Distinguished Service to SER Award
George Kaplan
George A. Kaplan, Ph.D. is the Thomas Francis Collegiate Emeritus Professor of Public Health and Epidemiology in the School of Public Health, a Research Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Social Research, Founder and former Director of the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health, all at the University of Michigan. He was Chair of the Department of Epidemiology from 1996-2003. He is also Senior Advisor for the Scholars and Fellows Programs at The Institute for Integrative Health in Baltimore.
Among his honors are elected membership in the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Social Insurance, the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, and presidency of the Society for Epidemiologic Research. Professor Kaplan was also the first public health scientist to be invited to address the Nobel Forum at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Read more
Kenneth Rothman Career Accomplishment Award
Beate Ritz
Beate Ritz MD, Ph.D. is a Professor of Epidemiology at the Fielding School of Public Health with appointments in Environmental Health Sciences and Neurology, and the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at UCLA. Her primary research interests are occupational and environmental exposures and chronic diseases originating in the prenatal period (adverse birth outcomes and neurodevelopment) as well as neurodegenerative disorders (Parkinson’s and Alzheimer disease). Her research developed geographic information system (GIS)-based exposure assessment tools for air pollution and pesticide exposures, and also employs omics tools including metabolomic and methylomic approaches to study interactions between environmental and genetic or biologic factors at both ends of the lifespan. Read more
Noel Weiss and Tom Koepsell Excellence in Education Award
Lauren A. Wise
Dr. Wise is Professor of Epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH), where she teaches graduate-level courses on reproductive epidemiology and cohort study design. Her primary research goals are to identify modifiable determinants of subfertility, pregnancy loss, and gynecologic disorders (e.g., uterine fibroids), focusing on populations that are disproportionately affected by these conditions. She is Principal Investigator of Pregnancy Study Online (PRESTO), a NICHD-funded North American web-based preconception cohort study of reproductive health (http://presto.bu.edu). She is also a Co-Principal Investigator of the Study of Environment Lifestyle and Fibroids (SELF), a prospective ultrasound study of 1,693 self-identified Black participants being followed for fibroid incidence during a 10-year period. In this cohort, she examines the role of endocrine-disrupting chemicals and fibroids, and the extent to which environmental contaminants explain the stark racial disparity in this debilitating gynecologic disease. Read more
Carol J. Rowland Hogue Mid Career Award
Whitney Robinson
Whitney Robinson specializes in epidemiologic methods for using “big data” to understand racial/ethnic and gender inequities in health and health care. Dr. Robinson is an Associate Professor (pending) in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department at Duke University School of Medicine. Her current research uses health care system data to figure out why Black women in the U.S. South are treated with hysterectomy at high rates at relatively young ages. In addition, Dr. Robinson has a strong interest in developing novel approaches for using regression-based modeling to understand causes of population-level health inequalities. Other work includes surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity in perinatal sentinel populations in North Carolina and under-researched causes of racial/ethnic and gender differences in breast cancer, prostate cancer, and obesity prevalence. Unifying themes of Dr. Robinson’s research are intersectionality, the public health critical race praxis, and life course theory.
Sherman James Diverse & Inclusive Award
Lorraine T. Dean
Dr. Dean is Associate Professor in Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. As a social epidemiologist, her work focuses on privilege and health, including social (racism, discrimination, social capital) and economic (consumer credit, socioeconomic position) determinants of disparities in cancer and HIV. She has led several studies in this area as PI of NIH and Center for AIDS Research grants. She holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate in Social Epidemiology from Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Her early career opportunities as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, which she completed in 2003 as a first-generation under-represented minority college student, paved the way to a year in Venezuela conducting breast cancer research under the J. William Fulbright Program. Prior to her time on faculty, she coordinated over $14 million of activities in both State- and federally-funded tobacco control initiatives in Philadelphia which led to a reduction in smoking for 25,000 residents. Thus, her research is inspired by building the evidence-base on which policies are made for those at risk of chronic disease.
Marshall Joffe Methods Award
Stephen Cole
Stephen R. Cole works to build robust, accurate, and impactful knowledge at the intersection of epidemiology and statistics. He is interested in study designs and analyses that accurately estimate parameters of central interest to population-health scientists. These study designs include randomized experiments and observational studies. In particular, he is interested in infectious diseases, primarily HIV, and birth outcomes.
Brian MacMahon Early Career Epidemiologist Award
Maya Mathur
Maya Mathur is an Assistant Professor at the Stanford University Quantitative Sciences Unit. Her statistical research develops methods for sensitivity analysis and for evidence synthesis, particularly meta-analysis. Her substantive research focuses on behavior and health and the experimental cognitive sciences.
Lilienfeld Postdoctoral Prize Paper Award
Alina Schnake–Mahl
Alina Schnake-Mahl, ScD, MPH, is an Assistant Research Professor in the Urban Health Collaborative and the Department of Health Policy and Management at Drexel’s Dornsife School of Public Health. She is also of the Policy Core at the Drexel School of Public Health Urban Health Collaborative. She is a social epidemiologist and health services researcher, and her primary research interest is in the social and political determinants of health inequities. Her current work aims to identify the compositional and contextual features of places — including neighborhood factors, social policies, and governance structures — that are associated with health disparities. Her policy work focuses on occupational- and housing-related social policies. Read more
FINALISTS
Vishal Midya, Mount Sinai
Laura Schummers, University of British Columbia
Yaguang Wei, Harvard University
Tyroler Student Prize Paper Award
Julie Petersen
Julie M. Petersen received her PhD in Epidemiology from the Boston University School of Public Health in 2021 and is currently a postdoctoral associate at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Her research aims to inform clinical guidelines for pregnancy (e.g., birth spacing, diet and vitamin supplementation, weight gain) to prevent adverse pregnancy outcomes like congenital malformations, fetal growth restriction, and preterm birth. Her methodological interests include the relative benefit of novel methodologies, such as machine learning, versus conventional analytic approaches and bias analysis to account for sources of systematic error.