Current Students

Saki Amagai

Entry year: 2021

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Justin B Starren, MD, PhD, FACMI

Bio: Saki received her BA in Chemistry (minor in Biochemistry) from Carleton College. Prior to joining HSIP, Saki worked with a team within Northwestern University Medical Social Science Department to develop a smartphone app to remotely assess cognitive function. As a PhD student on the Health and Bioinformatics track, she is interested in using technology and big data to better understand health and promote healthy aging.

Aparna Balakrishnan

Entry year: 2016

Program:  Health Services and Outcomes Research (HSOR)

Advisor: Lucy Bilaver, PhD

Bio: Aparna received a BA in English Literature from Columbia University, and pursued a career in journalism before working in public health. In 2012, she completed a dual masters degree program in Public Health and Public Administration, also at Columbia University. For the four years in between finishing her Masters degrees and starting the HSIP program, she worked first as a cancer outcomes researcher in the Mount Sinai Medical System in New York City, and then managed an outreach program for underserved and immigrant cancer patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. A second year student in the HSOR track, Aparna hopes to explore how access to and use of non-clinical services impacts treatment adherence among underserved cancer patients in the safety net hospital setting.

Balakrishnan, A., Burdett, K., Kocherginsky, M., & Jordan, N. (2021). HSR21-043: Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Surgery for Kidney Cancer: A SEER Analysis, 2007-2014, Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network J Natl Compr Canc Netw, 19(3.5), HSR21-043-HSR21-043.

Balakrishnan A, Jordan N. The Undocumented Elderly: Coverage Gaps and Low Health Care Use. J Health Care Poor Underserved. 2019;30(3):891-898.

Buscemi J, Buitrago D, Iacobelli F, Penedo F, Maciel C, Guitleman J, Balakrishnan A, Corden M, Adler RF, Bouchard LC, Perez-Tamayo A, Yanez BR. Feasibility of a Smartphone-based pilot intervention for Hispanic breast cancer survivors: a brief report. Transl Behav Med. 2018 Jul 7.

Benjamin Barrett

Entry year: 2021

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Justin B Starren, MD, PhD, FACMI

Bio: Ben received a B.A. in Biology and Sociology from Bucknell University and an Sc.M. in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Prior to entering HSIP he worked as a biostatistician for the MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study, a prospective cohort study of HIV infection. Past research has included applying spatial analytics to study cervical cancer screening uptake among women in the Peruvian Amazon, working to understand the underlying factors that explain racial/ethnic disparities in depressive symptoms among sexual minorities, and studying the differential risk for a variety of diseases, including smoking-related cancers, diabetes, proteinuria, and frailty, in people with and without HIV. As a student in HSIP, he hopes to use informatics methods to understand and address health disparities, particularly those related to access to healthcare.

Lixuan Cong

Entry year: 2020

Program:  Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety (HQPS)

Advisor: Donna M Woods, PhD

Bio: Lixuan received her BA in Museum Studies at Fudan University and her Master of Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has extensive research experiences on improving access to health services in both U.S and China. Prior to joining the HSIP program, she worked as a health policy researcher in Shanghai Health Development Research Center. In her PhD study, she hopes to work on applying qualitative methods in program evaluation and learn more about developing interventions that will make better quality of care accessible to underprivileged populations.

Jenny Ding

Entry year: 2022

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Theresa Walunas, PhD

Bio: Jenny received her BS in Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics from UCLA and her MS in Healthcare Analytics and Information Technology from Carnegie Mellon University. Previously, she was an undergraduate research assistant for three years studying gene regulation during inflammatory and innate immune responses. Her master’s work involved building clinical decision support tools to predict disease prognosis from Electronic Health Records and developing Machine Learning (ML) models to analyze large-scale sequencing data. Prior to joining HSIP, she was a data scientist at Merck’s preclinical development department, where she used Natural Language Processing algorithms to automate literature selection in meta-analysis and wrote scripts to inspect clinical trial data. In her PhD study, she hopes to leverage multi-modal healthcare data and ML to understand disease subtypes and aid the development of precision medicine. 

Cerina Dubois

Entry year: 2019

Program:  Social Sciences and Health (SSH)

Advisor: Neil Jordan, PhD

Bio: Cerina Dubois (Lee) is a Master of Public Health graduate from the University of Alberta, Canada; and is Certified in Public Health (NBPHE). She was the former Project Coordinator of Action on Smoking & Health - Western Canada's leading tobacco control organization, studying smoking policies to address vaping and hookah use in Alberta's youth population. With cannabis legalization in Canada (2018) and Illinois (2020), Cerina currently studies the health outcomes of medical cannabis patients in Canada. For her PhD, Cerina aspires to compare both health outcomes and cannabis regulatory policies in Canada, with US States that have legalized cannabis. On the side, Cerina is an avid fitness instructor - her favorite classes to teach are HIIT and Outdoor Bootcamp!

Lee, C., Round, J. M., Klarenbach, S., Hanlon, J. G., Hyshka, E., Dyck, J., & Eurich, D. T. (2021). Gaps in evidence for the use of medically authorized cannabis: Ontario and Alberta, Canada. Harm reduction journal, 18(1), 61. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12954-021-00509-0

Lee, C., Lin, M., Martins, K., Dyck, J., Klarenbach, S., Richer, L., Jess, E., Hanlon, J. G., Hyshka, E., & Eurich, D. T. (2021). Opioid use in medical cannabis authorization adult patients from 2013 to 2018: Alberta, Canada. BMC public health, 21(1), 843. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10867-w

 Lee, C., Voaklander, D., Minhas-Sandhu, J. K., Hanlon, J. G., Hyshka, E., Dyck, J., & Eurich, D. T. (2021). Cohort study of medical cannabis authorization and motor vehicle crash-related healthcare visits in 2014-2017 in Ontario, Canada. Injury epidemiology, 8(1), 33. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40621-021-00321-1

Round, J. M., Lee, C., Hanlon, J. G., Hyshka, E., Dyck, J., & Eurich, D. T. (2020). Changes in patient health questionnaire (PHQ-9) scores in adults with medical authorization for cannabis. BMC public health, 20(1), 987. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09089-3

Eurich, D., Lee, C., Zongo, A., Minhas-Sandhu, J. K., Hanlon, J. G., Hyshka, E., & Dyck, J. (2020). Cohort study of medical cannabis authorisation and healthcare utilisation in 2014-2017 in Ontario, Canada. Journal of epidemiology and community health, 74(3), 299–304. https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2019-212438

Arielle Eagan

Entry year: 2021

Program:  Social Sciences and Health (SSH)

Advisor: Judy Moskowitz, PhD

Bio: Arielle Eagan is a clinical social worker and mixed methods researcher who has worked globally in maco-spaces, including implementing psychosocial support programs in Zambia for adolescents with HIV and working as a Research Fellow for the Minister of Health in Rwanda. She holds a Bachelors in Child Psychology and Sociology, and a Masters in Clinical Social Work from Boston College and has completed two advanced fellowships, one in Pediatric Palliative Care at Harvard Medical School, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and Boston Children’s Hospital, and the other in Global Health as a part of the Global Health Corps. She has co-authored 27 publications and multiple high-level ministerial disease burden reports for countries including Sierra Leone, Liberia, Afghanistan, and Kenya. At the start of COVID19, she worked in a hospital emergency room social worker in Boston, helping patients navigate COVID19 from psychosocial and social perspectives. Since moving to Chicago, she joined Dr. Jaline Gerardin’s Malaria and COVID19 Disease Modeling lab here at Northwestern, where she led the team’s weekly COVID19 forecasting for the state of Illinois as well as a sentinel surveillance costing project. Arielle is excited to begin a PhD in the Health Integrated Sciences Program here at Northwestern in the fall under the advising of research mentor Dr. Lisa Hirschhorn and to continue to explore implementation in global health.

Noah Forrest

Entry year: 2021

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Judith T Moskowitz, PhD

Bio: Noah is a current NU MSTP student joining HSIP's Health and Biomedical Informatics track. He received his B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Portland in 2016, and subsequently worked on projects in the health informatics space. In his PhD, Noah wants to utilize medical record and biorepository data to identify common genetic markers among patients with autoimmune diseases. He would like to eventually use insights in his research in implementing personalized genomic medicine. In addition to his academic interests, Noah enjoys running along the lakeshore, biking to new neighborhoods around the city, and finding new recipes to cook at home.

Angela Freeman

Entry year: 2019

Program:  Social Sciences and Health (SSH)

Advisor: Judith T Moskowitz, PhD

Bio: Angela is a public health professional with experience in health administration, health disparities research, and STEM/health science education pipeline and workforce development program management. She earned a BA in Fine Arts from Purdue University and a Master of Public Health in Community Health Sciences from the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health. Prior to HSIP, Angela spent the past six years working for Rush University Medical Center. As project manager for Building Healthy Urban Communities she provided oversight of this initiative designed to improve education, employment and health outcomes of Chicago’s west and south sides. A collaboration with the Medical Home Network (MHN) and Malcolm X College - City College of Chicago, this program sought to develop new curriculum for allied health professionals, advance more sophisticated and effective continuing education models for providers and health professionals, train an elite group of health disparities researchers and test new models of care while ensuring efficiency, cost control and high quality. Her current research interests include health disparities, population health management, higher education, social epidemiology and the intersection of social determinants, place-based strategies and health.

Howard, D., Howard, J., Scott, L., & Freeman, A. (2021). Student Job Readiness During a Pandemic. Journal of Health Administration Education, 38(1), 377-388.

Scott, L., Howard, J. E., Howard, D. M., & Freeman, A. C. (2021). From Followers to Leaders: Building First-Time Leaders Through Transformational Leadership and Lifelong Learning. In Handbook of Research on Innate Leadership Characteristics and Examinations of Successful First-Time Leaders (pp. 191-203). IGI Global.

Peter Graffy

Entry year: 2021

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Justin B Starren, MD, PhD, FACMI

Bio: Peter received his BA in Anthropology and Women & Gender Studies from Luther College and his MPH from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to joining HSIP, Peter was a research coordinator for the ENRICH-US Study as part of Northwestern Quality Improvement, Research, & Education in Surgery (NQUIRES). While attending UW-Madison, his work focused on predictive disease modeling using machine learning to measure biomarkers on CT. He has also studied and published on other topics, such as opportunistic screening and detection of osteoporosis, image characterization of liver morphology changes in NAFLD and NASH, effect of gender identity on sexual health practices, and the determinants of homelessness for chronically unhoused individuals. As an HBMI student, Peter is interested in the intersection of GIS spatial analysis and epidemiology, developing computer-aided detection tools for the EHR to opportunistically predict disease, and methods to bridge the gap between the scientific community and the general population.

Abhijit Grewal

Entry year: 2019

Program:  Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety (HQPS)

Advisor: Donna M Woods, PhD

Bio: Abhi is a student in the Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety track within the Health Sciences Integrated (HSIP) PhD program. Abhi earned his Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Wayne State University and his Master of Health Administration from Cornell University. Before joining the PhD program, Abhi worked as a management consultant focusing on healthcare at Ernst and Young. He also served in the United States Air Force in both active and reserve capacities for six years while pursuing his undergraduate degree. As a PhD student, he hopes to draw upon his experiences to study the integration of new technologies (AI, machine learning, telehealth, etc.) to address health inequity and improve the quality and safety of care for vulnerable populations.

Sae Han

Entry year: 2020

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Nicholas Soulakis, PhD

Bio: Sae received her B.S. degree in Human Biology, Health, and Society from Cornell University and her MPH and certificate in Health Promotion Research and Practice from Columbia University. Prior to joining HSIP, she worked at NCI (as a health communication fellow) and at NIA (as a Clinical Protocol Coordinator/Program Analyst) in their offices that oversee the Institutes' clinical research grant portfolios. While at Northwestern's HSIP, Sae will be pursuing a doctoral degree in Health and Biomedical Informatics and is interested in building on the intersection between health informatics and epidemiology. Specifically, during her PhD studies, she will focus on applying informatics techniques to analyze existing and untapped data sources to identify and study relationships between Alzheimer's disease risk factors.

Massett, HA [et al, including Han, SH]. Challenges, facilitators, and messaging strategies for Latino populations participating in Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias in clinical research: a literature review. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. 2021.

Alexandra Harris

Entry year: 2020

Program:  Health Services and Outcomes Research (HSOR)

Advisor: Neil Jordan, PhD

Bio: Alex holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from The University of Alabama and a Master of Public Health from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Prior to starting the HSIP doctoral program, she was a project lead at the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE), a leading national healthcare quality measurement organization. Under contract to CMS, she led reevaluation efforts for 21 national outcome measures publicly reported in CMS value-based payment programs. In this role, she also coordinated the development of two outcome measures for the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) program. Her research interests include health economics, particularly as it pertains to pharmaceutical pricing and understanding the effect of healthcare market consolidation on patient outcomes.

Triche EW, Xin X, Stackland S, et al. Incorporating Present-on-Admission Indicators in Medicare Claims to Inform Hospital Quality Measure Risk Adjustment Models. JAMA Netw Open. 2021;4(5):e218512. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.8512

Mohamed Hasan

Entry year: 2016

Program:  Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety (HQPS)

Advisor: Donna M Woods, PhD

Bio: Mohamed has 6 years of experience in hospital accreditation, implementation of patient safety interventions, coordination of quality improvement projects, and facilitation of multidisciplinary teams as part of his job as a Total Quality Management Consultant at the Armed Forces Hospitals of Saudi Arabia. He also volunteered as a trainer in which he worked with multiple Saudi Directors of Health Affairs to train healthcare workers on clinical risk management, patient safety, and quality improvement. Mohamed graduated from medical school at Zagazig University in Egypt and he completed his MPH with a concentration in Healthcare Management and Policy from American University of Beirut. His research interests include implementation science, diagnostic errors, simulation and health IT interventions to improve patient safety.

Hasan MM, Zhang M, Beal M, et al. An umbrella review comparing computer-assisted and conventional total joint arthroplasty: quality assessment and summary of evidenceBMJ Surgery, Interventions, & Health Technologies 2020; 2:e000016. doi: 10.1136/bmjsit-2019-000016

Smith J & Hasan, M, Quantitative approaches for the evaluation of implementation research studies, Psychiatry Research, Volume 283, 2020, 112521,ISSN 0165-1781, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2019.112521.

Many, B, Hasan, M, Raval, M, et al. Conceptual Frameworks of Postoperative Recovery: A Scoping Review, Journal of Surgical Research, Volume 263, 2021, Pages 265-273, ISSN 0022-4804,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2021.01.031.

Elkholi A, Althobiti H, Al Nofeye J, et alNO WAIT: new organised well-adapted immediate triage: a lean improvement projectBMJ Open Quality 2021;10:e001179. doi: 10.1136/bmjoq-2020-001179

Ahmed, Abdalrahman G.; Kang, Raymond MA; Hasan, Mohamed MD, MPH; Tian, Yao PhD, MS, MPH; Ghomrawi, Hassan M. PhD, MPH Trends in Practice Patterns of Conventional and Computer-assisted Knee Arthroplasty: An Analysis of 570,671 Knee Arthroplasties Between 2010 and 2017, Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons: December 21, 2020 - Volume - Issue - 10.5435/JAAOS-D-20-00763, doi: 10.5435/JAAOS-D-20-00763

Tobias Holden

Entry year: 2021

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Justin B Starren, MD, PhD, FACMI

Bio: Tobias received his B.S. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology with a concentration in Quantitative Biology from Yale University in 2017, and was an NIH PREP Scholar in the Department of Pharmacological Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai before joining the MSTP at Northwestern in 2019. He is interested in applying mathematical modeling to population health, with a focus on social and environmental determinants of disease. As a medical student he worked with the Illinois Dept. of Public Health to analyze racial/ethnic disparities in the state’s COVID-19 epidemic. During his PhD he will focus on modeling public health interventions to reduce the burden of malaria in endemic settings. He hopes to combine his training from HSIP and medical school to address the community health challenges that result from global climate change.

Emily Hurst

Entry year: 2022

Program:  Health Services and Outcomes Research (HSOR)

Advisor: Megan Colleen McHugh, PhD

Bio: Emily holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering with Honors from West Texas A&M University and a Master of Prosthetics & Orthotics from the University of Texas Medical Center. Emily completed a prosthetics residency at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab where she provided patient care for those with limb loss. During her time at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, she conducted research for the Center for Bionic Medicine (CBM) in which she studied the impact of added prosthetic mass on energy expenditure for individuals with above knee limb loss. She completed her orthotics residency with Hanger Clinic where she provided clinical services in various outpatient and inpatient settings in addition to conducting outcomes-based research for Hanger's Clinical & Scientific Affairs (CSA) department. Her research interests include health services research related to limb loss, disability, and chronic illness with hopes to improve access and quality of health services among these populations.

Cassandra Iroz

Entry year: 2018

Program:  Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety (HQPS)

Advisor: Donna M Woods, PhD

Bio: Cassandra is a first year student in the Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety Track within the Health Sciences Integrated PhD (HSIP) program. Cassandra earned her BA in Biology from Carleton College and her Master of Science in Health Communication from Northwestern University. Prior to joining the PhD program she worked as a Clinical Research Project Manager within the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (NUCATS) where she worked on studies in a variety of areas including weight loss, urology, and liver transplantation. As a PhD student she is hoping to build upon her previous work to understand how improved communication within the healthcare team and with patients can improve quality and safety for all patients.

Lauren Leviton

Entry year: 2021

Program:  Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety (HQPS)

Advisor: Donna M Woods, PhD

Bio: Lauren is a first year student in the Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety Track within the Health Sciences Integrated PhD (HSIP) program. She earned her BS in Human Development and Family Studies and a minor in Spanish from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and her master’s in social work from the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago. Prior to joining the PhD program, she worked as a Social Worker in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at Northwestern Medical Group where she developed and implemented the first primary care social work role in the division. She also worked at Lurie Children’s Hospital as a Social Worker in the Division of Genetics and provided direct patient care to individuals and caregivers impacted by rare genetic conditions. Recently she partnered with colleagues to create Northwestern Medicine’s Health Equity Action Team (NM HEAT). Lauren is pursuing a PhD to contribute to research in the area of social determinants of health and healthcare disparities through a quality and safety framework.

Yikuan Li

Entry year: 2019

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Yuan Luo, PhD

Bio: Yikuan received his B.S. degree in Information Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and later M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University. Prior to joining in the doctoral program, he worked on applying natural language processing and machine learning to build clinical predictive models with Electronic health record (EHR) data. He also has industrial experience in Microsoft as a support engineering intern and in IQVIA as a consulting intern. His research interests include integrating informatics into healthcare to deliver a better treatment to patients and improve the population’s health outcomes.

Wang, Hanyin, Yikuan Li, Meghan Hutch, Andrew Naidech, and Yuan Luo. "Using Tweets to Understand How COVID-19-Related Health Beliefs Are Affected in the Age of Social Media: Twitter Data Analysis Study." Journal of medical Internet research 23, no. 2 (2021): e26302.

Li, Yikuan, Hanyin Wang, and Yuan Luo. "A comparison of pre-trained vision-and-language models for multimodal representation learning across medical images and reports." In 2020 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM), pp. 1999-2004. IEEE, 2020.

Wang, Hanyin, Yikuan Li, Seema A. Khan, and Yuan Luo. "Prediction of breast cancer distant recurrence using natural language processing and knowledge-guided convolutional neural network." Artificial intelligence in medicine 110 (2020): 101977.

Wang, Hanyin, Yikuan Li, Hongyan Ning, John Wilkins, Donald Lloyd-Jones, and Yuan Luo. "Using Machine Learning to Integrate Socio-Behavioral Factors in Predicting Cardiovascular-Related Mortality Risk." In MedInfo, pp. 433-437. 2019.

William Liem

Entry year: 2021

Program:  Social Sciences and Health (SSH)

Advisor: Judith T Moskowitz, PhD

Bio: William (he/they) received a BA in Sociology from the University of British Columbia and a MSW (System Dynamics specialization) from Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to HSIP, William consulted as a system dynamics consultant and design strategist for technology, public health, and education sectors. His consultancy work focused on using community-based system dynamics methods to understand barriers to designing and delivering equitable programs and services. William was also an Adjunct Instructor and Research Projects Coordinator with the Social System Design Lab at Washington University, where he co-taught a system dynamics simulation modeling course to masters and doctoral students. William’s research interests broadly include LGBTQIA+ health equity, community-based system dynamics, agent-based modeling, and designing equitable technologies. In their PhD, William hopes to co-design systems-informed solutions surrounding LGBTQIA+ health equity issues and structural homophobia.

Songzi Liu

Entry year: 2020

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Justin B Starren, MD, PhD, FACMI

Bio: Songzi received her B.A. in Economics from Oberlin College and her M.S. in Information Science from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Before joining the HSIP program, she investigated and wrote about the implementation and evaluation of patient-centered health IT products. Her previous works explored the prescribing patterns of physicians who practice online, health disparity issues in telemedicine adoption, and cost-effectiveness analysis of mobile health interventions. Her research interests include data mining and knowledge discovery using heterogeneous health-related data, natural language processing, network analysis, and human-centered design methods. As a PhD student, she hopes to bring her interdisciplinary background in social science, design, and data science training into solving practical problems in clinical and public health settings. Songzi is a recipient of the NU Data Science Fellowship.

Yueming Liu

Entry year: 2022

Program:  Biostatistics (BIOSTAT)

Advisor: Lihui Zhao, PhD

Bio: Yueming is a PhD student in the biostatistics track of HSIP program. She holds her Bachelor degree from University of Waterloo and her MS in biostatistics from Northwestern University. Intrigued by the field of biostatistics during previous study and research experiences, Yueming is developing broad interests in clinical trial, causal inference, survival analysis, and longitudinal analysis. For her PhD study, she hopes to explore more in the intersection of methodology and applications, such as disease prevention and precision medicine with the recent tools of high dimensional data analysis and interpretable machine learning.

Roberto Lopez-Rosado

Entry year: 2021

Program:  Health Services and Outcomes Research (HSOR)

Advisor: Megan Colleen McHugh, PhD

Bio: Roberto earned a Masters degree in Anatomy from Universidad Central del Caribe, in his native Puerto Rico, and a Doctorate in Physical Therapy from The Sage Colleges, New York. He teaches gross anatomy and neuroanatomy at Northwestern University. His PhD interests include rehabilitation service utilization for individuals following stroke.

Zhidi Luo

Entry year: 2022

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Theresa Walunas, PhD

Bio: Zhidi received a B.S. in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics from Sun Yet-Sen University and a M.S. in Financial Mathematics from the University of Chicago. Zhidi has experience working as a quantitative analyst in the financial trading industry, a researcher at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, and as a biostatistician in the Mental Health Services and Policy Program in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He has designed data warehouses, developed statistical plans, implemented research designs, and built predictive analytic and machine learning models. As a PhD student in Health and Biomedical Informatics track, Zhidi will focus on applying machine learning methods to child health services and outcomes research.

Julianne Murphy

Entry year: 2018

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Justin B Starren, MD, PhD, FACMI

Bio: Julianne received her BA and MS degrees in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Clark University. During this time, she worked and studied in Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Her research examined the distribution of microRNA gene copy number across human populations. Prior to joining HSIP, she analyzed self-reported risky health behaviors in middle and high-school students at the Worcester Division of Public Health. Her prior experiences include environmental health work at the Association of Public Health Laboratories and corporate medical management at AmeriHealth Caritas. Her research interests include integrating genomic data into EHRs and telehealth initiatives for quality of care improvement. She is a recipient of the NU Data Science Fellowship.

Borders A, Lee King P, Weiss D, Murphy J. 160: improving outcomes for mothers affected by opioids through statewide quality improvement. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2020; 222:S116

Borders A, Lee King P, Weiss D, Murphy J. 792: Optimizing care for mothers and newborns affected by opioids by understanding disparities in treatment. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2020; 222:S501-S502

Chuanfen Ni

Entry year: 2022

Program:  Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety (HQPS)

Advisor: Donna M Woods, PhD

Bio: Chuanfen received her Bachelor of Laws in Economic Laws from East China University of Political Science and Law and her Master of Social Work from Washington University in St. Louis. Before joining the PhD program, Chuanfen studied policy analysis at Harris School of Public Policy at The University of Chicago. Chuanfen also has worked as a reporter and editor in China, a public health services intern at St. Louis Health Department, and a social worker in rural Missouri. She has leveraged her coaching and management skills to help hundreds of patients access care, improve direct service quality, tackle crises, outreach and engage patients in service. As a PhD student, she hopes to design patient-centered techniques to develop solutions that make healthcare service delivery a more efficient, equitable, and ethical practice.

Emmanuel Okpetu

Entry year: 2022

Program:  Health Services and Outcomes Research (HSOR)

Advisor: Lisa R Hirschhorn, MD, MPH

Bio: Emmanuel Iroboudu Okpetu served as the district level Director of the Primary Health Care Department, Kuje Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Nigeria from February 2021 to August 2022. He has an MPH (2013) degree from the Royal Tropical Institute/VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands and an MBBS degree (2006) from the University of Jos, Nigeria. He has 14 years public health experience with expertise in implementing Primary Health Care (PHC) interventions in resource constrained settings both locally and internationally,. He was a volunteer stop transmission of polio consultant for the CDC/WHO global polio eradication initiative, serving in Ethiopia for 2 years (2016 – 2018). Since 2019, he has been an affiliate researcher  with the transforming hypertension treatment in Nigeria implementation research anchored by the University of Abuja Cardiovascular Research Unit in collaboration with Northwestern University. Emmanuel participated in the global alliance for chronic diseases 4th implementation science school 2021. He is interested in projects that will mitigate the growing burden of Non-Communicable Disease (NCDs) among economically vulnerable populations. He is particularly interested in exploring integration and task shifting options for surveillance and response to NCDs within a PHC system that seems focused on infectious diseases.

Sarah Philbin

Entry year: 2020

Program:  Health Services and Outcomes Research (HSOR)

Advisor: Megan Colleen McHugh, PhD

Bio: Prior to joining HSIP, Sarah was a Senior Program Associate at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). In this role, she monitored and evaluated a diverse portfolio, including several multi-site pragmatic clinical trials that investigated a range of clinical conditions, including pediatric rare diseases and opioid use disorder. She also supported the development and launch of several targeted funding announcements. Sarah earned a BA in History and International Peace Studies from the University of Notre Dame and a Master of Public Health (MPH) in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University. Broadly, her research interests include health system innovation and policy, and during her PhD, Sarah plans to explore how health systems can address social determinants of health within a clinical setting in order to facilitate successful transitions from pediatric to adult care for individuals with chronic conditions.

Jessica Puri

Entry year: 2018

Program:  Social Sciences and Health (SSH)

Advisor: Judith T Moskowitz, PhD

Bio: Jessica received a Bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences from Loyola University and a Masters in Public Health from DePaul University. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in the Social Sciences and Health Track at Feinberg's HSIP Program. She currently sits on the Alumni Advisory board for the Center for Community Health Equity and the Board of Directors for Soap Box PO. Jessica's prior research experience include studies on HIV, female circumcision, physician cultural competency, malaria and health equity in Chicago . Her interests include health equity, health promotion, global health, health behavior and health administration.

Yishu Qu

Entry year: 2019

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Lifang Hou, MD, PhD

Bio: Yishu received her Bachelor of Medicine in Laboratory Medicine from Peking University Health Science Center in China and her MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the University of Southern California. After graduation, she continued to work on biomarkers for papillary thyroid cancer in women of reproductive age among White and Filipino population and conducted data analysis. During her PhD studies, she will be focused on genetic, epigenetic biomarkers that may predict cancer or chronic diseases. She is also is interested in other aging biomarkers like telomere length and mitochondrial DNA.

Musa, J, Kim, K,  Zheng, Y., Qu, Y, et al. Abstract 71: Accelerated Epigenetic Age among HIV-infected Nigerian Women with Invasive Cervical Cancer. 2021; p 71-71.

Zheng, Y, Musa, J, Kim, K, Qu, Y, et al. Abstract 76: Global LINE-1 Hypomethylation as Novel Biomarker for Cervical Cancer in Nigerian Women Living with HIV. 2021; p 76-76.

Zheng, Y, Hawkins, C, Okeke, E. Duguru, M, Odeghe, E, Lesi, O, Qu, Y.;  et al, Abstract 83: Blood-Based Circulating Cell-Free DNA Epigenetic Age Is Accelerated Among HIV-Infected Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Nigeria. 2021; p 83-83.

Zheng, Y, Hawkins, C, Okeke, E, Lesi, O.;  Qu, Y.; et al. Acceleration of blood-based circulating cell-free DNA epigenetic age among HIV-infected patients with hepatocellular carcinoma in Nigeria. Journal of Clinical Oncology 2021, 39, e16137-e16137.

Sinha, A, Zheng, Y, Nannini, D, Qu, Y et al. Association of the V122I Transthyretin Amyloidosis Genetic Variant With Cardiac Structure and Function in Middle-aged Black Adults: Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study. JAMA Cardiology 2020, 6.

Sinha, A, Zheng, Y, Qu, Y.;  et al. Abstract 24: Amyloidogenic V122I Transthyretin Variant is Associated With Progression of Adverse Cardiac Mechanics in Middle-aged African American Adults: The Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study. Circulation 2020, 141.

Lamkur Gabriel Shedul

Entry year: 2022

Program:  Health Services and Outcomes Research (HSOR)

Advisor: Lisa R Hirschhorn, MD, MPH

Bio: Lamkur had MBBS from the University of Jos in Nigeria before pursuing his Fellowship program with the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria in the Faculty of Family Medicine. As a practicing Family Physician with the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, he became a member of the Cardiovascular Research Unit of the same institution where he was involved in several research works involving local and international collaborators like Northwestern University. To buttress his research work, he obtained a Masters in Public Health in the University of Abuja. His research interest is in preventive cardiology and task shifting where he train non-physician health workers at primary health care level using a simplified national protocol to diagnose, treat and refer patients with hypertension.

Mindy Szeto

Entry year: 2022

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Theresa Walunas, PhD

Bio: Mindy trained at the University of Washington, University of Colorado, and Johns Hopkins University in math modeling, protein engineering, and bioinformatics before joining HSIP's Health and Biomedical Informatics Track. She has experience leading genetic epidemiology studies of complex traits in understudied populations in conjunction with the Jackson Heart Study, the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, and the NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine program. Most recently, she conducted multi-omics and machine learning analyses of rare diseases with patient data, and hopes to integrate novel approaches with EHR information to reduce health disparities and improve precision medicine.

Iva Terwilliger

Entry year: 2017

Program:  Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety (HQPS)

Advisor: Julie K Johnson, MSPH, PhD

Bio: Iva graduated cum laude with a BS in Nursing from Georgetown University. After graduating, she completed a nurse residency program and worked as a Staff Nurse on an orthopedic / oncology / medical / surgical unit at the West Palm Beach VA Medical Center. She then worked at the New York University Langone Medical Center as a Senior Staff Nurse in Breast Imaging. As a PhD student in the Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety track, she is interested in studying how technology can help improve the quality of care provided to patients.

Steven Tran

Entry year: 2020

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Justin B Starren, MD, PhD, FACMI

Bio: Steven is a current NU MSTP student joining HSIP's Health and Biomedical Informatics track. He received his B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Texas at Austin in 2018, and his research interests have since pivoted quite a ways from his background in synthetic biology. In his PhD, Steven wants to explore how data is derived from medical practice and transformed into a state that is usable for clinical research. He hopes to create tools to optimize this process so that we can obtain clinical data quicker, cheaper, and in larger scales. Outside of school and lab, Steven enjoys cooking (but mostly eating) and making, with his 3D printer and small armory of tools.

Jacob S, Rahbari K, Tegtmeyer K, et al. Lung Cancer Survival in Patients With Autoimmune Disease. JAMA network open: NLM (Medline); 2020. p. e2029917.

Tubanji Walubita

Entry year: 2021

Program:  Social Sciences and Health (SSH)

Advisor: Judith T Moskowitz, PhD

Bio: Tubanji earned a BA in Biology and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies from Lake Forest College. Upon graduating, Tubanji participated in the NIH Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She researched sexual orientation-based disparities in allostatic load among Black women. Following her time in PREP, Tubanji worked as a clinical research assistant at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where she investigated racial and ethnic differences in exposure and susceptibility to COVID-19. As a PhD student in the Social Sciences and Health track of HSIP, Tubanji is further expanding her work in health equity, social epidemiology, and health promotion.

Ping (Stella) Wang

Entry year: 2022

Program:  Social Sciences and Health (SSH)

Advisor: Betina Yanez, PhD

Bio: Ping (Stella) Wang holds a BS from Fudan University, major in Pharmaceutical Science and a MS in Pharmacy Administration from St. John’s University School of Pharmacy. She also studied Epidemiology, Global Health Policy & Management with a Master of Public Health at New York University Global Institute of Public Health. Before joining the PhD program, Stella worked as the Head of Medical Projects and Data Analytics at a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company in NYC. Stella has over 10 years working experience in pharmaceutical industry in various business, operational, and research functions. Her current research focuses on clinical outcome evaluation in both qualitative and quantitative projects. As a PhD student, Stella is interested in developing innovative health assessments using the latest scientific knowledge. She hopes to use her knowledge to influence health policies and improve population health at a higher level. 

Rick Weinmeyer

Entry year: 2017

Program:  Social Sciences and Health (SSH)

Advisor: Judith T Moskowitz, PhD

Bio: Rick spent the last four years serving as a Senior Research Associate for the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs at the American Medical Association. During his tenure with the AMA, he researched and wrote on subjects at the intersection of health policy, health law, and medical ethics, including expanded access to unapproved drugs, religious and philosophical vaccination exemptions, and hospital mergers and their impact on patient care. Rick earned his BA in Political Science from the University of Washington, his MPhil in Sociology from Cambridge University, and his JD and MA in Health Law and Bioethics at the University of Minnesota. His research interests are in health disparities research, legal epidemiology, and research regulation, and he’d like to use his doctoral training to conduct empirical work in public health law and health policy.

Richard Weinmeyer, Annalise Norling, Margaret Kawarski & Estelle Higgins, The Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 and Its Role in Providing Access to Safe Drinking Water in the United States, 19 AMA J. ETHICS 1018 (2017), http://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/2017/10/pdf/hlaw1-1710.pdf.

Yuyang Yang

Entry year: 2020

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Justin B Starren, MD, PhD, FACMI

Bio: Yuyang received his B.S in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Michigan and joined the Feinberg School of Medicine MSTP in 2018. Coming from a basic science background, he became interested in clinical quality improvement after seeing the high morbidity burden attributable to preventable when compared to non-preventable risk factors. He is specifically interested in leveraging human-computer interaction to improve patient-centered medical education and in data driven implementation of clinical decision support tools. During his PhD in HSIP's Health and Bioinformatics track, he hopes to further his informatics and programming toolset to make positive impacts on patientcare.

Jiancheng Ye

Entry year: 2018

Program:  Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety (HQPS)

Advisor: Donna M Woods, PhD

Bio: Jiancheng received Biomedical Engineering training from Tsinghua University in China and Health Informatics training from Johns Hopkins University. He has not only done much work in the design and implementation of medical devices, but also in the industry and data analysis. His PhD research will be focused on the intersection of informatics, health quality and patient safety. He enjoys interdisciplinary research for the opportunity to use technology to combine engineering and medicine, thereby improving people’s health and quality of life.

Ye J. The impact of electronic health record-integrated patient-generated health data on clinician burnout. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2021 Apr 23;28(5):1051-1056. PMID: 33822095; PMCID: PMC8068436.

Walunas TL, Ye J, Bannon J, Wang A, Kho AN, Smith JD, Soulakis N. Does coaching matter? Examining the impact of specific practice facilitation strategies on implementation of quality improvement interventions in the Healthy Hearts in the Heartland study. Implement Sci. 2021 Mar 31;16(1):33. PMID: 33789696; PMCID: PMC8011080.

Ye J. Health Information System's Responses to COVID-19 Pandemic in China: A National Cross-sectional Study. Appl Clin Inform. 2021 Mar;12(2):399-406. PMID: 34010976; PMCID: PMC8133837.

Feinglass J, Wang JA, Ye J, Tessier R, Kim H. Hospital care for opioid use in Illinois, 2016-2019. J Behav Health Serv Res. 2021 Jan 27:1–13. PMID: 33502670; PMCID: PMC7839292.

Ye J, Sanchez-Pinto LN. Three Data-Driven Phenotypes of Multiple Organ Dysfunction Syndrome Preserved from Early Childhood to Middle Adulthood. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2021 Jan 25;2020:1345-1353. PMID: 33936511; PMCID: PMC8075454.

Ye J. The role of health technology and informatics in a global public health emergency: practices and implications from the Covid-19 pandemic. JMIR Med Inform. 2020;8(7):e19866. PMID: 32568725; PMCID: PMC7388036.

Ye J, Zhang R, Bannon JE, Wang AA, Walunas TL, Kho AN, Soulakis ND. Identifying practice facilitation delays and barriers in primary care quality improvement. J Am Board Fam Med. 2020; 33(5): 655-664. PMID: 32989060.

Ye J. Pediatric mental and behavioral health in the period of quarantine and social distancing with COVID-19. JMIR Pediatr Parent. 2020 Jul 28;3(2):e19867. PMID: 32634105; PMCID: PMC7389340.

Ye, J., Yao, L., Shen, J., Janarthanam, R., & Luo, Y. (2020). Predicting mortality in critically ill patients with diabetes using machine learning and clinical notes. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 20(11), 1-7. PMID: 33380338 PMCID: PMC7772896

Jingzhi (Kevin) Yu

Entry year: 2020

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Justin B Starren, MD, PhD, FACMI

Bio: Kevin received his B.A. from Northwestern University in Economics and Biology. After graduation, he has been working as a data analyst focusing on health informatics studies on cardiovascular disease outcomes and supporting large research networks such as CAPriCORN, PCORnet, eMERGE, and the All of Us Research Program. He also has industry experience from working as a strategy intern at DaVita Inc. His current research interests include integrating external data sources (sensor data, claims data, patient-reported outcomes, etc.) with Electronic Health Records (EHR) and designing next generation of EHR-based tools and applications for physicians and patients to improve cardiovascular outcomes.

Yuanzhi Yu

Entry year: 2022

Program:  Biostatistics (BIOSTAT)

Advisor: Lihui Zhao, PhD

Bio: Yuanzhi completed his undergraduate degree in Life Science and Biotechnology at Wuhan University and his master’s degree in Biostatistics at the Columbia University. His previous works include proposing new imputation method to correct exposure mixture measurement errors in environmental health data and investigating association between chronic disease and metabolomics by Bayesian approaches and machine leaning methods. His research interests are in missing data, machine learning and precision medicine, and he aims to create innovative statistical methods that can extract meaningful insights into complex human diseases and environmental health.

Jiafeng (Jay) Zhu

Entry year: 2022

Program:  Biostatistics (BIOSTAT)

Advisor: Lihui Zhao, PhD

Bio: Jiafeng (Jay) Zhu is currently a research associate at Johns Hopkin School of Public Health joining the new Biostatistics track of HSIP in Fall 2022. Jay got his B.S. degree at Zhejiang University, China. He got two M.S. degree at Virginia Tech and has been working as research associate for three years at JHU. His research includes study in longitudinal data and aging.  In his PhD study, Jay would like to explore new statistical/biostatistical methods as well as cooperate with students in the HSIP and people over the university in different disciplines.