Current Students

Saki Amagai

Entry year: 2021

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Yuan Luo, PhD

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.

Benjamin Barrett

Entry year: 2021

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Abel Kho, MD

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. His research in HSIP is focused on helping to develop a Heat Vulnerability Index for the city of Chicago that is centered on community engagement and collaboration, generating prevalence estimates of chronic disease from electronic health record data in collaboration with the Chicago Department of Public Health, and using large language models for unsupervised phenotyping within electronic health records.

Mercy Berchie

Entry year: 2023

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Norrina Bai Allen, PhD

Bio:

Mercy received her Doctor of Optometry degree from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. Prior to joining HSIP, she worked as an intern Optometrist and a research and teaching assistant at the Department of Optometry and Vision Science at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. Her research interests lie in using informatics tools and methodologies to improve health and healthcare, particularly ophthalmic diseases.

Chelsea Brown

Entry year: 2024

Program:  Social Sciences and Health (SSH)

Advisor: Chris Rini, PhD

Bio: Chelsea's work encompasses the development and testing of psychosocial mHealth interventions. She has experience in agile digital health product management and has collaborated on the development and research of several algorithmic mHealth interventions aimed at promoting well-being. Chelsea earned a B.M. in Music Therapy from the University of the Pacific. She completed post-baccalaureate research associate positions at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the UCLA Medical Center, where she investigated a digital mindfulness intervention for improving focus in teens and explored the role of music therapy interventions in reducing perinatal stress. She has co-authored five publications related to digital interventions, mindfulness, and therapeutic music. Currently, she serves as a co-investigator for an A2 Pilot Award, which aims to utilize machine learning to improve cultural fit for a psychosocial intervention targeting rural older adults at risk for Alzheimer's disease. Chelsea is dedicated to enhancing digital mental health delivery and intervention fit to enhance treatment adherence and accessibility for those who need it most.

Hannah Cheng

Entry year: 2024

Program:  Social Sciences and Health (SSH)

Advisor: Chris Rini, PhD

Bio: Hannah received her BS in Neuroscience and Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh and her MS in Epidemiology and Clinical Research from Stanford University. Before joining HSIP, Hannah worked as a senior research analyst at the Stanford Center for Dissemination and Implementation, where she examined how to effectively and efficiently improve access to addiction treatments. She was also a project manager at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System contributing to research aimed at improving care for underserved Veterans living with HIV, chronic pain, and/or opioid use disorder. Her long-term goal is to leverage implementation science to transform the status quo of healthcare access so that everyone can receive high-quality medical care and live their healthiest life.

Lixuan Cong

Entry year: 2020

Program:  Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety (HQPS)

Advisor: Anne Stey, MD & Andrew Berry, PhD, MS

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: Yuan Luo, PhD

Bio:

Ngoc Duong

Entry year: 2023

Program:  Biostatistics (BIOSTAT)

Advisor: Lucia Petito, PhD & Lihui Zhao, PhD

Bio: Ngoc obtained his Master's degree in Biostatistics from Columbia University. He then worked as a data analyst in the Department of Pediatrics, Columbia University, where he applied statistical methods to answer questions in population health and health services research. He is interested in learning new methodologies and innovative applications of statistics to help drive knowledge discovery in the health sciences.

Arielle Eagan

Entry year: 2021

Program:  Social Sciences and Health (SSH)

Advisor: Lisa R Hirschhorn, MD, MPH

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.

Chris Eyo

Entry year: 2023

Program:  Social Sciences and Health (SSH)

Advisor: Brian Mustanski, PhD

Bio: Chris received a BS in Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2018 and an MA in Adolescent Chemistry Education from Relay Graduate School of Education in 2021. Prior to Northwestern, Chris designed and taught university English courses in Leticia, Colombia through The Fulbright Program, and high school chemistry in Bronx, NY. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic heavily influenced his decision to pivot to medicine, and after 3 years teaching, he joined the MD/PhD program at Feinberg School of Medicine and the Impact Institute. He is broadly interested in LGBTQIA2S+ [children's] health, policy, and education. Long-term he would like to use his clinical and research training primarily to inform local and federal legislation that govern how racial, sexual, and gender minorities navigate healthcare spaces. His (evolving) clinical interests include pediatrics, emergency medicine, infectious disease, and microbiology. His current graduate research leverages the RADAR study, a long-running multilevel assessment of risk and protective factors for HIV transmission and substance use, to explore barriers and facilitators of substance use disclosure in clinical settings among SGM patients.

Peter Graffy

Entry year: 2021

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Abel Kho, MD

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 the Surgical Outcomes and Quality Improvement Center (SOQIC) at Northwestern. 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.

Vijeeth Guggilla

Entry year: 2023

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Theresa Walunas, PhD

Bio: Vijeeth is a current NU MSTP student joining HSIP's Health and Biomedical Informatics track. He received his B.S. in Computer Science and Biological Chemistry with a concentration in Neuroscience from Grinnell College in 2021. During his PhD, Vijeeth is interested in exploring how medical data can be leveraged in predictive contexts that can be translated into tangible clinical practice improvements. He hopes to combine his training from HSIP and medical school to come up with new ways of thinking about and taking advantage of the abundance of available medical data. Outside of school and lab, Vijeeth enjoys playing video games/board games and going to various shows in the Chicago area with his friends.

Sae Han

Entry year: 2020

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Nicholas Soulakis, PhD

Bio: Sae earned her B.S. in Human Biology, Health, and Society from Cornell University and her MPH in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University. Before beginning her PhD program, she was a Health Communications Fellow at the National Cancer Institute, and later, held roles as a Program Analyst, Clinical Protocol Coordinator, and Scientific Program Manager at the National Institute on Aging. Her research interests lie in public health informatics, with her dissertation focusing on integrating and utilizing LLMs in the ontology development process.

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.

Hyojung Jang

Entry year: 2023

Program:  Biostatistics (BIOSTAT)

Advisor: Lili Zhao, PhD, MS

Bio: Hyojung received her B.S. and M.S. in Applied Mathematics & Statistics from Stony Brook University. Her fields of interest includes: Microbiome, Machine Learning, Causal Inference, Survival Analysis, and Personalized Medicine. She plans to study statistical theories and methods more deeply at the beginning of my PhD training. Hyojung will then dig deeper into new research topics and develop new statistical methods eventually. Furthermore, she hopes to participate in comprehensive biomedical studies in interdisciplinary collaborations with experts in the field.

Hanzi (Maria) Jiang

Entry year: 2023

Program:  Health Services and Outcomes Research (HSOR)

Advisor: Megan McHugh, PhD

Bio: Hanzi (Maria) Jiang received her Master's in Public Policy from the University of Chicago. Upon graduating, Hanzi served as a Data Analyst at West Side United of Rush University Medical Center. Her work focused on evaluating community health initiatives on Chicago's West Side through data analysis and community-based participatory research. Hanzi's research interest lies in the intersection between social epidemiology and health services research. As a PhD student at HSIP, Hanzi would like to continue exploring research methods that utilize epidemiologic, spatial, and socioeconomic data for a better understanding of the impact of health inequity,  as well as econometrics methods to advance the evaluations of policy interventions.

Amy Krefman

Entry year: 2024

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Theresa Walunas, PhD

Bio:

Amy received a B.A. in Art History from Dartmouth College and an M.S. in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Northwestern University. Prior to entering HSIP, she worked in the Department of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern, most recently as Assistant Director of Data and Statistics for the Northwestern University Data Analysis and Coordinating Center (NUDACC). Past research includes longitudinal patterns in cardiovascular health, data harmonization of cardiovascular and dementia-related data, and estimating family trees using electronic health records. Her research interests include data visualization, harmonization, communication, and best practices for data collection and management in reproducible research.

Cheol Min (Matthew) Lee

Entry year: 2023

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Nelson Sanchez-Pinto, MD, MBI, FAMIA

Bio: Cheol Min (Matthew) received his Doctor of Pharmacy degree at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. Before joining HSIP, he studied Biomedical Informatics at Washington University in St. Louis and gained research experience on Alzheimer's Diseases and aging at WashU NeuroGenomics and Informatics Center. At Northwestern, Matthew will continue to study Health and Biomedical Informatics and aim to enhance biomedicine by leveraging informatics. He is also a big fan of soccer and enjoys watching movies.

Yueming Liu

Entry year: 2022

Program:  Biostatistics (BIOSTAT)

Advisor: Denise Scholtens, 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: Allen Heinemann, 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 spinal cord injury.

Jake Mackie

Entry year: 2024

Program:  Health Services and Outcomes Research (HSOR)

Advisor: Lucy Bilaver, PhD

Bio: Jake received his MS in Data Science from the University of Kentucky, where he studied applications of machine learning in the prediction of healthcare utilization. Prior to joining HSIP, Jake was health policy and health services researcher in a joint position between the University of Kentucky's Institute for Biomedical Informatics and the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services. At Northwestern, he intends to further explore methodologies to better understand geographic disparities in health services utilization and health risk factors.

Chuanfen Ni

Entry year: 2022

Program:  Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety (HQPS)

Advisor: Nandita Nadig, MD, MS

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.

Tim Schwirtlich

Entry year: 2023

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Abel Kho, MD

Bio: Tim has a background in healthcare industry, including integrated B.Sc. Computer Science and M.Sc. Data Science degrees. In his previous role as a R&D Software Engineer at Roche he was developing medical software applications and leading innovation initiatives in the area of Digital Health & Clinical Decision support. Based on his experience with the emerging health data standard HL7 FHIR, he intends to focus his research on the intersection of medical interoperability and Clinical Decision Support. Leveraging cutting-edge AI capabilities his goal is to make an impact in advancing personalized care for patients and providing relief to care providers. In his free time, Tim is a big sports fan, playing soccer & tennis himself but also loves trying out any new kinds of sports.

Kate Fiona Simpson

Entry year: 2025

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Theresa Walunas, PhD

Bio: Kate is a current NU MSTP student joining HSIP’s Health and Biomedical Informatics track. She received her B.A. in Biology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2019 and subsequently completed the postbaccalaureate intramural research training program at the NIH. During her PhD, Kate hopes to use electronic health record and biorepository data to study inflammatory airway diseases like pneumonia and asthma. She hopes to use her PhD and MD training to develop new informatics tools to improve patient care. Outside of school and lab, Kate enjoys spending time outdoors with her partner, son, and King Charles Spaniel.

Mindy Szeto

Entry year: 2022

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Donald M Lloyd-Jones, MD, ScM

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.

Masayuki Teramoto

Entry year: 2024

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Theresa Walunas, PhD

Bio: Masayuki Teramoto (Masa) is a physician-scientist with expertise in cardiovascular prevention. He received his medical degree from Osaka University, a Master of Public Health from Harvard University, and a Master of Advanced Studies in Clinical Research with a specialization in Data Science from UCSF. His research leverages data science and informatics techniques, and focuses on the emerging field of Neurocardiology and the life-course approach to the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases.

Tubanji Walubita

Entry year: 2021

Program:  Social Sciences and Health (SSH)

Advisor: Jessica Schleider, PhD

Bio: Tubanji (she/her) earned a B.A. in Biology and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies from Lake Forest College. She then joined the NIH Postbaccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP) at UMass Chan Medical School, where she studied sexual orientation-based disparities in outcomes such as allostatic load, mental distress, and healthcare satisfaction. As a clinical research assistant at UMass Chan, Tubanji expanded her focus on health disparities by examining racial and ethnic differences in COVID-19 exposure and susceptibility. At Northwestern University, she furthered this work by investigating victimization and bullying disparities among sexual minority adolescents, gaining deeper insights into the challenges faced by underserved communities. Currently, Tubanji’s research bridges health disparities and intervention science. She is dedicated to designing tailored mental health interventions for LGBTQ+ individuals and people of color, combining disparities research with community-engaged approaches. Through her work, Tubanji seeks to illuminate systemic inequities, empower marginalized populations, and advance health equity.

Xicheng Xie

Entry year: 2024

Program:  Biostatistics (BIOSTAT)

Advisor: Lihui Zuo, PhD

Bio: Xicheng earned his bachelor's degree in Environmental Science from Shanghai Jiaotong University and subsequently pursued a master’s degree in Biostatistics from Columbia University. His prior research pursuits encompass environmental epidemiology, Bayesian statistics, longitudinal analysis, unsupervised learning, and multi-omics data integration. He contributed as a research assistant to various projects, including building Bayesian spatial-temporal models for monitoring heat stress variation at the census tract level across New York State and developing clustering methods for disease subtyping via multi-omics data integration. In his doctoral studies, he aims to delve deeper into methodological advancements and their applications within data science, statistics, and precision medicine.

Yuanzhi (Fisher) Yu

Entry year: 2022

Program:  Biostatistics (BIOSTAT)

Advisor: Denise Scholtens, 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.

Jiaqi Zhou

Entry year: 2024

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Theresa Walunas, PhD

Bio: Jiaqi Zhou holds a B.S. in Biology from Wuhan University and an M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Tsinghua University. Jiaqi is interested in developing large multimodal models for biomedical applications, including machine learning, integrative genomic analysis, and natural language processing. Her works aim to derive insights from increasingly complex biological datasets, meet the needs of deeper disease interpretation, and improve clinical practice.

Xinyu Zhou

Entry year: 2024

Program:  Health and Biomedical Informatics (HBMI)

Advisor: Theresa Walunas, PhD

Bio: Xinyu obtained his bachelor's degree from Fudan University and his master's degree from Yale University. His research focuses on natural language processing (NLP), public health informatics, and clinical NLP.

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. 

Scott Zuo

Entry year: 2024

Program:  Biostatistics (BIOSTAT)

Advisor: Lihui Zuo, PhD

Bio: Scott is a current student joining HSIP's Biostatistics track. He earned his BS in Statistics and Operations Research from Southern Methodist University (SMU) and his Master's in Biostatistics from Yale. His research focuses on causal inference and the application of statistical methodologies in clinical trials to enhance the precision of treatment effect estimates and decision-making in healthcare.