Current PhD Students

I am a second year PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases. My research interest is in the implementation, evaluation and modeling of public health interventions and/or policies geared towards the control of infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, TB, hepatitis, and other diseases of global health importance.

Emmanuella Asabor is a joint MD-PhD Candidate in Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Yale University Schools of Medicine and Public Health. She has been named a Forbes 30 Under 30 Honoree and a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Research Scholar for her research and advocacy at the intersection of social medicine, epidemiology, and global health policy. Emmanuella has been invited to speak nationally and internationally including a broadcasted sit-down with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the 2022 Forbes International Women’s Day 30/50 Summit in Abu Dhabi as well as a plenary panel at the 2023 National Tuberculosis Conference in Atlanta, GA. Her scholarship has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Vanity Fair, USA Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and more. She also serves on the External Research Advisory Committee for the American Medical Association's Center for Health Equity. Prior to Yale, Emmanuella shaped homelessness policy at the New York State Department of Health, and developed public-private partnerships for global health aid at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria in Geneva, Switzerland. She earned her bachelor’s at Harvard University where she studied the history of medicine and global health, and she holds a master’s in African Studies from the University of Cambridge. In her spare time, she enjoys travel with loved ones, making traditional Nigerian food and reading Nigerian literature, K-dramas, and occasionally re-living her opera-singing past.

Meet Yale School of Public Health's Catherine Chant.

Melanie H. Chitwood is a doctoral candidate in the Ted Cohen Lab. She is interested in using mathematical models to understand the transmission and prevalence of tuberculosis in high burden settings. She has previously worked as a Research Associate in the Cohen Lab, where she was involved in projects in Brazil and on COVID-19 estimates and projections. Melanie received her BA from Hampshire College and her MS in Global Health and Population from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Kelly is a PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases. Her research interests focus on reducing vector-borne and zoonotic diseases in low income countries by identifying social, biological, and environmental risk factors of disease. Specifically, she hope to use molecular epidemiological studies to gain insight into pathogenesis and to improve the prevention and control of infectious diseases.

Katherine (Katie) Hill is a PhD candidate in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases working under the mentorship of Dr. Robert Heimer. She is also a Public Health Workforce Development Fellow with the Office of Public Health Practice. Her research interests include substance use, harm reduction, xylazine, kratom, sexual health and behavior, and improving the health of incarcerated individuals. She is a Teaching Fellow for EPH537E (Frontiers in Public Health) and EPH509 (Fundamentals of Epidemiology).

After completing her undergraduate degree at Georgia Tech, Ann spent 9 months in India conducting public health research with a Fulbright research fellowship. Ann plans to continue public health research during her PhD with a mixed-methods approach. Ann enjoys spending time hiking and outdoors.

Meet Yale School of Public Health's Emily Johnson.

Jiye Kwon is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases. She is primarily interested in the intersection of pathogen genomics, bioinformatics, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases. In the Pitzer-Weinberger Lab, she aims to integrate these areas to study the risk, development, and spatiotemporal spread of resistance and pathobionts to ultimately strengthen disease surveillance systems. Prior to her doctoral studies, Jiye earned her MPH with public health modeling concentration from Yale School of Public Health and conducted respiratory and gastrointestinal microbiome research with the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG) while working in the Pettigrew Lab.

Meet Yale School of Public Health's Sarah Lapidus

Elisabeth Nelson is a second-year Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases PhD student. She is interested novel forms of vector control and in optimizing wolbachia release programs to help with scale-up and expansion into low-resource endemic settings. She is currently working on a Wolbachia release randomized control trial in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Meet Yale School of Public Health's Abbey Porzucek.

Alexandra Savinkina is a first year PhD student in the Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases. She is interested in using mathematical modeling to answer questions at the intersection of infectious disease epidemiology and national and global health policy, with a focus on health equity. Prior to coming to Yale, Alexandra was a data analyst at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and then worked in simulation modeling at Boston Medical Center's infectious disease department.

Natasha Turyasingura is a third year PhD student in the Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases Department. Before coming to Yale, she worked as a Postbaccalaureate Scholar at the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Oncology Drug Discovery and with the Global Health unit and as an Intern in Translational Discovery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute. She is interested in how we may use information generated from molecular epidemiological studies to develop novel therapies against diseases afflicting populations in low-resource settings.

Jo joined the Pitzer Lab as a PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases in the Fall of 2021, where they use mathematical models to study the dynamics of infectious disease transmission and vaccination in low-resource settings, with a focus on typhoid fever. Prior to arriving at Yale, Jo worked on mathematical modeling and forecasting for influenza and COVID-19 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When Jo is not in class or building models, they enjoy cooking, climbing, and basketball.