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INFORMATION FOR

Affiliated Faculty

YCCCH's affiliated faculty are committed to collaboration on a wide range of topics for interdisciplinary research including food and water insecurity, infectious diseases, population displacement, climate disasters (preparedness, post-disaster response, morbidity and mortality surveillance), health co-benefits of climate change mitigation and adaptation, climate change and pandemics, climate change impacts on microbial diversity and antibiotic resistance, and climate justice.
  • Serap Aksoy, PhD

    Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Trypanosomiasis, African
    • Tsetse Flies
    • Global Health
    • One Health
    Professor Aksoy is a tropical medicine researcher whose work focuses on the epidemiology of insect transmitted (vector borne) and zoonotic diseases.  Her research has been on tsetse flies and the pathogenic parasites they transmit that cause highly neglected and fatal diseases of humans in Africa, known as Sleeping Sickness. Her laboratory focuses on deciphering the vector-parasite molecular dialogue and parasite development during the transmission process with the ultimate goal of identifying novel targets of interference and developing transmission blocking vaccines to reduce disease.  Her fundamental and interdisciplinary work on tsetse and its microbial symbionts has identified key principles that shape host-microbe interactions. Her studies with tsetse's mutualistic microbes identified nutritional contributions that facilitate female fecundity and mediate host immune system development. Her studies with tsetse's commensal microbiota led to a novel biological method, coined as paratransgenesis, in which anti-parasitic molecules are synthesized in the beneficial gut microbes, thus making the gut environment inhospitable for disease causing parasites. Ability to spread such modified microbes into natural insect populations is being explored to reduce disease transmission as a novel biological method.Dr. Aksoy maintains collaborative research activities with Yale researchers as well as with multiple universities and research institutes in Africa. Their studies in Kenya and Uganda investigate the epidemiology of Sleeping Sickness disease, with a focus on understanding the major drivers that sustain disease transmission, as well as on population genetics of flies and parasites and their microbiota. She initiated and led a large international consortium that eventually sequenced the genome of six tsetse fly species. This effort vastly expanded molecular knowledge and genomic resources on this neglected disease vector, and collectively expanded research capacity in bioinformatics and functional biology in many laboratories in sub-Sahara Africa. As the co-editor in Chief of the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases between 2007-2020, she has been a major voice for building research and publication capacity for global neglected tropical diseases.  Throughout her professional career, Aksoy has been an advocate of and innovator in Global Health; served as a dedicated mentor to students and scientists in the US and in Africa, China, Italy and Turkey helping to prepare the next generation of leaders in the fields of epidemiology and zoonotic disease control.
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  • Paul Anastas

    Professor of Epidemiology (Environmental Health Sciences) and Teresa and H. John Heinz III Professor in the Practice of Chemistry for the Environment; Co-Director, Environmental Health Sciences Track, Executive MPH

    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.
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  • Theodore Andreadis, PhD

    Clinical Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases)

    Dr. Theodore Andreadis is the Director of The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and Head of the Center for Vector Biology & Zoonotic Diseases where he formally directed the State of Connecticut’s Mosquito and Arbovirus Research and Surveillance Programs. He is a native of Massachusetts, has two grown children and resides in Cheshire with his wife Peg. Dr. Andreadis holds a B.S. degree in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology and M.S. degree in Medical Entomology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a Ph.D. in Insect Pathology from the University of Florida at Gainesville. He is also holds an appointment as a Clinical Professor within the Epidemiology of Microbial Disease Division at the Yale School of Public Health and is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Pathobiology at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of over 195 scientific publications on mosquitoes and mosquito-borne diseases and his current research activities focus on the mosquito ecology, microbial control of mosquitoes and the epidemiology of mosquito-borne diseases
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  • Ernest Asare, PhD

    Associate Research Scientist in Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases)

    Ernest Asare is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases. His primary research focuses on using mathematical models to describe the transmission dynamics, evaluate the impact of interventions and understand the influence of meteorological and climatic factors on diarrhea and malaria diseases. He uses mathematical models to better understand and quantify the drivers of differential impact of rotavirus vaccines. He is also interested in how climate change will affect mosquito population and intensity and distribution of malaria.
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  • Carl Baum, MD, MSc

    Professor of Pediatrics (Emergency Medicine) and of Emergency Medicine

    Carl Baum, MD, FAAP, FACMT, is board-certified in Pediatric Emergency Medicine and in Medical Toxicology, and has over 25 years' experience in both subspecialties. He serves as attending physician in the Pediatric Emergency Department, and as Director of the state-funded Lead Poisoning and Regional Treatment Center. Nationally, Dr. Baum serves the following organizations:• Executive Committee, Council on Children and Disasters, American Academy of Pediatrics• Medical Toxicology Subboard, American Board of Pediatrics/American Board of Emergency Medicine• National Biodefense Science Board, Administration for Strategic Preparedness & Response, US Department of Health and Human ServicesIn addition, he is a member of the International Society for Children's Health and the Environment.
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  • Michelle L. Bell, PhD

    Mary E. Pinchot Professor at the School of the Environment and Professor of Environmental Health; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Environmental Health
    • Epidemiology
    Dr. Michelle Bell is the Mary E. Pinchot Professor of Environmental Health at the Yale University School of the Environment, with secondary appointments at the Yale School of Public Health, Environmental Health Sciences Division; the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs; and the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science, Environmental Engineering Program. Her research investigates how human health is affected by atmospheric systems, including air pollution and weather. Other research interests include the health impacts of climate change and environmental justice. Much of this work is based in epidemiology, biostatistics, and environmental engineering. The research is designed to be policy-relevant and contribute to well-informed decision-making to better protect human health and benefit society. She is the recipient of the Prince Albert II de Monaco / Institut Pasteur Award, the Rosenblith New Investigator Award, and the NIH Outstanding New Environmental Scientist (ONES) Award. Dr. Bell holds degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.S. in Environmental Engineering), Stanford University (M.S. in Environmental Engineering), University of Edinburgh (M.Sc. in Philosophy), and Johns Hopkins University (M.S.E. in Environmental Management and Economics and Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering). She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
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  • Laura Bothwell, PhD, MA

    Assistant Professor of Public Health; Assistant Professor, Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Bioethics
    • Environment and Public Health
    • Epidemiology
    • Ethics
    • History
    • History of Medicine
    • Human Rights
    • Political Systems
    • Public Health
    • Social Justice
    • Social Medicine
    • Global Health
    • Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic
    • Pharmacoepidemiology
    • Government Regulation
    • Vulnerable Populations
    • Policy
    • Social Determinants of Health
    • Public Health Systems Research
    • Adaptive Clinical Trials as Topic
    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.
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  • Xi Chen, PhD

    Associate Professor of Public Health (Health Policy) and Associate Professor at Institution for Social and Policy Studies; Affiliated Faculty, Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Affiliated Faculty, Department of Economics

    Research Interests
    • Aging
    • Air Pollution
    • Alzheimer Disease
    • Child
    • Cognition
    • Dementia
    • Economics
    • Medicare
    • Pensions
    • Retirement
    • Social Behavior
    • Climate Change
    • Big Data
    Xi Chen, Ph.D., is an associate professor of Public Health (Health Policy), of Global Health, of Economics, and of Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yale University. He is a faculty fellow at the Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS), Yale Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, Yale Center for Climate Change and Health, Yale Macmillan Center for International and Area Studies, Yale Institute for Network Science (YINS), and a faculty advisor of the Yale-China Association. He is a PEPPER Scholar at Yale Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center. His research endeavors focus on economics and public policies on population aging, and global health systems. Currently, his main research projects involve: 1) Economics of cognitive aging and Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD), using both medical claims data and survey data to investigate how cognitive aging may affect decision-making and healthcare utilization, and ADRD care quality, costs and equity; 2) Pension, retirement policies and health of the aging population; 3) The impact of environmental pollution and climate change on older adults; 4) life course factors and healthy aging. Professor Chen is a research fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, fellow at the Global Labor Organization (GLO) and its Cluster Lead in Environment and Human Capital, Editor at the Journal of Population Economics, President of the China Health Policy and Management Society (CHPAMS) (2018-2020), and an Academic Committee member of the Global Lecture Series on Chinese Economy. He is an adjunct professor at Peking University and at SJTU-Yale Joint Health Policy Center of Shanghai Jiaotong University. He consults for the United Nations and the World Bank. He is an alumni affiliate of Cornell Institute on Health Economics, Health Behaviors & Disparities, Cornell Population Center, and Cornell Institute for the Social Sciences. He has served as a grant reviewer for the National Sciences Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), the Research Council of Norway, Guest Editor at the Journal of Asian Economics, a member of the editorial board at China CDC Weekly, and a reviewer for more than 30 peer-reviewed journals. Professor Chen's work has been recognized through numerous awards, including the Best China Paper from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) (2011), the George Warren Award (2012), the Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award from the AAEA (2013), the MacMillan Faculty Research Award (2013, 2017), USDA-ERS (2008), James Tobin Summer Research Award (2014-2022), the Kempf Award (2017-2018), awards from the National Institute of Health (NIH), the U.S. PEPPER Center Scholar Award (2016), Emerging Scholar and Professional Organization Interdisciplinary Paper Award of the Gerontology Association of America (2019), the Best Abstract Award at the Academy Health Research Meetings (2020). He is a Butler-Williams Scholar at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) (2019). His timely and rigorous economic evaluations on the COVID-19 pandemic won the Kuznets Prize (2021). His research projects funded by public and private funding sources has resulted in 110+ peer-reviewed publications, such as PNAS, LANCET, JAMA, PLoS Medicine, JAERE, JEEM, JoPE, EHP, SSM, JEoA, and AJAE. These studies have been widely covered 3,000+ times in popular media worldwide, such as BBC, CNN, CBS, WSJ, NYT, The Guardian, Financial Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, The Macmillan Report, The Times of London, NPR, NBC News, Reuters, Associated Press, Time Magazine, Fortune, Slate, Forbes, Bloomberg, CNBC, Al Jazeera, World Economic Forum, Science Magazine, Nature, DW, ABC (Australia), ABC (USA), EuroNews, Foreign Policy, FOX News, New Scientist, The Hill, National Geography, Foreign Affairs, The LANCET, RT, Xinhua News Agency, Global Times, and People's Daily, The Hill, CBC, VOA, The Telegraph, AFP, Scientific American, SCMP, The Independent, Yahoo Finance, VoX, Barron's, USA Today, LA Times, WIRED, VICE, The Atlantic, The Scientist Magazine. He is a commentator at BBC, CNN, EuroNews, CGTN. Chen has written opinion pieces for NYT. Chen has been invited by The National Committee on United States China Relations (NCUSCR) as a delegate of U.S. - China Healthcare Dialogue (Track II). In the past ten years, Professor Chen has supervised more than 30 postdoctoral fellows, PhD students and Yale College students who have won a number of outstanding paper awards. Chen has taught quantitative methods in health economics and health services research, as well as U.S.-China Health Systems at Yale. Chen obtained a Ph.D. in Applied Economics from Cornell University.
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  • Jamie Childs, ScD

    Lecturer in Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Bartonella
    • Borrelia
    • Orthohantavirus
    • Leptospira
    • Lyme Disease
    • Rabies
    • Rickettsia
    • Global Health
    • Zoonoses
    • Arenavirus
    Senior Scientist Childs’ area of research includes theecological dynamics of directly-transmitted zoonotic viruses, including the hantaviruses, arenaviruses and rabies, and vector-borne bacteria, including rickettsia, bartonella and borrelia. Prior to coming to Yale in 2004, Dr. Childs served as the Chief of the Viral and Rickettial Zoonoses Branch at CDC. His recent interests and research, conducted in collaboration with Dr. Albert Ko, Division Chief at Yale, and Fleur Porter, an MPH candidate, focus on the ecoepidemiology of intra- and inter-specific transmission of leptospires in an urban slum setting in Salvador, Brazil. The Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus) is the principal reservoir host for leptospires causing human disease in Salvador, however, scant knowledge exists on the mechanisms of acquisition, maintenance and shedding of this bacterium by rats. Humans are directly infected by leptospires through contact with environments contaminated with spirochetes shed in the urine of infected rats Defining parameters of the natural history of leptospiral infection within individual rats and within rat populations, coupled with determinations of critical environmental and ecological features underlying the distribution and density of rat populations, will help elucidate risk factors for human infection and disease.
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  • Todd Cort

    Senior Lecturer in Sustainability

    Dr. Cort is a Lecturer at the Yale School of Management, Faculty Advisor for the Yale Center for Business and the Environment (CBEY) and has a secondary appointment in the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. He holds a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering and over 15 years experience in global corporate settings advising on sustainability matters including metrics, risk management and auditing practices.
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  • Miraj U. Desai, PhD

    Assistant Professor of Psychiatry

    In Memoriam: 1982- 2023 Miraj U. Desai, PhD was an Assistant Professor at the Program for Recovery and Community Health of the Yale University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry. At Yale, he was also a Fellow of Pierson College, Affiliated Faculty in the Center on Climate Change and Health (Yale School of Public Health), and a Member of the South Asian Studies Council. He had been at Yale since 2011, completing his clinical and postdoctoral fellowships, prior to joining the faculty in 2015. His work focused on the cultural, community, and social justice foundations of mental health. Dr. Desai lead the Structural Health and Psychology (SHP, or "ship") Lab. The SHP Lab investigates—through multiple methods and community engagement—the structural bases of health, equity, and inequity. This work also involves developing a novel basic and applied science—which his lab calls “structural psychology”—to aid in these efforts. Structural psychology spans the entire translational science spectrum, inclusive of basic, clinical, community, and population health research. Dr. Desai's scientific work on culture, community, race, and racism has been funded by a range of awards, including a K01 Award from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities/NIH; a Pioneering Ideas Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; a KL2 Scholar Award from the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation/NIH (for research in partnership with local African American faith communities); and a NIMH Supplement for Minority Health and Mental Health Disparities Research (for research featuring Asian and Latinx communities). Dr. Desai’s book, Travel and Movement in Clinical Psychology: The World Outside the Clinic (Palgrave), with Foreword by Jeffrey Sachs, examines the relationship between mental health and various forms of structural oppression. Dr. Desai was a recipient of the Melba J.T. Vasquez Early Career Award for Distinguished Contributions (American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship Program); the Distinguished Early Career Contributions in Qualitative Inquiry Award (APA Division of Quantitative and Qualitative Methods); and the Sidney Jourard Award (APA Society for Humanistic Psychology). He was a Minority Fellow of the APA and was named a 40 Under 40 Leader in Health by the National Minority Quality Forum. Dr. Desai was a practitioner of Zen and is proficient in Gujarati, French, and Hindi.
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  • Nicole Deziel, PhD, MHS

    Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Environmental Health Sciences); Co-Director, Yale Center for Perinatal, Pediatric and Environmental Epidemiology (CPPEE)

    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.
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  • Durland Fish, PhD

    Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Babesia
    • Babesiosis
    • Borrelia
    • Chikungunya virus
    • Climate
    • Epidemiology
    • Biological Evolution
    • Insect Vectors
    • Lyme Disease
    • Parasitology
    • Public Health
    • Ticks
    • Global Health
    • Evolution, Planetary
    • Climate Change
    Durland Fish, a native of Berwick, Pennsylvania, received his B.S. degree at Albright College in Reading, PA in 1966 with a major in biology and a minor in chemistry. Upon graduation he was employed with the Pennsylvania Department of Health as a sanitarian and in 1967 became Regional Vector Control Coordinator in charge of insect and rodent-borne diseases. His investigation of a fatal case of Rocky Mountain spotted fever in 1968 stimulated a career in public health entomology. In 1970, Fish entered the graduate program in entomology at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst where he received his M.S. in 1973. He went on to continue his graduate studies at the University of Florida where he received his Ph.D. in entomology with a minor in ecology in 1976.Fish studied vector ecology at the University of Notre Dame with a fellowship from the National Institutes of Health. He went to New York in 1980 as Assistant Professor of Biology at Fordham University, where he taught ecology and medical entomology. In 1985, he joined the faculty at New York Medical College where he was Associate Professor in the Department of Community and Preventative Medicine and Director of the Medical Entomology Laboratory, and became Director of Lyme Disease Research Center in 1990.He joined the faculty at Yale School of Public Health in 1994 where became Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases with a secondary appointment to Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Fish also served on the faculty of the interdisciplinary Microbiology Ph.D. Program and the Yale College Environmental Studies Program. He is founding Director of the Yale Institute of Biospheric Studies Center for EcoEpidemiology and serves on the Steering Committee of the Yale Climate and Energy Institute. His research on epidemiology and prevention of vector-borne disease has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Sandia National Laboratory, New York State Dept. of Health, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Mathers Charitable Foundation, and the American Lyme Disease Foundation. He has been awarded the honorary degrees of Doctor of Science from Albright College and Master of Arts from Yale University. He was recipient of a Mentor of the Year Award at Yale School of Public Health in 2012 and received the Hoogstraal Medal in Medical Entomology from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and hygiene in 2015.Fish retired on July 1, 2015 and is now Professor Emeritus at Yale School of Public Health where he remains active in research, writing, and advising students.He is a member of many professional scientific societies including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Entomological Society of America and the Ecological Society of America. He has served as chairman of the Medical and Veterinary Entomology Section of the Entomological Society of America, president of the New York Entomological Society, and president of the International Northwestern Conference on Diseases in Nature Communicable to Man. He has also served on Executive Boards for the Society for Vector Ecology, Acarological Society of America, and the American Committee on Medical Entomology of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. He has served on Editorial Boards for Emerging Infectious Diseases and the Journal of Medical Entomology, and is Founding Editor of Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases. He has presented over 100 papers at professional meetings and has published more than 130 scientific journal articles in entomology, ecology, and medicine. His work has been featured in Time Magazine, Newsweek, Science, Science News, Audubon Magazine and the New York Times, and he has appeared on numerous television programs including NBC News, NBC Today Show, ABC Nightline, CBS This Morning, and was featured in documentaries produced by The Discovery Channel and BBC.
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  • Alison Galvani, PhD

    Burnett and Stender Families Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis (CIDMA)

    Research Interests
    • Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
    • Africa, Southern
    • Ecology
    • Economics
    • Epidemiologic Methods
    • Epidemiology
    • Biological Evolution
    • HIV
    • Influenza, Human
    • Parasitology
    • Public Health
    • Tuberculosis
    • Global Health
    • Evolution, Planetary
    • Infectious Disease Medicine
    Alison Galvani, Ph.D., is the founding director of the Yale Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis (CIDMA) and the Burnett and Stender Families Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, Yale School of Medicine. She has applied her modelling and health economics skills to address myriad public health challenges, including HIV/AIDS, Zika, Ebola, influenza, and COVID-19. In 2015, Galvani became the youngest faculty member ever appointed to an endowed chair in the history of the Yale School of Medicine. She earned her Ph.D. and B.A. from the University of Oxford.
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  • Annie Harper, PhD

    Assistant Professor of Psychiatry

    Annie Harper has a PhD from Yale University in cultural anthropology. She conducts research on how vulnerable populations, particularly low income people with mental illness, cope with poverty and financial difficulties, and how to support them in this area. She is particularly interested in understanding how the financial services and retail industries could better serve low income people generally, and people with mental illness in particular. She is committed to combining rigorous research with practical work that makes a difference now, to which end she works closely with the City of New Haven and the broader community’s efforts to provide support to low income residents struggling with financial difficulties. She is originally from the UK, but has lived for many years in New Haven with her husband, who is originally from Pakistan, and their three children.
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  • Saria Hassan, MD

    Assistant Professor Adjunct; Director, Pediatric Global Health Track, Pediatrics; Deputy Director, Yale-TCC

    Dr. Saria Hassan is an Instructor in General Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. She is core faculty at the Equity Research Innovation Center. She is certified in both Internal Medicine and Pediatrics and spent her early years as a Primary Care Physician for the under-served in New Haven, CT. She is now the Deputy Director of the Yale Transdisciplinary Collaborative Center for Health Disparities focused on Precision Medicine, where she hopes to continue her work with under-served populations by addressing the important issue of health disparities. Her research interest is in using implementation science and implementation science frameworks to design, implement and evaluate interventions to reduce cardiovascular risk disparities in the US and globally.Dr. Hassan is also the Director of the Pediatric Global Health Track for residents in the General Pediatrics department. Please visit the Pediatric Global Health Track website for more information.
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  • Yuan Huang, PhD

    Assistant Professor of Biostatistics (Biostatistics)

    Yuan Huang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at Yale School of Public Health. Her methodological research is focused on statistical methods for high-dimensional data and has been motivated by challenges posted by analyzing cancer genomics, such as low reproducibly, nonlinearity, and heterogeneity. Applications from her work include biomarker identification, large-scale network structure estimation, GxE analysis, etc. She is particularly interested in integrative analysis that simultaneously analyzes multiple datasets to improve the discovery. Recently she collaborates extensively in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Huntington’s disease and multiple sclerosis. She is also actively involved in collaborative research on clinical trials, genetics, epidemiology, and other biomedical fields.
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  • Debbie Humphries, PhD, MPH, MA

    Assistant Professor of Public Health; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
    • Developing Countries
    • Ghana
    • HIV
    • Hookworm Infections
    • Malaria
    • Parasitology
    • Public Health
    • Vietnam
    • Global Health
    • Nutrition Policy
    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.
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  • Jeannette Ickovics, PhD

    Samuel and Liselotte Herman Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Yale School of Public Health; Dean of Faculty, Yale-NUS College; Director, Program on Climate Change and Urban Health; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Chronic Disease
    • Community Health Services
    • Epidemiology
    • Obesity
    • Pregnancy
    • Prenatal Care
    • Urban Health
    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.
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  • Olivia Kachingwe, PhD, MPH

    Assistant Professor of Public Health (Social & Behavioral Sciences)

    Olivia N. Kachingwe, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Public Health in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health. Her research focuses on understanding how healthcare providers, peers, family members (particularly fathers), and technology can better support the sexual and reproductive health of Black youth and young adults, with an emphasis on health disparities rooted in systemic racism and discrimination against LGBTQ+ communities. A central component of Dr. Kachingwe’s research is strong partnerships with community-based organizations and providers. She has expertise in qualitative methods and community-engaged research. Dr. Kachingwe received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in Behavioral and Community Health and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Maternal and Child Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health. Dr. Kachingwe’s most recent projects include (1) a qualitative exploration of parent-child sexual health communication among Black LGBTQ+ young adults and (2) the evaluation of an evidence-based parenting intervention implemented among Black fathers and fathers on probation, parole, and supervised release.
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  • Kaveh Khoshnood, PhD, MPH

    Associate Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Track Director, Critical Topics, Executive MPH; Program Co-Director, Global Health Ethics Program, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
    • Epidemiology
    • Ethics
    • HIV
    • Human Rights
    • Public Health
    • Violence
    • Global Health
    • Infectious Disease Medicine
    Dr. Khoshnood is an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Yale School of Public Health and executive committee member at Yale Council on Middle East Studies. He is Faculty Director for Humanitarian Research Lab. Dr. Khoshnood is trained as an infectious disease epidemiologist and has more than three decades of domestic and international experience in HIV prevention research among people who use drugs and other at-risk populations. Dr. Khoshnood's research interests include: 1) epidemiology and prevention of HIV/AIDS, 2) research ethics and 3) humanitarian health.
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  • Jaehong Kim

    Henry P. Becton Sr. Professor of Engineering; Professor, Environmental Health Sciences

    Jaehong Kim is currently Professor and Chair of Chemical and Environmental Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Yale University. Prior to joining Yale University in 2013, he was the Georgia Power Distinguished Professor and the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Programs at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Seoul National University in Korea in 1995 and 1997, respectively, and a Ph.D. degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2002. He is interested in diverse aspects of environmental science and engineering, from fundamental photocatalytic and photoluminescent materials chemistry to water quality engineering in the developing world.
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  • Albert Ko, MD

    Raj and Indra Nooyi Professor of Public Health and Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases) and of Medicine (Infectious Diseases); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Dengue
    • Epidemiology
    • Leptospirosis
    • Urban Health
    • Global Health
    • Meningitis, Bacterial
    • Infectious Disease Medicine
    Dr. Albert Icksang Ko is the Raj and Indra Nooyi Professor of Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health and a Collaborating Researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazilian Ministry of Health. His research centers on the health problems that have emerged as a consequence of rapid urbanization and social inequity. Dr. Ko coordinates a research program in Brazil, which focuses on delineating the role of social marginalization, urban ecology and climate in the emergence of infectious disease threats in slum communities and informal settlements. He and his team have mobilized research capacity to develop and implement community-based interventions to epidemics of meningitis, leptospirosis, dengue, Zika virus infection and associated birth defects, and the current COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Ko is also Program Director of the Fogarty/NIH Global Health Equity Scholars Program which provides research training opportunities for US and LMIC post and pre-doctoral fellows at collaborating international sites. He is a member of the WHO R&D Taskforce for Zika Virus and R&D Blueprint Working Group. During the pandemic, he served with Indra Nooyi as co-chair of Governor Lamont’s Reopen Connecticut Advisory Group. Dr. Ko continues to advise the Governor and the State on its pandemic prevention and control plan, in addition to supporting the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in its COVID-19 response in Brazil.
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  • Peter James Krause, MD

    Senior Research Scientist in Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases), in Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and in Pediatrics (Infectious Disease) and Lecturer in Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Affiliated faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Babesiosis
    • Blood Transfusion
    • Epidemiology
    • Lyme Disease
    • Relapsing Fever
    • Borrelia burgdorferi
    • Infectious Disease Medicine
    • Biostatistics
    • Diseases
    Dr. Peter J. Krause is Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT. He received his B.A. with honors in biology from Williams College and his M.D. from Tufts University School of Medicine. He completed his Pediatric internship and residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital and Stanford University Medical Center and his Pediatric Infectious Diseases training at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He joined the faculty at the University of Connecticut in 1979 where he became Professor of Pediatrics and Chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases. He returned to Yale in 2008. Dr. Krause is an international authority on human babesiosis who carries out translational, epidemiological, and clinical research in the study of vector-borne diseases. His primary focus has been on human babesiosis but he has also carried out research on two companion tick-borne infections, Lyme disease and relapsing fever caused by Borrelia miyamotoi. He is the author of more than 200 peer reviewed scientific publications and 35 book chapters., the majority focusing on human babesiosis. He also has coedited two books: North American Parasitic Zoonoses (Kluwer Academic Publishers) with Dr. Dennis Richardson and Immunoepidemiology (Springer) with Dr. Nancy Ruddle and Dr. Paula Kavathas. He currently serves on the Editorial Boards of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Clinical Microbiology Reviews, Plos Neglected Tropical Diseases, and Pathogens. He has served as a reviewer for more that 80 medical journals. He also has served on several leadership committees of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and Connecticut Infectious Diseases Society. He recently served as chair of the committee that wrote the Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Infectious Diseases Society of America's 2020 Guideline on Diagnosis and Management of Babesiosis. He also was a member of the committee that wrote the Infectious Diseases Society of America Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Lyme Disease. He has been cited in American Men and Women of Science, The Best Doctors in America, and Who’s Who in America. He served on the Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health Tick Borne Disease Working Group 2021-2022. Dr. Krause and his colleagues were the first to: Characterize the frequency and clinical outcome of human tick-borne disease coinfection Identify the long-term persistence of Babesia infection in people Perform an antibiotic treatment trial for human babesiosis. This trial introduced the use of atovaquone and azithromycin, the treatment of choice for babesiosis since the trial was conducted 25 years ago. Characterize persistent and relapsing babesiosis in immunocompromised hosts Develop and test a laboratory method for screening the blood supply for Babesia microti infection Discover human infection by the relapsing fever spirochete Borrelia miyamotoi Discover human infection by Borrelia miyamotoi in the United States (co-discoverers) Develop a Borrelia miyamotoi antibody assay Describe the epidemiology of Borrelia miyamotoi infection Provide evidence that Borrelia miyamotoi may be transmitted through blood transfusion They also have quantitated the risk of transmission of babesiosis and Lyme disease though blood transfusion and developed several antibody and molecular-based tests for the diagnosis of babesiosis and Borrelia miyamotoi.
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  • Harlan Krumholz, MD, SM

    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)

    Research Interests
    • Cardiology
    • Decision Making
    • Health Policy
    • Heart Failure
    • Myocardial Infarction
    • Health Care Quality, Access, and Evaluation
    • Access to Information
    • Health Information Systems
    • Machine Learning
    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 their 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 incoming Editor-in-Chief of JACC, a pre-eminent cardiovascular medical journal. He co-founded HugoHealth, a patient-centric platform to engage people as partners in research and clinical care, facilitate the secure acquisition and movement of digital health data, and promote learning health communities. He 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 230.
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  • Stephen Latham, JD, PhD

    Senior Research Scholar; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health, Yale Institute for Global Health; Director, Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics

    Stephen R. Latham, JD, PhD is Director of the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. A graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and UC Berkeley’s doctoral program in Jurisprudence, Latham is a former healthcare business and regulatory attorney, and served as Director of Ethics Standards at the AMA before entering academia full-time. Latham is a Fellow of the Hastings Center, and has been a graduate fellow of Harvard’s Safra Center on Ethics and a Research Fellow of the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. At Yale, Latham teaches about bioethics and environmental ethics in the College, the Law School, and the School of the Environment. He chairs the Human Subjects Committee, co-chairs the Embryonic Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee, and does clinical ethics consultation at the Yale-New Haven Hospital. He is a former board member and Secretary of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, from which he received a Distinguished Service Award in 2010. Latham's 100+ publications in bioethics and health-law have appeared in leading medical, bioethics and health-law journals.
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  • Anthony Leiserowitz

    Senior Research Scientist at the School of the Environment

    Anthony Leiserowitz, Ph.D. is the founder and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He is an expert on public climate change and environmental beliefs, attitudes, policy preferences, and behavior, and the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape them. He conducts research at the global, national, and local scales, including many surveys of the American public. He conducted the first global study of public values, attitudes, and behaviors regarding sustainable development and has published more than 200 scientific articles, chapters, and reports. He has served as a contributing author, panel member, advisor or consultant to diverse organizations including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (AR6 Report), the National Academy of Sciences (America’s Climate Choices Report), the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Harvard Kennedy School, the United Nations Development Program, the Gallup World Poll, and the World Economic Forum, among others. He is a recipient of the Friend of the Planet Award from the National Center for Science Education, the Mitofsky Innovator Award from the American Association of Public Opinion Research, and the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Science Communication from Climate One. He is also the host of Climate Connections, a radio program broadcast each day on more than 680 stations and frequencies nationwide. Twitter: @ecotone2
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  • Zeyan Liew, PhD, MPH

    Assistant Professor of Epidemiology (Environmental Health)

    Research Interests
    • Acetaminophen
    • Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity
    • Cerebral Palsy
    • Child Development
    • Environmental Pollutants
    • Pregnancy
    • Models, Statistical
    • Causality
    • Pharmacoepidemiology
    • Endocrine Disruptors
    • Pediatric Obesity
    • Autism Spectrum Disorder
    Dr. Liew is an environmental and perinatal epidemiologist and a research methodologist. A core focus of his work is understanding how exposures that occur during critical and vulnerable periods of development may shape disease risks and influence health outcomes throughout our life span. Dr. Liew is leading numerous studies with funding from the NIH to evaluate whether fetal exposures to endocrine disrupting compounds and/or neurotoxicants could harm fetal brain development leading to neurological disorders or impaired neuropsychological function in childhood and young adulthood. He is also interested in methodological research, especially the development of novel study designs and analytical techniques that could help us better address biases in observational studies or research using “real-world” data.
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  • Sarah Lowe, PhD

    Associate Professor of Public Health (Social and Behavioral Sciences), Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Associate Clinical Professor of Nursing; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health

    Research Interests
    • Anxiety Disorders
    • Mental Disorders
    • Disasters
    • Genetics, Behavioral
    • Mental Health Services
    • Psychological Phenomena
    • Psychology, Clinical
    • Rwanda
    • Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic
    • Mood Disorders
    • Substance-Related Disorders
    • Stress Disorders, Traumatic, Acute
    • Resilience, Psychological
    • Disaster Victims
    • Psychiatry and Psychology
    • Psychological Trauma
    • Trauma and Stressor Related Disorders
    • Exposure to Violence
    • Gender-Based Violence
    Sarah Lowe, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health, with secondary appointments in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and Yale School of Nursing. Her research focuses on the long-term mental health consequences of a range of potentially traumatic events, as well as the impact of such events on other domains of functioning, such as physical health, social relationships, and economic wellbeing. Her work explores the mechanisms leading from trauma exposure to symptoms, and the role of factors at various ecological levels – from genetics to neighborhoods – in shaping risk and resilience. She uses a range of methodologies to achieve her research aims, including structural equation modeling, latent growth curve analysis, geospatial modeling, and qualitative analysis, among others.  Dr. Lowe received her Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Boston and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Psychiatric Epidemiology Training program at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
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  • Yuan Lu, ScD

    Assistant Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science and of Epidemiology (Chronic Diseases)

    Research Interests
    • Cardiovascular Diseases
    • Chronic Disease
    Dr. Lu was trained in epidemiology and global health, with a particular focus on cardiovascular diseases. She obtained both of her ScD and MSc Degrees in Global Health and Population at the Harvard School of Public Health. She works in the intersection of cardiovascular disease prevention, health equity, and digital health, using implementation science methods to resolve real-world issues. Her long-term goal is to improve care, outcomes, and equity of cardiovascular diseases by designing and implementing technology-based interventions. She successfully completed an NHLBI K12 career development award in implementation science. During this award, she harnessed electronic health records from the Yale New Haven Health System to identify patients with persistent hypertension and designing decision support systems to improve their care. Currently, Dr. Lu serves as the Principal Investigator for an NIH R01 grant, where she leverages real-world data from five electronic health record databases encompassing over 100 million US adults. The goal of this endeavor is to generate real-world evidence that informs decisions regarding hypertension treatment escalation. In addition to her domestic contributions, Dr. Lu has engaged in groundbreaking collaborative projects between Yale University and the Chinese National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases in Beijing. These include the Millions Persons Project that assembles remarkable population health and biomedical resources from 5 million individuals across China. Moreover, she has collaborated with the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) on global analyses examining the impact of risk factors on the worldwide burden of cardiovascular diseases. She has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications, including first author articles in leading journals such as The Lancet, JAMA, Circulation, and BMJ, and her work has been cited more than 40,000 times. Dr. Lu is the recipient of the 2022 John H. Laragh Research Award of the American Journal of Hypertension for her contribution to the field of hypertension.
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  • Xiaomei Ma, PhD

    Professor of Epidemiology (Chronic Diseases); Co-Leader, Cancer Prevention and Control

    Research Interests
    • Chronic Disease
    • Epidemiology
    • Leukemia
    • Lymphoma
    • Myelodysplastic Syndromes
    • Myeloproliferative Disorders
    • Neoplasms
    Dr. Ma is Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, and Co-Leader of the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Program at the Yale Comprehensive Cancer Center, Yale School of Medicine. She studies the etiology and health outcomes of different types of cancer, with a focus on pediatric cancer and malignancies of the hematopoietic system (e.g., leukemia, lymphoma, myelodysplastic syndromes, and myeloproliferative neoplasms). Her research has addressed the impact of immunological factors, chemical exposures, and genetic characteristics on the risk of cancer. In addition, she has assessed the patterns of care and cost implications of cancer screening and treatment in older adults.
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  • Nikhil S. Malvankar

    Associate Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry

    Research Interests
    • Bacteria, Anaerobic
    • Bacterial Adhesion
    • Bacterial Infections
    • Biophysics
    • Chemistry, Physical
    • Electron Transport
    • Environmental Microbiology
    • Microscopy, Atomic Force
    • Nanotechnology
    Nikhil is an associate professor at Yale. His lab studies structures, functions and mechanisms of conductive protein filaments (nanowires) Geobacter uses to transport electrons derived from metabolism to produce electricity and clean up waste. Nikhil’s team discovered that these filaments show high conductivity due to continuous arrangement of cytochrome hemes. Nikhil’s team is now using these nanowires to develop electrogenetics - electronic control of bacterial growth, communication and adhesion. Nikhil has received the Blavatnik Award for Innovation and Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 2021, NSF CAREER Award in 2018, NIH Director’s New Innovator Award and Hartwell Foundation Individual Biomedical Research Award in 2017, Charles H. Hood Foundation Child Health Research Award in 2016 and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface in 2014.
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  • Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, MHS

    Associate Dean for Health Equity Research and C.N.H. Long Professor of Internal Medicine (General Medicine), of Epidemiology (Chronic Disease) and of Public Health (Social And Behavioral Sciences) & Professor of Internal Medicine (General Medicine); Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Founding Director, Equity Research and Innovation Center (ERIC), Yale School of Medicine; Director, Center for Research Engagement (CRE); Director, Center for Community Engagement and Health Equity; Deputy Director for Health Equity Research and Workforce Development, Yale Center for Clinical Investigation (YCCI); Director, Pozen-Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Health Equity Leadership

    Research Interests
    • Chronic Disease
    • Health Services Research
    • Internal Medicine
    • Social Justice
    • Socioeconomic Factors
    • Global Health
    • Women's Health
    • Caribbean Region
    • Vulnerable Populations
    • Minority Health
    • Healthcare Disparities
    • Community-Based Participatory Research
    • Social Discrimination
    • Social Determinants of Health
    • Patient Reported Outcome Measures
    • Global Burden of Disease
    • Population Health
    • COVID-19
    Dr. Nunez-Smith is Inaugural Associate Dean for Health Equity Research; C.N.H Long Professor of Internal Medicine, Public Health, and Management; Founding Director of the Equity Research and Innovation Center (ERIC); Director of the Center for Research Engagement (CRE); Associate Cancer Center Director for Community Outreach and Engagement at Yale Cancer Center; Chief Health Equity Officer at Smilow Cancer Hospital; Deputy Director for Health Equity Research and Workforce Development at the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation; Core Faculty in the National Clinician Scholars Program; Research Faculty in the Global Health Leadership Initiative; Director of the Pozen-Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Health Equity Leadership; and Co-Director of the Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellowship. Dr. Nunez-Smith’s research focuses on promoting health and healthcare equity for structurally marginalized populations with an emphasis on centering community engagement, supporting healthcare workforce diversity and development, developing patient reported measurements of healthcare quality, and identifying regional strategies to reduce the global burden of non-communicable diseases. Dr. Nunez-Smith has extensive expertise in examining the effects of social and structural determinants of health, systemic influences contributing to health disparities, health equity improvement, and community-academic partnered scholarship. In addition to primary data collection, management, and analysis, ERIC has institutional expertise in qualitative and mixed methods, population health, and medical informatics. Dr. Nunez-Smith is the principal investigator on many NIH and foundation-funded research projects, including an NIH-funded project to develop a tool to assess patient reported experiences of discrimination in healthcare. She has conducted an investigation of the promotion and retention of diversity in academic medical school faculty and has published numerous articles on the experiences of minority students and faculty. Funded by NIH/NIMHD, she established the Eastern Caribbean Health Outcomes Research Network (ECHORN), a research collaborative across four Eastern Caribbean islands, supporting several chronic disease research projects and enhancing health outcomes research and leadership capacity in the region; the flagship ECHORN Cohort Study recruited and is following a community-dwelling adult cohort (n=3000) to examine novel chronic disease risk and protective factors. She received NIH/NHLBI funding to build upon this work by recruiting children into an expanded intergenerational ECHORN cohort, inclusive of a biorepository. She is also PI on one of five NIH/NIMHD-funded Transdisciplinary Collaborative Centers on Health Disparities focused on Precision Medicine which leverages the ECHORN infrastructure to conduct collaborative research on hypertension and diabetes. Most recently, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shed national attention on the health and healthcare disparities of marginalized populations, she received NIH funding to leverage ECHORN to improve the COVID-19 testing cascade in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Further, she was called upon to chair the Governor’s ReOpen CT Advisory Group Community Committee and was subsequently named co-chair of the Biden-Harris Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board. She served as Senior Advisor to the White House COVID-19 Response and Chair of the Presidential COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force at the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Nunez-Smith has mentored dozens of trainees since completing fellowship and has received numerous awards for teaching and mentoring. An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, Dr. Nunez-Smith is board certified in internal medicine, having completed residency training at Harvard University’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and fellowship at the Yale Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program, where she also received a Masters in Health Sciences. Originally from the US Virgin Islands, she attended Jefferson Medical College, where she was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society, and she earned a BA in Biological Anthropology and Psychology at Swarthmore College.
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  • Kieran O'Donnell, PhD

    Assistant Professor

    Research Interests
    • Biological Psychiatry
    • Molecular Epidemiology
    • Depression, Postpartum
    • Pregnant Women
    Dr. O’Donnell is an Assistant Professor at the Yale Child Study Center and the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences within the Yale School of Medicine where he leads the Health-Omics & Perinatal Epidemiology (HOPE) Research Group.Dr. O’Donnell's research focuses on maternal perinatal mental health and the developmental origins of mental health. His group integrates genomic and epigenomic data with measures of psychosocial risk to 1) better understand individual differences in maternal perinatal mental health and 2) identify the molecular processes that underlie the persisting influence of the prenatal environment on child/adolescent neurodevelopment. Dr. O'Donnell's research occurs in the context of a number of large prospective longitudinal cohorts, including the Montreal Antenatal Well-Being Study, as well as randomized controlled trials of maternally-focused psychosocial interventions.
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