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Advancing the Next Generation
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2019 Scholars
Wendy Camello Castillo | MD, PhD
Associate Professor | University of Maryland Baltimore
Research Summary: Dr. Camelo Castillo is Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research at the School of Pharmacy, University of Maryland, Baltimore. Her PhD training in epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill focused on pharmacoepidemiology, after which she joined the Department of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research at the School of Pharmacy, UMB as a postdoctoral fellow in patient centered outcomes and comparative effectiveness research. Her research integrates methods in pharmacoepidemiology and patient preferences to develop evidence for populations in whom best practices of care are limited such as women, youth, and minority communities. Overall her goal is to inform and improve clinical and policy decision making by providing evidence of benefits or harm of interventions used in real world settings in these populations. She brings an innovative approach into this work by integrating the patient perspective into pharmacoepidemiology and health services research.
Ewa Czyz | PhD
Research Assistant Professor | University of Michigan
Research Summary: My research focuses on how we can best identify and intervene with youth at elevated suicide risk. I am especially interested in adaptive interventions that incorporate technology to deliver tailored interventions to adolescents at risk for suicide following transition from acute care. Currently, I am conducting a Sequential, Multiple Assignment, Randomized Trial (SMART) pilot of an intervention for teens discharged from psychiatric hospitalization augmented with a tailored text-based component. In addition, I am interested in the application of real-time passive data, such as data collected via sensors, in informing early detection of suicide risk and interventions for high-risk youth.
Ellen Fitzsimmons-Craft | PhD
Assistant Professor | Washington University School of Medicine
Research Summary: Ellen Fitzsimmons-Craft, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist and clinical researcher whose work aims to disseminate evidence-based interventions for eating disorders from research to practice, as well to develop novel solutions for reaching the large number of people in need of clinical care for eating disorders but who are not receiving services, with a focus on mHealth solutions. Recent work in this area involves testing the efficacy of a guided self-help mobile app compared to referral for usual care among women with eating disorders at 28 U.S colleges and developing a conversatonal agent or "chatbot" for delivering a fully-automated version of an evidence-based online eating disorders prevention program.
Yuan-Han (Rick) Huang | PhD
Assistant Professor | Pennsylvania State University
Research Summary: I am an Assistant Professor of Industrial Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University, Erie, the Behrend College. I received my PhD in Industrial Engineering with a concentration in Human Factors Engineering from Clemson University in 2013. My research focuses on improving the quality of care in the healthcare community and investigating the evolution of workflows at the inpatient, outpatient, and long-term healthcare settings based on the usage of new information technology and communication / collaboration strategies. My research interests broadly focus on Human Factors Engineering in Healthcare and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Design.
Nirav Kamdar | MD, MPP, MBA
Director of Quality | UCLA Health
Research Interest: Bioelectronics, Wearables, E-tattoos, 2D Materials, Human-Mahine Interfaces
Research Summary: I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Massachussetts Amherst. My research focuses on developing atomically thin bioelectronic devices using 2D materials. The devices include graphene tattoos, implantable neurointerfaces, cardiac implants, biosensors, electrophysiological sensors among tohers. Ultimately, my aspirations extend to laying the groundwork for deciphering the human brain and human body, with the potential to transform and heal it or even contribute to the development of cyborgs.
Research Summary: I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Massachussetts Amherst. My research focuses on developing atomically thin bioelectronic devices using 2D materials. The devices include graphene tattoos, implantable neurointerfaces, cardiac implants, biosensors, electrophysiological sensors among tohers. Ultimately, my aspirations extend to laying the groundwork for deciphering the human brain and human body, with the potential to transform and heal it or even contribute to the development of cyborgs.
Honghuang Lin | PhD
Associate Professor | Boston University
Research Summary: My research is focused on the development of computational methods to study cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease using multi-omics data. I am also developing machine learning models for the early diagnosis of diseases using large collections of blood biomarkers, genetics and images. The long-term goal is to develop new strategies for the disease prevention, risk stratification, and intervention.
Marianne Menictas | PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher | Harvard University
Research Summary: My current research interests involve the generalization and development of new algorithms and methods in Reinforcement Learning for use in improving health and well-being. In particular, my research focuses on the combination of statistical methods for performing inference in learning and evaluating adaptive interventions in mobile health. Prior to my time at Harvard, my research was on the use of variational approximations as a way of speeding up inversion of large sparse matrices, a computation that is used extensively when dealing with fitting of higher level Bayesian hierarchical models. My industry experience involved research on general online experimentation methodologies.
Keshet Ronen | PhD, MPH
Clinical Assistant Professor | University of Washington
Research Summary: Keshet Ronen, PhD MPH, is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Washington. She is broadly interested in strategies to support marginalized and medically underserved communities and reduce health disparities. Her current work focuses on development and evaluation of mobile technology interventions (using SMS and social media) to support mental health and HIV care in women and adolescents.
Alexi Wright | MD, MPH
Assistant Professor | Harvard Medical School
Research Summary: Alexi A. Wright, MD, MPH is the Director of Gynecologic Outcomes Research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Wright is a health services researcher whose area of interest is developing scalable mobile health interventions to improve outcomes in patients with advanced cancers. She has research expertise in mobile health, patient-reported outcomes, and patient-clinician communication. She is currently conducting a randomized trial of a mobile health intervention that uses smartphones to collect patient-reported outcomes, stratify their responses by risk, provide tailored symptom management, and trigger clinical alerts for patients and oncology providers in response to the reporting severe symptoms vs. control. She is also testing several other telehealth interventions in patients with advanced cancers to improve outcomes by early detection and treatment of symptoms (e.g. fear of cancer recurrence, fatigue, bowel obstructions).
Wenbing Zhao | PhD
Professor | Cleveland State University
Research Summary: I have a broad background in building computer systems that incorporate mobile and wearable devices such as smartwatches, smartphones, computers, and cloud services. In particular, at Cleveland State University I created the first mobile app development course for the iOS platform in fall 2010 and I am currently teaching Android app development and Android sensor programming.
Stephanie Carpenter | PhD, MS
Postdoctoral Research Fellow | University of Michigan
Research Summary: Stephanie M. Carpenter is a Research Fellow at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research in the Quantitative Methodology Program. Stephanie received a joint Ph.D. in Social Psychology and Business Administration from the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the role of emotion in decision making, with interests in how these processes influence engagement with just-in-time adaptive health behavior interventions.
Robert Daly | MD, PhD
Assistant Attending | Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Research Summary: I am an oncologist and health services researcher with an interest in innovative care delivery systems that provide high quality, affordable, and sustainable care. My prior research has demonstrated that unwarranted variations in care can lead to poor outcomes. I investigated factors related to receipt of adjuvant endocrine therapy for breast cancer patients. We found that appropriate receipt of therapy varied significantly by age, race, and geographic location, and that if appropriate therapy had been provided an estimated 15,000 lives would have been saved over 10 years. My interest in variations in care and care transformation has inspired another significant area of my work: avoidable emergency room visits in patients receiving outpatient antineoplastic treatment. My current research objective is to reduce preventable acute care for cancer patients using a digital platform to provide intesive symptom and management at home.
Stephanie Goldstein | PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow | Miriam Hospital
Research Summary: My research is focused on developing and testing electronic/mobile health (e/mHealth) approaches (e.g., incorporating wearable sensors, advanced analytics) for assessing and intervening on weight-related behaviors implicated in cardiovascular disease risk, particularly eating. I am specifically interested in combining sophisticated technologies with advanced statistics (e.g., machine learning) to predict, and potentially intervene on, eating behaviors related to weight loss failure. My NHLBI-funded National Research Service Award (F32) will evaluate the utility of a wrist-worn accelerometer to detect dietary lapses throughout weight loss treatment.
Peter James | ScD
Assistant Professor | Harvard Medical School
Research Summary: I am an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. Since receiving my ScD from Harvard School of Public Health in 2012, I have focused my research on estimating the influence of geographic contextual factors, including exposure to nature, the built environment, the food environment, noise, light at night, and socioeconomic factors, on health behaviors and chronic disease. I have more than a decade of experience working with large prospective cohort studies, including the Nurses’ Health Studies and the Framingham Heart Study, where I have created many geographic-based variables and linked them to health data. More recently, I am advancing my research beyond the residential address, applying methodologies to assess real-time, high spatio-temporal resolution objective measures of location and behavior by linking smartphone-based global positioning systems (GPS) and wearable device accelerometry data to understand how contextual factors influence health.
Michelle Kaufman | PhD
Assistant Professor | Johns Hopkins
Research Summary: Dr. Michelle Kaufman’s research is primarily focused on STI/HIV prevention for resource limited populations, particularly women in the developing world. She develops and test STI/HIV prevention interventions that take into account gender issues, sexual relationship power, gender-based violence, and cultural context. Her research has spanned three continents: her current projects are based in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Malawi, and her completed projects have taken place in South Africa, Nepal, Indonesia, and the U.S. Dr. Kaufman is also interested in the issue of sex trafficking and how the global status of women contributes to this issue. Her work on this issue has been focused in Nepal and the U.S. Over the past decade she has been funded by NIH, CDC, USAID, the Bloomberg Initiative, and NIJ.
David Lydon-Staley | PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher | University of Pennsylvania
Research Summary: My research focuses on substance use and abuse across the lifespan, with a particular focus on cigarette-smoking. Nested within a developmental systems framework, my work examines the causes and consequences of substance use at multiple levels of analysis (brain, behavior, social), multiple timescales (seconds, days, years), and within its developmental trajectory (pre-initiation, uptake, and dependence). I am particularly interested in how short-term variability (on the daily or even finer timescales) in affective and cognitive functioning renders individuals more likely to initiate drug use, transition to drug dependence, and relapse during drug abstinence and in identifying the sources of this variability in order to inform interventions.
Jasmine Mote | PhD
Postdoctoral Associate | Boston University
Research Summary: I'm dedicated to using mobile technology to better understand and improve the social and emotional lives of people with and without serious mental illness (SMI). Currently, I'm interested in understanding the relationship between social and physical health, and whether this relationship differs between people with and without SMI. I'm developing a novel mHealth intervention to address loneliness, social functioning, and physical health outcomes in people with SMI. I'm also interested in evaluating community-based methods of addressing loneliness in the general population; developing interventions that improve positive emotion in people with SMI; and understanding the relationship between emotion granularity (being specific about how one feels) and motivated behavior in people with and without SMI.
Na Jin Seo | PhD
Associate Professor | Medical University of South Carolina
Research Summary: My PhD training was in engineering, especially musculoskeletal biomechanics of the hand and ergonomics. My postdoc training was in post-stroke rehabilitation of the hand. My current research focuses on development of novel intervention for hand motor recovery in stroke survivors and associated neuroplasticity. I started my faculty position in an engineering department, and then moved to a health science department. One of the interventions I have been developing and testing is "TheraBracelet." TheraBracelet is vibration-based peripheral sensory stimulation that is intended to stimulate the brain area responsible for sensorimotor control of the hand, and to enhance functional use of the hand.
Shonna Yin | MD, MS
Associate Professor | NYU School of Medicine
Research Summary: H. Shonna Yin, MD, MSc, is a general pediatrician and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Population Health at the NYU School of Medicine. She is nationally recognized for her research accomplishments focused on health literacy as a key factor related to adverse child health outcomes and poverty-associated health disparities. Her work in developing health literacy-informed strategies addressing medication safety, chronic disease management, and obesity prevention, conducted as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Physician Faculty Scholar and as PI of several NIH/NICHD-funded R01s, have been recognized as models of high quality clinical care, and have informed CDC, FDA, and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) initiatives. Dr. Yin completed residency training in Pediatrics and a Masters of Science degree in Clinical Investigation at the NYU School of Medicine.
John Zulueta | MD, BA
Clinical Instructor | University of Illinois at Chicago
Research Summary: I am a fellow in clinical informatics and a psychiatrist interested in pursuing a career in academic medicine. Broadly, my research interests lie in examining how we can use data science to analyze the interaction between mental illness and people’s use of digital technologies to better inform the diagnosis and treatment of these disorders.
Ming-Yuan Chih | PhD
Assistant Professor | University of Kentucky
Research Summary: I am interested in the development and implementation of tools to bridge the gaps between patients, family caregivers, and healthcare systems. My recent research focuses on how to change their health-related behaviors, such as drinking, physical activity and treatment adherence, at their homes and communities by using mHealth technologies to connect them with the healthcare system.
Caroline Figueroa | MD, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar | University of California Berkeley
Research Summary: I am interested in the potential of mobile applications to treat mental health disorders in vulnerable populations. In my research I investigate the effectiveness of mobile health interventions for depression and diabetes in low-income ethnic minority populations, with a focus on Latinx patients. I am interested in mobile text messaging interventions to support psychotherapy in low-income Latinx patients with depression. Furthermore, I aim to investigate whether apps that use adaptive learning algorithms, which use patient data to personalize messages, can be more effective in treating depression and diabetes in low-income ethnic minority populations, than interventions with a static (pre-determined) content.
Alicia Hong | PhD
Professor | George Mason University
Research Summary: I was trained in medical anthropology and behavioral intervention and have experience in mHealth interventions for chronic disease management. I led a team to develop and test iCanFit, an interactive web application for older cancer survivors. I also co-led a large RCT of Run4Love, a social media-based intervention for people living with HIV and depression. In addition to mHealth intervention, I’m also interested in digital divide and adoption of mHealth tools in underserved population.
Nitin Joglekar | PhD
Associate Professor | Boston University
Research Summary: Nitin R. Joglekar is on the faculty at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. His interests involve Digital Product Management Thinking (DPMT), Digitalization of Supply Chains (and use of data analytics) at established firms and during entrepreneurial startups, and public policy issues in global supply chains. Prior to his academic career, he worked in the information technology and energy industries. He has overseen digital product management and supply chain implementations at established firms and founded a software startup. He holds bachelor’s degree from Indian Institute of Technology, masters degrees in engineering from MIT and Memorial University (Canada), and doctoral degree in management science from the MIT Sloan School.
Ashley Kendall | PhD
Research Assistant Professor | University of Illinois at Chicago
Research Summary: I am a clinical psychologist in the Center for Dissemination and Implementation Science within the Department of Medicine at UIC. My research aims to adapt, optimize, and disseminate evidence-based interventions addressing the intersecting issues of mental health and HIV/STI risk among youth, with an emphasis on the use of mHealth to advance this aim. My current work centers on a NIDA K99/R00 award to adapt a mindfulness-based intervention app to improve mental health and HIV/STI risk behaviors among juvenile offenders on probation, and conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of its efficacy. I collaborate on 4 additional federally-funded RCT of HIV/STI interventions designed for (1) justice-involved youth, (2) African-American mothers and daughters, (3) young people living with HIV in Rwanda, and (4) youth at risk for HIV in South Africa.
Boyla Mainsah | PhD
Research Scientist | Duke University
Research Summary: My research focuses on developing signal processing and machine learning algorithms to extract useful information from biomedical data and provide meaningful outputs for diagnostic purposes or to control neuro-prosthetic devices that replace or supplement deficiencies in the human nervous system. I develop algorithms that learn to identify patterns in data and make recommendations based on predictions from newly observed data, such as inferring the message a person intends to communicate based on identifying specific spikes in brain signals, or providing a diagnosis based on identifying characteristic features associated with a specific medical condition. I am currently working on improving the efficiency of brain-computer interfaces and cochlear implants, and non-invasive acoustic diagnostics for early detection of complications in individuals with implanted heart pumps.
S. Raquel Ramos | PhD, MBA, MSN
Assistant Professor | New York University
Research Summary: Dr. Ramos is a nurse informatician whose primary research goal is to contribute to the achievement of health equity through behavior change, chronic illness prevention, and informed decision-making in diverse and underserved populations living with HIV and at-risk of HIV-related chronic illnesses. Her research employing user-centric design approaches informed the need to develop a unique and relevant program of research utilizing mHealth methodologies as a bridge to address the increasing disparity of HIV-related chronic illnesses. Her aim is to leverage Just-in-Time-Adaptive Interventions to incorporate cultural context and develop targeted strategies to promote decision-making ability and health behavior change that can be implemented in real-time.
Jacob VanHouten | MD, PhD, MS
Resident Physician | Griffin Hospital
Research Summary: Jacob VanHouten, MD, PhD, MS, is a resident in the Internal Medicine/Preventive Medicine at Griffin Hospital. His previous work has focused on the use of mathematical and statistical methods to develop novel methods of analyzing clinical and public health information systems data. Jacob has expertise in machine learning and statistical analysis, as well as in the development of predictive analytics tools. His current research interests focus on the development of information systems, both clinician- and patient-facing, to improve chronic disease management and decision making, improve health information and technology equity, understand use patterns among system users, and explore the ways in which these technologies can improve chronic disease management outcomes.
Kelly Ylitalo | PhD
Assistant Professor | Baylor University
Research Summary:My research interests include physical functioning trajectories during the mid-life and older adult years, and how physical activity engagement across the life course may prevent or mitigate aging- and obesity-related functional declines. I am particularly interested in developing behavioral interventions within academic-community partnerships. I received a K01 Career Development Award from the NIH/NIA to develop a physical activity promotion intervention using community health workers and mHealth tools, including wearable sensors and delivery of health information via text messaging, among underserved women.
