professor of Public Health, and Director of the Office of Public Health Practice, the Global Health Concentration, and the Maternal Child Health Promotion track at the Yale School of Public Health. He is the PI of the Yale-Griffin CDC Prevention Research Center (PRC). His global public health nutrition and food security research program, supported with over $70 million in extramural funds, has contributed to improvements in breastfeeding and other maternal, infant and young child nutrition outcomes, iron deficiency anemia among infants, household food security, and early childhood development. He has co-led innovative mixed-methods implementation studies assessing the impact of community health worker person centered interventions on breastfeeding, type-2 diabetes, post-partum hypertension and mental health outcomes among in vulnerable communities, including people of color in the U.S. He has published over 340 research articles, 3 books/monographs, and numerous journal supplements, book chapters, and technical reports. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine (elected in 2019) and served in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) Food and Nutrition Board from 2012-18. He has been a senior advisor to maternal-child community nutrition programs as well as household food security measurement projects funded by the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, UNICEF, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the U.S. Agency for International Development, The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH),The World Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Governments across world regions. He obtained his BS in Chemical Engineering from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and his MS in Food Science and his PhD in Nutrition from the University of California at Davis. His postdoctoral training at UC Davis focused on the link between nutrition and early childhood development.

Dr. Brad Richards is currently the Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Social Services which oversees Medicaid and CHIP for Connecticut. He received his MD from Georgetown University School of Medicine, MBA from the Yale School of Management as part of the healthcare track in the executive MBA program, and completed internal medicine residency and a chief resident year in Yale Primary Care Internal Medicine training program before joining faculty in the Department of Medicine at Yale School off Medicine. He is currently an Assistant Professor Adjunct at Yale School of Medicine and Assistant Professor at Yale School of Management. He continues to practice both inpatient and outpatient medicine, co-leads a course on Population Health and Health Equity at Yale School of Management, and co-leads the Primary Care Innovations curriculum for the Yale Primary Care training program.