The control and administration of SER is vested in an Executive Committee, which, as per SER bylaws, includes a President, Past-President, President-Elect, five Members at large and an Executive Director. All positions, except for the Executive Director, are elected individually by majority vote of the members voting.
Wendy Nembhard
President
Dr. Wendy Nembhard is a tenured professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), Fay W Boozman College of Public Health, and a tenured professor in the UAMS College of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics in Little Rock, Arkansas. She is also the director of the Arkansas Center for Birth Defects Research and Prevention. She is the current chair of the Board of Directors for the National Birth Defects Prevention Network and serves on the Medical Advisory Board of the National Conquering Congenital Heart Defect Association. Read more
Brian W. Whitcomb
President Elect
Brian W. Whitcomb is Professor of Epidemiology and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences. His research is in the areas of reproductive health, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and related women’s health outcomes, with a focus on molecular determinants, and epidemiologic methods for biomarkers and laboratory data.
Dr. Whitcomb received his PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and completed postdoctoral training in reproductive epidemiology and epidemiologic methods research in the Division of Intramural Population Health Research at NICHD.
BA Molecular and Cell Biology, UC Berkeley, 1994
PhD, Epidemiology, University of Maryland Baltimore, 2006
Contact
Department of Biostatistics
and Epidemiology
University of Massachusetts
715 N Pleasant Street
Amherst, MA 01002
e-mail: bwhitcom@umass.edu
Yvette Cozier
Past President
Dr. Cozier is an investigator on the Black Women’s Health Study (BWHS) and the BWHS Sarcoidosis Study at the Slone Epidemiology Center. Her research interests include social and genetic determinants of health in African-American women — specifically, the influence of psychosocial stressors (e.g., racism, neighborhood socioeconomic status), and genetics in the development of cancer, cardiometabolic, and immune-mediated diseases (sarcoidosis, lupus). Additional research interests include oral health, and the role that religiosity/spirituality and the faith community, particularly the black church, plays in health promotion/disease prevention in the Black community.
- Boston University School of Public Health, DSc Field of Study: Epidemiology
- Boston University School of Public Health, MPH Field of Study: Epidemiology
- Harvard University Extension School, BA Field of Study: Liberal Arts
Contact
Milena Gianfrancesco
Member At Large (Mentoring)
Milena Gianfrancesco, PhD, MPH is the Genetic Epidemiology Lead within the Global Medical Real-World Evidence & Epidemiology group at Pfizer, Inc. She is also Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Gianfrancesco’s research interests include identification of risk factors associated with disease onset and progression in chronic diseases, particularly inflammatory and immune-related conditions. Her work integrates genetic and observational data such as electronic health records with machine learning and causal inference methods.
Monique Brown
Member At Large (Awards)
Dr. Monique J. Brown is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Arnold School of Public Health (ASPH) at the University of South Carolina. She is also a Faculty Affiliate in the SmartState Center for Healthcare Quality, the Rural and Minority Health Research Center and the Office for the Study on Aging. She is also Deputy Director of the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Leadership, Education, and Advancement in Undergraduate Pathways (LEAP) Program. She completed a postdoctoral research fellowship and was a Research Assistant Professor in the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences at the University of South Florida (USF). Read more
Bryan James
Member At Large (Awards)
Bryan D. James, PhD, is an epidemiologist with the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center and an associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Epidemiology Research. His research focuses on identifying risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, cognitive decline and disability at the population level. In particular, he is interested in social and lifestyle factors that can protect against the clinical manifestation of disease pathology in the aging brain. He is currently funded by the National Institute on Aging to examine why hospitalization can lead to cognitive problems in some older persons. James received his PhD in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2009 and Master of Bioethics degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001. He joined the RADC in 2009. James is an active member of the Alzheimer’s Association International Society to Advance Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment (ISTAART), the Gerontological Society of America (GSA), and the Society for Epidemiological Research (SER), for which he co-chairs the Publications Committee and leads the SER Podcast initiative, “Epidemiology Counts”. He has published extensively in the areas of cognitive aging, gerontology, neuroepidemiology, and research ethics. Since 2011, Dr. James has contributed to the Alzheimer’s Association Facts & Figures annual report.
- BS, Utah State University, 2002
- SM, Harvard University, 2006
- PhD, University of North Carolina, 2009
Contact
RUSH University
600 S. Paulina St.
Chicago, Illinois 60612
Email: Bryan_James@rush.edu
Website: https://www.rushu.rush.edu/faculty/bryan-d-james-phd
Brenda Heaton
Member at Large (Membership)
Brenda Heaton, PhD, MPH is the Associate Dean for Research and Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Health Services Research at the University of Utah School of Dentistry. She is also Adjunct Associate Professor of Population Health Sciences in the University of Utah School of Medicine. Dr. Heaton’s primary research interests include the study of oral health equity through research that investigates the social, economic, and political drivers of dental care access, utilization, and quality. Her research utilizes observational epidemiology to investigate the relationship between oral health and overall health and well-being and applies complex systems science approaches to investigate the causal mechanisms responsible for the emergence of oral health disparities.
- PhD, Boston University School of Public Health, Epidemiology
- MPH, Boston University School of Public Health, Epidemiology
- BS, Brigham Young University, Health Sciences
Contact
brenda.heaton@hsc.utah.edu
Peter Tennant
Member at Large (Communications)
Associate Professor of Health Data Science at Leeds Institute for Data Analytics and Fellow of the Turing Institute. My research focusses on the translation and use of causal inference methods to improve analysis of real-world data in health and social science.
- Data Science; Epidemiology; Biostatistics; Causal Inference; Causal Diagrams; Directed Acyclic Graphs; Maternal and Child Health; Pregnancy; Obesity; Diabetes
Contact
Email: P.W.G.Tennant@leeds.ac.uk
Address: Leeds Institute for Data Analytics, Level 11 Worsley Building, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9NL
X/BlueSky:
@PWGTennant
Faculty Page: tinyurl.com/pwgtennant
Anthony J. Nixon, Jr.
SPC President
Anthony J. Nixon, Jr. is a doctoral student in the PhD Public Health Sciences program at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He is a perinatal epidemiologist who focuses on family health and well-being. His research interests focus on fatherhood and complex social issues during the perinatal period, with a particular emphasis on understanding the impact of fathers’ contribution to maternal, infant, and family health outcomes. He is also interested in exploring the intersection of race, gender, and socioeconomic status in shaping fatherhood experiences and health disparities. His work has included exploratory and descriptive studies in maternal and infant mortality, spatial epidemiology, social epidemiology, social networks, public health surveillance, and access to perinatal & healthcare services.
His dedication to public health has been acknowledged through several awards and honors. These include the Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship with the Office of the Provost and the Race & Ethnicity Scholars program with the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity at Washington University in St. Louis. He is committed to advancing research in health equity and social justice with a focus on improving health outcomes for Black communities.
- BS, Biology, Morehouse College, 2012
- MPH, Epidemiology, The Ohio State University, 2017
Contact
Email: nixonanthonyj@wustl.edu