Career development events featuring experts in the field on a specific topic area. Some events are organized by the Student and Postdoc Committee. Events may be live webinar, or pre-recorded events.

Upcoming Events

"Managing your Mentor" March 22, 2023, 12:00pm -1:30pm EST

Mentorship is a key determinant of success for emerging epidemiologists. In this session, we will extend the corporate concept of “managing up” to mentoring in the field of epidemiology, whereby the mentee takes ownership of the mentoring relationship by selecting a developmental network, establishing structure in the mentoring relationship, and aligning mentoring expectations.

Moderator

Laura Corlin

BIO

Dr. Laura Corlin is an Assistant Professor in Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University. She earned her MS and PhD in Environmental Health through Tufts School of Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Cardiovascular Epidemiology at the Boston University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on developing and applying new methods to assess the health effects of environmental mixtures in observational studies. Through her exposure assessment and environmental epidemiology research, Dr. Corlin seeks to mitigate environmental health disparities. Dr. Corlin also enjoys working with students in and out of the classroom.

Session Chair

Kimberly Page

BIO

Dr. Kimberly Page, Ph.D., MPH, MS, is an infectious disease epidemiologist whose research has focused on hepatitis C virus (HCV) and HIV infections in multiple high risk populations. She has led prospective cohort studies, clinical trials and implementation science research. She received her PhD at University of California at Berkeley and held a faculty position at University of California San Francisco for 17 years after completing a post-doctoral fellowship there. She is a Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Preventive Medicine, in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center. Currently, she is very active as the PI for the Southwest Node of the NIDA Clinical Trials Network which aims to advance NIDA’s goals of expanding and research and infrastructure to conduct multi-site studies of promising science-based prevention, therapies, and the treatment delivery to patients with substance use disorders in a variety of treatment settings and with diverse populations.

Presenter

Akshay Sood
Director of Faculty Affairs at the UNM HSC

BIO

Akshay Sood, the new interim Director of Faculty Affairs at the UNM HSC, is a tenured Distinguished Professor, Regents Professor, and the founding Miners’ Colfax Medical Center Endowed Chair at the University of New Mexico’s School of Medicine. Dr. Sood received his postdoctoral fellowship in Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
Dr. Sood’s research has focused on non-smoking host risk factors for obstructive lung diseases, including inhalational dust exposure. Continuously federally funded since 2006, he has received funding from the NHLBI, NIEHS, NCATS, NIGMS, AHRQ, PCORI and various HRSA-funded and Foundation grants.
Passionate about the role of mentoring junior faculty, he leads the UNM HSC Faculty Mentor Development Program which has been adopted by 13 institutions across seven states. He is the Assistant Dean of Mentoring and Faculty Retention at the UNM School of Medicine Office of Faculty Affairs and Career Development and Associate Director of the Mentoring Core of the Mountain West-CTR-IN Professional Development Core. He is a national expert on faculty development and retention, with presentations at the UNM Mentoring Conference/AAMC. His work on faculty development has been published in Academic Medicine, Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, and the Chronicle of Mentoring and Coaching. His current research interest is on the assessment of the institutional mentoring climate, strategies to improve URM faculty retention, and innovative mentor development initiatives. He is the P.I. of a multi-institutional U01 grant on the “Effectiveness of Innovative Research Mentor Interventions among Underrepresented Minority Faculty in the Southwest (NIGMS U01GM132175-01)”.
Dr. Sood is an Asian American faculty of international origin who is a religious minority, and speaks three languages. He has set up UNM as a regional center of excellence in occupational lung disease. He provides specialist care to diverse underserved communities through a rural clinic in Raton, New Mexico. Author of over 170 publications, he has worked with multidisciplinary and multi-institutional teams of investigators studying large cohorts. He is a father of two teens. Married to an integrative pediatrics physician, he recently celebrated his 25th wedding anniversary. He has traveled to over 30 countries in five continents

"Virtual Affinity Groups" March 29, 2023, 12:00pm -2:00pm EST

A Virtual Affinity Group Event hosted by the SER International Subcommittee in collaboration with the SER Equity Subcommittee (Chair, Kezhen Fei) and SER–SPC Education Co–Chairs (Drs. Estela Blanco and Andreas Teferra). The purpose is to nurture and engage SER’s membership (both international and domestic) by providing an accessible opportunity to participate in a virtual Affinity Group event with Breakout Sessions.

Session Chair

Ryan M. Andrews, PhD MHS
Boston University

Session Chair

Martine Elbejjani
American University of Beirut

BIO

Martine Elbejjani is an assistant professor and a neuro–epidemiologist at the American University of Beirut (Clinical Research Institute and Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine). Her research is centered on studying the development and manifestation of brain, cognitive, and mental health disorders in older age. She is particularly interested in studying the interplay between these disorders as well as their risk trajectories across the life–course, with a focus on social and cardiovascular risk factors. She is the director of the Research Education Unit at the Clinical Research Institute (Faculty of Medicine, American University of Beirut), a unit that aims to build research capacities and competencies through various workshop and training offerings. She is also the director of the Faculty Advancement Program in clinical research and the co–director of the medical curriculum’s Scholarly Concertation Track at the AUB Faculty of Medicine, two programs aiming at promoting and advancing health and clinical research capacities. She holds a BSc and MSc in psychiatric genetics and PhD in neuroepidemiology from McGill University. Prior to joining AUB, she completed a three–year postdoctoral fellowship at the neuroepidemiology unit at the National Institute on Aging (NIH)

Moderator

Kezhen Fei
CUNY SPH. Repare Therapeutics

BIO

Kezhen Fei has worked as a biostatistician for over 20 years in chronic disease prevention,
treatment, and care delivery. Ms. Fei received her Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the City University of New
York School of Public Health and an M.S. in Statistics from Stony Brook University. Her research interests
include study design, inferential statistics, selection bias, Mendelian randomization, missing data, and
patient–reported outcomes.

Moderator

Andreas Teferra
Nationwide Children’s Hospital

BIO

Andreas Teferra, PhD, MS, is an epidemiologist and health services researcher with a background in
clinical nursing and public health research. He currently works as a Research Scientist at the Center for
Child Health Equity and Outcomes Research at the Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide
Children’s Hospital. Broadly, he is interested in translational epidemiologic and population–based studies
focused on underserved and at–risk populations that can inspire health policy and decision–making. His
research has covered topics related to tobacco use and regulation, health and healthcare disparities,
adolescent health behavior, and global health.

Moderator

Shahriar Zamani
University of Cambridge, Early Cancer Institute

BIO

I am a Ph.D. student at the Department of Oncology and the Early Cancer Institute in the Fitzgerald
Group. My work mostly focuses on the epidemiology, early detection, and prevention of gastrointestinal
cancers, including pre–malignant conditions. I have experience working with large population–based
cohorts, designing molecular epidemiology studies, and applying bioinformatic tools to better
understand processes that drive cancer. I aim to improve our understanding of cancer to better prevent,
detect, and manage these conditions to reduce the public health burden of this disease.

Moderator

Nnaemeka Odo
HEOR, Optum Life Sciences

BIO

Dr. Odo is a physician with 10+ years of experience working with observational health data. He has been primary consulting epidemiologist on health-related cases providing expert scientific opinions related to epidemiologic methods, bias, and causality, and part of multidisciplinary project teams on various real-world evidence (RWE), pharmacoepidemiology, HEOR, and market access/entry projects. He has collaborated on database analyses for breast cancer risk factors, as well as on projects related to retrospective RWE generation, market entry analysis, pharmacovigilance studies, systematic literature reviews and summaries, including operations lead on project looking at RWD acquisition and utilization for RWE generation. He has presented research findings at various scientific meetings and authored peer-reviewed original research publications on occupational health issues such as workplace respirable particles in mining and their association with cancer and non-cancer respiratory outcomes, including methodological considerations with spirometry testing; personal protective practices; and burnout as a workplace hazard.

Moderator

Augusto Cesar Ferreira De Moraes
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

BIO

I’m an Epidemiologist Assistant Professor at the (UTHealth Houston) The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Public Health Austin Campus, Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Environmental Science (EHGES). And Faculty Member of the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living.

B.Sc. in Kinesiology, Residency in Human Physiology, M.Sc. in Pediatrics, and 2 Ph.D. diplomas: Epidemiology earned from the Medical School, the University of Sao Paulo other in Health Science earned from the Faculty of Health Sciences of the University of Zaragoza. Postdoctoral at the Medical School, the University of São Paulo, and Postdoctoral Fellow at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology.

My current research interests include determinants of cardiovascular health, multiple lifestyle-related behaviors, brain cognitive development, diagnostic/predictive methods, and their possible interactions with environmental determinants in young people from low- and high-income countries, including countries in North America, Latin America, and Europe, evidence-based medicine and public health, and the effectiveness of health behaviors promotion.

Moderator

Jen Dykxhoorn
UCL Division of Psychiatry and UCL, Primary Care and Population Health

BIO

Jen Dykxhoorn is a psychiatric epidemiologist and public mental health expert. She completed her undergraduate and master’s degrees in Canada (Queen’s University and University of Ottawa, respectively). She completed her PhD at UCL (UK) and is currently a Senior Research Fellow/Assistant Professor at UCL. Her research interests include the social and environmental determinants of mental illnesses, longitudinal data analysis, and simulation
modelling.

"The Power of Physician-Epidemiologist Teams In Clinical Practice and Research to Advance Population Health" April 5, 2023, 12:00pm -1:00pm EST

In this session experts from the fields of medicine and epidemiology will provide evidence of the importance of physician-epidemiologist collaboration in clinical practice and research settings to improve population health.

Session Chair

Kelli Gribben PhD, MPH
SER CTSI Subcommittee Chair

BIO

Dr. Gribben recently graduated from the University of Nebraska Medical Center with her PhD in Epidemiology. She has experience in both applied epidemiology (CSTE Applied Epidemiology Fellow graduate) and epidemiologic research. Dr. Gribben has been a proud member of SER since 2017, and is currently serving as a member on the SER Membership and Nominations Committee and Chairs the Clinical and Translational Science Institutes (CTSI) Subcommittee.

Presenter

Martine Elbejjani, PhD
American University of Beirut

BIO

Martine Elbejjani is an assistant professor and a neuro-epidemiologist at the American University of Beirut (Clinical Research Institute and Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine). Her research is centered on studying the development and manifestation of brain, cognitive, and mental health disorders in older age. She is particularly interested in studying the interplay between these disorders as well as their risk trajectories across the life-course, with a focus on social and cardiovascular risk factors. She is the director of the Research Education Unit at the Clinical Research Institute (Faculty of Medicine, American University of Beirut), a unit that aims to build research capacities and competencies through various workshop and training offerings. She is also the director of the Faculty Advancement Program in clinical research and the co-director of the medical curriculum’s Scholarly Concertation Track at the AUB Faculty of Medicine, two programs aiming at promoting and advancing health and clinical research capacities. She holds a BSc and MSc in psychiatric genetics and PhD in neuroepidemiology from McGill University. Prior to joining AUB, she completed a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at the neuroepidemiology unit at the National Institute on Aging (NIH).

Presenter

Eran Bellin, MD
Montefiore IT and Albert Einstein College of Medicine

BIO

Dr. Bellin is VP of Clinical IT Research and Development at Montefiore Information Technology and a Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Population Health and Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine where he mentors fellows in the Clinical Research Training Program. Dr. Bellin was the visionary behind Clinical Looking Glass a cohort builder analytic tool with advanced temporal awareness in use at Montefiore since 2004 and powering the Bronx Rhio’s (Regional Health Information Organization) initial analytic efforts. Dr. Bellin was boarded in Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease and trained in Clinical Epidemiology as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at Yale University. From 1994-1997, Dr. Bellin was program Director for the Montefiore Rikers Island Health program providing outpatient medical care for 100,000 unique inmates annually and supervising a staff of 1,100. His current analytic efforts include building advanced analytics for prediction, matching, and analyzing time to multiple event outcomes to extract meaningful inference from observational data.

Dr. Bellin has written three books:
1. Riddles in Accountable Healthcare: A primer to develop analytic intuition for
medical homes and population health.
2. How to ask and answer questions using electronic medical record data
3. Missing Management: Health-Care Analytic Discovery in a Learning Health
System

Moderator

Stephanie Mayne PhD, MHS
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

BIO

Stephanie Mayne, PhD, MHS received her PhD in Epidemiology at Drexel University and her MHS in international Health at Johns Hopkins University. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania. She is the Associate Director of Clinical Epidemiology at Clinical Futures, a research center of emphasis at CHOP. Her research focuses on the impact of home and neighborhood environmental factors on child health, with a particular focus on health behaviors related to future cardiovascular risk (e.g. sleep, diet). Much of her work involves linking geospatial exposures with electronic health record data and partnering with clinician scientists for epidemiological investigations related to pediatric primary care.

Moderator

Elizabeth Yanik PhD, ScM
Washington University School of Medicine

BIO

Dr. Yanik received her master’s degree in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University, her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Institute. In 2016, she joined the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor and transitioned her research to focus on musculoskeletal disease. Much of her research has focused on clinical populations, and a key part of her current role is collaborating with surgeon-scientists to improve the study design, analysis, and interpretation of orthopaedic clinical research.

Capitalism and Health: Critical Epidemiologic Approaches April 19 2023, 12:00 - 1:30pm EST

Since the industrial revolution’s inception, researchers have documented capitalism’s noxious effects on the health of the working class and oppressed. Indeed, in the 1840s, Frederick Engels decried the alarming mortality rates among the English working class, an injustice he deemed “social murder”. 200 years later, health inequities persist and proliferate globally. What explains this phenomenon? While this question has been a primary concern of epidemiology, the answers have not always engaged directly with capitalism, a system that not only structures societal distributions of health-affecting resources, but modulates our very experiences of reality and the production of knowledge within it. Read more

Session Co-Chair

Jerzy Eisenberge-Guyot
Columbia University Mailman

BIO

Jerzy Eisenberg-Guyot is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Psychiatric Epidemiology Training Program at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. His research integrates advanced epidemiologic methods and relational social theories to investigate the effects of novel social factors, like economic exploitation and domination, on inequities in mental illness and other outcomes.

Session Co-Chair

Seth Prins
Columbia University Mailman

BIO

Seth J. Prins is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. He directs the Critical Social Epidemiology Research Collaborative. Dr. Prins studies the collateral consequences of mass incarceration for public health, and how the division and structure of labor influence depression, anxiety, and substance use. He is the principal investigator on a K01 Mentored Research Scientist Development Award K01DA045955-01: Adolescent substance use as determinant and consequence of the school-to- prison pipeline: Disentangling individual risk, social determinants, and group disparities.

Presenter

Arrianna M. Planey
University of North Carolina

BIO

Arrianna Marie Planey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health and a Fellow in the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. She is a health/medical geographer with expertise in measuring and conceptualizing health care access, health and healthcare equity, and spatial epidemiology. Her research and teaching focuses include the application of spatial analytic/statistical/epidemiologic methods to study interactions between health(care) policies, healthcare access and utilization and underlying, population-level health inequities, and identify points of intervention at structural- and system-levels. Dr. Planey’s ongoing research includes collaborative studies of birth outcomes among Black immigrants in segregated neighborhoods, spatial mismatch by race and gender among workers in US metro areas, and the disparate effects of rural hospital closures on acute care access.

Presenter

Danya M. Qato
University of Maryland

BIO

Danya M. Qato is Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, with appointments in the School of Pharmacy and the School of Medicine’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health. Dr. Qato is an epidemiologist, health services researcher and pharmacist, who studies equity in access to medications and the differential and unintended impacts of federal and state policies on adverse health outcomes and high-risk medication use, with particular attention paid to psychotropic agents. Her work also examines how settler colonialism shapes public health; and how epidemiologic methods can either elucidate or elide this relationship. Dr. Qato’s research has been funded by the FDA, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the National Institute on Aging.

Discussant

Usama Bilal
Drexel’s Dornsife School

BIO

Usama Bilal is an assistant professor in the Urban Health Collaborative and the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics at Drexel’s Dornsife School of Public Health.
His primary research interest is the macrosocial determinants of health, with an interest in describing health inequities in urban environments, specifically urban health in Latin American cities (the Urban Health Collaborative’s SALURBAL project); the health consequences of urban and neighborhood dynamics; and the effect of mass-influences (e.g., macroeconomic change) on health and policy modifiers that mitigate/exacerbate these effects.

Language and Rigor: A conversation on the role of language in epidemiology April 26 2023, 12:00 - 1:30pm EST

Language is a powerful tool. What and how we communicate as epidemiologists can influence replication, accuracy of interpretation, and translation of science into policy. Moreover, our use of language reflects our thinking and value systems, reifying structures in society through science. With the description of study populations, we can contribute to erasure, medicalization of bodies, or normalize whose health matters and is worthy of study. Recent reviews have examined language practices within epidemiology, evaluating language with respect to causal inference, gender inclusivity, and communication of race/ethnicity-related methodology. In this webinar, we bring together four perspectives on language in epidemiology, focusing on the broader relationships between language, methodological rigor, and equity. Through this event, we hope to foster discourse on the fundamental role of language in rigorous and impactful research, and our roles – as readers, authors, reviewers, editors, and members of the scientific community – in the evolution of language.

Session Chair

Rae Anne Martinez, MSPH Department of Epidemiology
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill & Carolina Population Center

BIO

Rae Anne Martinez is an Epidemiology PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Martinez is broadly interested in how social-structural determinants are embodied during critical periods of development and may result in later-life health disparities of chronic conditions. She is also interested in exploring historical & contemporary conceptualizations of race and ethnicity in health scholarship and their relationship of these social constructs to health. Martinez was a Flinn Foundation Scholar at the University of Arizona, where she received her B.S. in Molecular & Cellular Biology and a B.A. in Sociology in 2014. She received her MSPH from UNC Chapel Hill in 2019.

Presenter

Nafeesa Andrabi, MA Department of Sociology
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill & Carolina Population Center

BIO

Nafeesa Andrabi is a Sociology PhD Candidate at UNC Chapel Hill, a Biosocial Fellow at the Carolina Population Center, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. Her research focuses broadly on health disparities in the US. In her dissertation, she explores the intersections of race, religion, nativity and geography in relation to maternal stress and adverse birth outcomes among Muslim immigrant women in the US. Nafeesa is also interested in the measurement of race and ethnicity in population health research and how subjective experiences of inequality impact health across the life course. She is a 2023 Mirzayan Science and Technology Graduate Policy Fellow at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Presenter

Noah Haber, PhD RTI International

BIO

Dr. Noah Haber is an interdisciplinary scientist working at the crossroads of causal inference, infectious disease, economics, epidemiology, and meta-science. Dr. Haber’s research integrates two interconnected lines of quantitative research: evaluating the strength of causal inference across the pathway from publication to decision-making, and global HIV/AIDS measurement and evaluation. His methodological roots in health economics and econometrics were developed largely during his doctoral years at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, with additional interdisciplinary studies and collaboration in epidemiology during his prior postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and meta-science work at the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford University (METRICS). Dr. Haber’s work is oriented toward improving evaluation and production of evidence to improve actionability for decision-makers. That includes developing methods and systems to more systematically review and understand strength of causal inference and study design across health research, helping decision-makers understand the extent and nature of evidentiary uncertainty, executing large scale evidence review, or bridging conceptual gaps between epidemiology and econometrics.

Presenter

Charlie Rioux, PhD Department of Psychology
The University of Oklahoma

BIO

Dr. Charlie Rioux is an assistant professor of developmental and quantitative psychology at the University of Oklahoma (OU). She is also an affiliated member of the Health Promotion Research Center, the Institute for Community and Society Transformation, and the Data Institute for Societal Challenges at OU. Dr. Rioux completed her Ph.D. in Psychology in 2018 at the University of Montreal. She completed a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship in quantitative psychology at Texas Tech University and a 1-year postdoctoral fellowship in clinical and developmental psychology at the University of Manitoba and the University of Calgary. Her research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Quebec Health Research Fund, and Research Manitoba.

Presenter

Sonja Swanson, ScD Department of Epidemiology
University of Pittsburgh

BIO

Dr. Sonja Swanson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health. She is an editor for Epidemiology, a statistical editor for JAMA Psychiatry, and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the CAUSALab and epidemiology at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Her methodological research focuses on improving the use and transparency of methods for estimating causal effects in epidemiology. She has a substantive interest in mental health and in particular in suicide prevention.

Improving evidence synthesis in observational health research; the example of nutritional epidemiology May 3, 2023 | 12:00 - 1:30pm EST

Many of the most common social and behavioral exposures are extremely difficult to measure and study, particularly by randomized controlled experiments. Understanding the effects of such exposures thus requires repeated study by a range of approaches in a range of settings, with each study often producing quite different estimates. Health scientists, practitioners and policymakers have hence come to rely on formal evidence syntheses to provide clarity and summary estimates.

The art of evidence synthesis is however an evolving field. Despite the emergence of various reporting criteria, risk of bias tools, and – most recently – the confounder matrix, there are still many unresolved challenges with the synthesis of results from observational studies. These include how best to synthesize evidence from different study designs, different populations, using different measures of the exposure and/or outcome, different adjustment sets, and with different approaches to confounding control.

Using the fertile and challenging context of nutritional epidemiology, this symposium will explore the issues with, and limits of, current quantitative evidence synthesis before proposing some potential improvements for implementation in the near and not-so-near future.

Session Chair

Christina C Dahm, Aarhus University, Denmark

BIO

Christina C. Dahm is an Associate Professor in Epidemiology at the Department of Public Health, Aarhus University, Denmark. Her current research interests include assessing food intake, such as single foods or sustainable dietary patterns, and health, such as cardiometabolic health, obesity and cancer. She received her PhD in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge, UK, and also holds a MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Presenter

Daniel Borch Ibsen, Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus, Denmark

BIO

Daniel Ibsen is a postdoc at the Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus, the Department of Public Health, Aarhus University, Denmark, the MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, UK, and the Department of Nutrition, Sports and Exercise, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research focus on improving methods in nutritional epidemiology (e.g. food substitutions and application of the target trial approach) and addressing questions about the role of plant-based diets on health in the general population and people living with type 2 diabetes (e.g., replacement of red meat with alternative food sources of protein). He holds the 2022 Schroll Prize for excellent early-career epidemiologists from the Danish Epidemiological Society. His background includes a PhD in Epidemiology from Aarhus University, Denmark, and a MSc in Human Nutrition from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Presenter

Georgia D Tomova, University of Leeds, United Kingdom

BIO

Georgia Tomova is a PhD student in Epidemiology based jointly at the Alan Turing Institute and the University of Leeds in the UK. Her research interests are in the use of causal inference methods for the analysis of compositional data and composite variables. Her PhD research is focused on understanding the estimation of causal effects in nutritional data with a compositional structure. She is currently funded by the Alan Turing Institute, where is she is also a co-leader of the Causal Inference Special Interest Group. Her educational background includes a BSc in Nutrition and a MSc in Health Data Analytics from the University of Leeds.

Presenter

Peter WG Tennant, University of Leeds, United Kingdom

BIO

Peter Tennant is an Associate Professor of Health Data Science at the University of Leeds, UK, and a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, UK. His research is focused on the translation and application of contemporary causal inference methods in health and social science research. He is a co-leader of the Causal Inference Special Interest Group within the Alan Turing Institute and he leads the popular Introduction to Causal Inference Course for Health and Social Science within the UK. He holds a PhD in Perinatal Epidemiology and has an educational background in the natural sciences.

Presenter

Conor James MacDonald, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

BIO

Conor MacDonald is a postdoctoral researcher at the CAUSALab at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. His research interests lie in using sound methodology to identify interventions (including dietary and lifestyle-based interventions, as well as clinical interventions) that work to reduce cardiovascular disease risk, using data from cohort studies, or sources such as clinical registers, and randomized trials. Conor holds a MPhys in Physics from the University of St Andrews, and a PhD from Dundee University’s School of Medicine.

Past Events

"An epidemiologist’s introduction to food insecurity measures" February 15, 2023, 12:00pm -1:00pm EST

In this webinar, we’ll discuss the concept of food insecurity as an epidemiologic measure – as an exposure, as a health outcome, and as an important “third” variable. We’ll present a few of the different validated scales for measurement, chat about benefits and drawbacks of these measures, and talk about the (potential) difficulties in obtaining data on food insecurity for epidemiologic studies.

Recording

Presenter

Eliza W. Kinsey
University of Pennsylvania

BIO

Eliza W. Kinsey, PhD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health at the Perelman School of Medicine. Dr. Kinsey is trained as an urban planner and social epidemiologist and her research interests lie at the intersection between unmet social needs, built environment, and public health. Her current areas of inquiry include the effect of food insecurity and poverty on child and maternal health trajectories across the life course, the neighborhood food environment and its relationship to obesity and chronic disease, and the influence of food assistance policies on diet quality and health status. In her work, Dr. Kinsey prioritizes policy translation and producing research findings that contribute to the generation of data driven policies to improve population health. Dr. Kinsey holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning and a Master of Public Health from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a Master of Science in Food Policy and Applied Nutrition from Tufts University. She completed her postdoctoral training in Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

Presenter

Jamaica (“Jamie”)
R. M. Robinson
Weill Cornell Medicine

BIO

Jamaica (“Jamie”) R. M. Robinson, PhD, MPH is a Postdoctoral Associate in Behavioral Geriatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Robinson is trained as a social epidemiologist, with a research focus on supporting community-based and -driven health initiatives involving unmet social needs. Her current inquiries center on characterizing the burdens of and trade-offs associated with food insecurity and housing instability in medically underserved, end-stage cancer patients and their informal caregivers. Dr. Robinson received her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Washington, and also holds a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology from the University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Science in Community Health Studies/Urban Planning from Portland State University. She completed her postdoctoral training in Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health before moving to Weill Cornell Medicine for additional training at the Center for Research on End-of-Life Care.

"What is long COVID?" February 1, 2023, 12:00 - 1:30pm EST

The chronic condition of long COVID reminds us that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is not over. Long COVID negatively impacts thousands of those who have been infected with COVID-19, affecting their physical and mental health, as well as ability to work. Read more

Recording

Session Co-Chair

Dr. Emily Levitan, Professor
University of Alabama at Birmingham

BIO

Dr. Levitan is Professor and Vice Chair for Faculty Development in the Department of Epidemiology in the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health. Over the past two years, she has been deeply involved in both national and local studies of COVID-19 and its sequelae. She is one of the mPIs for the University of Alabama at Birmingham adult cohort hub site for the NIH-funded RECOVER Initiative, lead for REasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) COVID-19 working group, and an investigator of the NIH-funded Collaborative Cohort of Cohorts for COVID-19 Research (C4R), representing the REGARDS study. Locally she was co-chair of the University of Alabama at Birmingham COVID-19 Collaborative Outcomes Research Enterprise (COVID CORE), which was organized in spring 2020 to coordinate, collate, and facilitate the rigorous and expeditious completion of COVID-19 health services, outcomes, and population health studies and a co-investigator for the University of Alabama at Birmingham-lead RADxUP program A Dynamic COVID-19 Community-Engaged Testing Strategy in Alabama (COVID COMET AL).

Session Co-Chair

Dr. Stephanie DeLong
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill

BIO

Stephanie M. DeLong, PhD, MPH is an epidemiologist whose research focuses on long COVID among adolescents and young adults (AYA) in the United States, where she is working to better understand the prevalence and longer-term impacts of the condition. She also studies HIV prevention and treatment among AYA in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a special emphasis on adolescent girls and young women (AGYW). She is specifically interested in the role gender-based violence and mental health play in HIV acquisition, linkage to care, and treatment adherence among AYA.

Dr. DeLong is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and completed an HIV Epidemiology and Prevention Training Program T32 Postdoctoral Fellowship focused on AYA HIV Prevention and Treatment at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. DeLong received her PhD in Epidemiology from UNC and co-founded and co-led both the Johns Hopkins University Center for AIDS Research AYA Scientific Working Group International subgroup and the UNC Gender-Based Violence Research Group as a postdoctoral and predoctoral trainee, respectively.

Presenter

Lorna Thorpe
NYU Grossman School of Medicine

BIO

Lorna Thorpe, PhD is professor and director of the Division of Epidemiology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine in the Department of Population Health, where she also serves as vice chair for strategy and planning. Reflecting her career trajectory working in both public health practice and academic settings, Dr. Thorpe’s research focuses on the intersection between epidemiology and policy, the impacts of policy and social conditions on health, and on improving population health surveillance. Dr. Thorpe currently leads several NIH and CDC-funded research initiatives, including several on COVID responses. She co-leads coordination of the EHR Cohort arm of the RECOVER Initiative to study the long erm effects of SARS Co-V2 infection. Previously, Dr. Thorpe served as Deputy Commissioner of Epidemiology for the NYC Health Department.

Presenter

Melissa Haendel
University of Colorado Anshutz

BIO

Dr. Melissa Haendel is the Chief Research Informatics Officer and Marsico Chair in Data Science at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, and the Director of the Center for Data to Health (CD2H). Her background is molecular genetics and developmental biology as well as translational informatics, with a focus over the past decade on open science and semantic engineering. Dr. Haendel’s vision is to weave together healthcare systems, basic science research, and patient-generated data through development of data-integration technologies and innovative data capture strategies. Dr. Haendel’s research has focused on integration of genotype-phenotype data to improve rare-disease diagnosis and mechanism discovery. She also leads and participates in international standards organizations to support improved data sharing and utility worldwide.

Presenter

Oved Amitay
Solve M.E.

BIO

Oved Amitay is a pharmacologist by training, a drug-developer by trade, and a patient-advocate by choice.

Oved is has dedicated most of his professional career to the development of life-changing therapeutic options for people affected by rare genetic diseases, that resulted in eight Orphan Drugs approved by the FDA. While not rare, infection-associated diseases are also poorly understood, are often missed or misdiagnosed, and suffer from lack of research funding and interest. Oved is using his extensive biotech experience to help bring a change to this space.

Oved and his organization were early to recognize the emerging concern that some people with COVID who were infected by SARS-CoV-2 may continue to struggle and develop a post infection condition, that we now call Long COVID. In the summer of 2020 Oved co-authored an op-ed calling for an immediate research effort to be initiated, and later co-founded the Long Covid Alliance, building a network of patient-advocates, scientists and disease experts to collaborate and share their collective knowledge to transform our understanding and treatment of Long COVID and associated diseases. Together, their advocacy led to Congress directing $1.15B to the NIH for funding of Long Covid research. As the pandemic continues, Solve is pushing for more comprehensive solutions to address this mass-disabling disease, and its report on the economic, social and workplace impact of Long Covid was recently featured in the Milken institute’s Review.

Throughout his career, Oved has had extensive engagements with healthcare systems and patient advocacy organizations around the world, forging collaborations for patient registries and natural history studies for drug development. One of Solve M.E.’s flagship programs is the You+ME Registry and Biobank, an online clinical study of individuals living with ME/CFS, people with long COVID, and control volunteers. Oved uses his extensive background to advance research initiatives, and foster public-private partnerships. Oved’s leadership and expertise are recognized by government agencies, researchers and the community, and he is invited often to speak about these topics.

Prior to joining Solve M.E., Oved served as Chief Business Officer at CENTOGENE (NASDAQ: CNTG), a global leader in the diagnostics of rare hereditary disorders. He held the position of President and Chief Operating Officer at Arrett Neuroscience, where he led the company’s efforts to develop therapies for Rett syndrome. Prior to that, Oved had senior executive positions at top-tier biotech companies- Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) and Genzyme Corporation (now Sanofi Genzyme).

Presenter

Dr. Payal Patel
University of Washington

BIO

Payal B. Patel, MD, is a board-certified pediatric neurologist who specializes in neuro-infectious diseases.
Dr. Patel’s research integrates pediatric neurology with epidemiological research methods to evaluate predictors of neurologic sequelae in children following infections, including SARS-CoV2 and HIV. Patel currently addresses questions related to prognosis and prevention of neurologic sequelae following Covid-19 and perinatally acquired HIV. Her laboratory investigations focus on immunologic and neuroimaging markers of CNS injury as prognostic tools for identifying those at risk for cognitive sequelae following acute infections.

Presenter

Bertha Hidalgo, PhD, MPH
University of Alabama at Birmingham

BIO

Dr. Bertha Hidalgo an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She holds degrees from Stanford University, the University of Southern California and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research focuses health inequities related to COVID-19, cardiometabolic diseases, with a special focus on Latino populations, genomics, and dissemination science.

Aug 17 at 10 am Mountain Standard

“The United States post Roe: Impacts on abortion access, public health, and research gaps”

With the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion is banned or soon to be banned in over half of US states. In this webinar, researchers from Ibis Reproductive Health will provide an overview of the current state of abortion access and services in the United States and discuss the impact of restrictive abortion laws on reproductive health and wellbeing.

Recording

Jennifer Ahern

Dr. Jennifer Ahern
PhD, MPH, Professor of Epidemiology
Associate Dean for Research
School of Public Health
University of California, Berkeley

Caitlin Gerdts

Dr. Caitlin Gerdts
PhD, MHS, Vice President for Research
Ibis Reproductive Health
(she/her)

BIO

Caitlin leads the development and implementation of Ibis’s research agenda, and serves on the Senior Management Team. Caitlin is an epidemiologist whose past and current research includes clinical and epidemiologic studies to measure the prevalence of informal sector abortion, document women’s experiences with medication abortion self-management, explore strategies (including mobile technologies) to improve access to safe abortion, analyze women’s experiences traveling for abortion in Europe, measure abortion-related mortality, and understand the consequences of abortion denial. Caitlin’s methodologic expertise is in study design and implementation, impact evaluation, and causal inference methods; she has authored and co-authored over 20 peer-reviewed publications. Prior to joining Ibis, Caitlin served as an Epidemiologist with Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) at the University of California, San Francisco. She received her undergraduate degree in Human Biology from Stanford University; a Masters in Health Sciences (MHS) in Population, Family, and Reproductive Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; and a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Ruvani Jayaweera

Dr. Ruvani Jayaweera
PhD, MPH, Research Scientist
Ibis Reproductive Health
(she/her)

BIO

Ruvani (she/her) is a Research Scientist at Ibis. Ruvani is an epidemiologist who leads work on measuring the experiences of people who self-manage their abortion including: measuring the safety and effectiveness of self-managed medication abortion; identifying opportunities for expanding access to self-managed abortion resources and support; and development of person-centered approaches to measure medication abortion experiences. She also serves as the Principal Investigator on several projects, including a research study aimed at measuring the abortion experiences of people living in refugee/humanitarian contexts in Kenya and Uganda, a pilot study to validate a self-report questionnaire for measuring abortion complications and outcomes in India, and a community-engaged research study developing and evaluating interventions that expand access to abortion accompaniment models. Ruvani prioritizes developing research questions in close partnership with accompaniment groups, safe abortion hotlines, and advocacy organizations to ensure that the needs of those they serve are centered in the research process. Ruvani’s methodologic expertise is in study design and implementation, respondent-driven sampling, and quantitative bias analysis. Ruvani received her undergraduate degree in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley; a Master of Public Health (MPH) in Global Epidemiology from Emory University; and a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Heidi Moseson

Dr. Heidi Moseson
PhD, MPH, Senior Research Scientist
Ibis Reproductive Health
(she/her)

BIO

As Senior Research Scientist at Ibis, Heidi (she/her) is an epidemiologist whose past and current research includes epidemiologic studies to improve methods and understanding in reproductive health research. Presently, Heidi’s research focuses on evaluating safety and effectiveness of self-managed medication abortion in various contexts, developing a more accurate clinical and research screening tool for transgender and nonbinary people, testing strategies to reduce under-reporting of sensitive experiences in surveys, and understanding the family planning needs and experiences of transgender and gender-expansive people. Heidi’s methodologic expertise is in study design and implementation, measurement development and testing, and causal inference methods; she has authored over 35 peer-reviewed publications. Heidi received her undergraduate degree in Human Biology and International Relations from Stanford University; a Masters in Public Health (MPH) in Epidemiology & Biostatistics from the University of California, Berkeley; and a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California, San Francisco.

July 27, 2022 12pm ET

“SER Symposia 101: your guide to proposing, organizing, and hosting an symposium at the annual meeting”

With the annual meeting behind us, it is time to start planning symposia for next year’s meeting. Faculty, researchers, government epidemiologists, postdocs and students are all welcome to submit a proposal for a symposium at the SER annual meeting. Organizing a symposium is a great way to network, shape the conversation at the meeting, and hear from experts on topics of interest to you and others. In this webinar, we will discuss the ins and outs of proposing, organizing, and hosting a symposium.

Recording

Session Chair

Jennifer Ahern

Panelist

Magdalena Cerda

Panelist

Jess Edwards

Panelist

Matthew Fox

Panelist

Catherine Lesko

Panelist

John Pamplin

February 16, 12:00-1:00pm ET

“Investigating Structural Factors to Advance Population Health“

Drs. Marynia Kolak and Michael Kramer will provide an introduction into the rationale for the measurement and use of structural measures in epidemiology. This discussion will include novel methods for measuring structural factors. Lastly, they will provide an applied example of the measurement and analysis of structural factors from an epidemiologic study.

Recording

This event is organized and sponsored by the SER Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

PRESENTER

Michael Kramer, PhD
Department of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University

“What is ‘structural’ and how can we measure and use social structure in epidemiology?”

PRESENTER

Marynia Kolak, PhD
Division of the Social Sciences, University of Chicago

“Modeling Structural Factors as Multidimensional, Spatial, & Intersectional”

BIO

Marynia is a health geographer, spatial epidemiologist, and Director of the Health Regions & Policies Lab, where she investigates issues of equity across space and time. Her research centers on how “place” impacts health outcomes in different ways, for different people, from opioid risk environments to chronic disease clusters. She focuses on quantifying and distilling the structural determinants of health across different environments, tying socio-ecological models of public health with geocomputational methods and quasi-experimental evaluation techniques.

MODERATOR

Dayna A. Johnson
Department of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University

BIO

Dr. Dayna A. Johnson, PhD, MPH, MSW, MS is a sleep epidemiologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University in Atlanta GA. She received her doctorate degree in Epidemiologic Science from the University of Michigan and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Harvard Medical School. Her research is aimed at understanding the determinants and health consequences of sleep health disparities by 1) addressing the social and environmental determinants of sleep disorders and insufficient sleep; and 2) investigating the influence of modifiable factors such as sleep disorders and disturbances on various health outcomes. More specifically, Dr. Johnson’s research quantifies the contribution of social, household-level and neighborhood-level factors with objective and well-validated subjective measures of insufficient sleep using data from different epidemiologic cohort studies. She also investigates associations of sleep health and sleep disorders with hypertension, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cognition. Dr. Johnson is also exploring how stress reduction interventions can improve sleep and reduce subsequent risk of poor health outcomes.

February 9, 12:00-1:00pm ET

“Peer Review 101 for students and postdocs“

Peer review is the process by which scholarly articles are reviewed and critiqued by independent researchers/experts prior to publication. The main purpose of this process to provide authors with constructive criticism and improve the quality of published research. However, there are also numerous benefits to the reviewer. This includes learning how to apply principles of epidemiology learned in the classroom to real life, provide constructive feedback, and even write better manuscripts! Join Drs. Hailey Banack, Special Editor at Epidemiology, and Catherine Lesko, Editor in Residency at the American Journal of Epidemiology, for an overview of the process of peer review and an introduction to writing peer reviews.”

Recording

This event is organized and sponsored by the SER Student and Postdoc Committee.

PRESENTER

Hailey Banack (she/her/hers)
Assistant Professor in Epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto
Special Editor at Epidemiology
Twitter: @haileybanack

PRESENTER

Catherine Lesko (she/her/hers)
Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Editor in Residency at the
American Journal of Epidemiology
Twitter: @leskocar

MODERATOR

Andreas Teferra (he/him/his)
Ph.D. Candidate in Epidemiology at The Ohio State University
Twitter: @andreteferra

September 15, 12:00-1:00pm ET

“What can I do with my PhD?: Employment opportunities outside of academia“

While the traditional career path following completion of a PhD is typically thought to be obtaining a postdoctoral fellowship then faculty position in academia, there are now more opportunities than ever for epidemiologists in the workforce. Join us for a panel discussion on employment opportunities outside of academia featuring panelists representing government and industry positions. Panelists will provide an overview of their personal career trajectory, how they got to where they are, and what motivated them to pursue their career. Additional time will be spent answering questions submitted by participants. When registering for this event, will be given the opportunity to anonymously submit queries beforehand.

Recording

This event is organized and sponsored by the SER Student and Postdoc Committee.

PRESENTER

Ashley Holub, PhD MA (she/her/hers)
Senior Clinical Research Scientist at GSK
Twitter: @ashtroid22

BIO

Dr. Holub is currently a senior research scientist at GSK in the pain division. She recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in medical devices epidemiology at Johnson & Johnson where she worked on studies related to joint replacements. Dr. Holub completed her PhD in epidemiology at the University of Rochester and has authored and co-authored several peer reviewed manuscripts across a variety of topics including mental health, pediatrics, emergency medicine, and cardiovascular health.

PRESENTER

Randy Stalter, PhD, MPH (he/him/his)
Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

BIO

Dr. Stalter is currently an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer at the CDC assigned to the Washington State Department of Health. He received his PhD in epidemiology from the University of Washington where his research focused on HIV prevention and family planning among women of reproductive age in sub-Saharan Africa. He previously worked for the human development organization FHI360 first as a global health research fellow and later as an associate scientist in the Contraceptive Technology Innovation department. He received his MPH in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology from the University of Pittsburgh.

PRESENTER

Mitra Yousefi (she/her/hers)
Lead Epidemiologist, global vaccines at GDK

BIO

Dr. Mitra Yousefi is currently an Epidemiology Lead in global vaccines at GSK where she manages post-marketing vaccine epidemiology studies. She has also served as a Principal Epidemiology Biostatistician at the company, where she helped designs studies and develop statistical analysis plans for pre- and post-marketing vaccine studies. Prior to working in vaccine research, Dr. Yousefi was a research data analyst at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation where she advised P.I.s at the National Institutes of Health, Walter Reed Military Medical Center, and the Uniformed Services University on statistical designs and analyses in traumatic brain injury research studies.
Dr. Yousefi attended the University of Maryland College Park for her undergraduate studies, where she majored in Biochemistry and minored in British and American Literature. She then completed a post-bac fellowship at the National Institutes of Health before completing an MSPH and PhD in epidemiology at the University of South Carolina. During her undergraduate career, she also worked in x-ray crystallography, biochemistry, molecular biology, and microbiology labs at the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration.

June 2, 2021, 12:00-1:00pm ET

“National Institute of Health’s Loan Repayment Programs: Information Session”

You’re invited to an in-depth overview of the NIH Loan Repayment Program from the Division of Loan Repayment Director, Dr. Ericka Boone. The NIH Loan Repayment Programs (LRPs) are a set of programs established by Congress designed to recruit and retain highly qualified health professionals into biomedical or biobehavioral research centers. The NIH LRPs pay up to $50,000 annually of qualified educational debt in return for a commitment to engage in NIH mission-relevant research. Applicants must hold an M.D., Ph.D., Psy.D., Pharm.D, D.O., D.D.S., D.M.D. D.P.M, D.C., N.D., O.D., D.V.M, or equivalent doctoral-level degree (except for the Contraception & Infertility Research LRP). The NIH LRPs will accept applications from September 1-November 15. Don’t miss your opportunity to learn how you could receive up to $100,000 in educational debt relief! The hour will include responses to questions attendees send when registering for the event.

Note: Only individuals with United States citizenship (or U.S. national or permanent resident status) are eligible for the LRP.

Recording

INFORMATIONAL FLYER

This event is organized and sponsored by the SER Student and Postdoc Committee.

PRESENTER

Ericka Boone, Ph.D.
Director, Division of Loan Repayment
National Institutes of Health

MODERATOR

Kendra Sims
Doctoral Candidate
Oregon State University

May 12, 2021, 12:00-1:00pm ET

“#MeToo”

The #MeToo movement has brought to the fore seemingly endless stories of unwelcome and inappropriate sexual remarks or physical advances. No sector of society appears to be spared, including the field of epidemiology. In this webinar, we’ll present results from the SER survey about member’s experiences of sexual harassment as a graduate student, in the workplace, or at a conference. In consideration of consequences, we’ll discuss corrective ways forward with guest speaker Vicki Magley, Professor of Psychological Sciences at U Conn Storrs and member of the National Academy of Sciences Sexual Harassment in Academia Committee.

Recording

SESSION CO-CHAIR

Martha Werler
Boston University

SESSION CO-CHAIR

Wendy Nembhard
University of Arkansas

PRESENTER and DISCUSSANT

Vicki J. Magley
University of Connecticut, Storrs

March 10, 2021, 12:00-1:00pm ET

“Equitable Distribution of Vaccines for COVID-19”

Sponsored by the SER Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Committee, this upcoming SERexpert event will explore the distribution and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines though different lenses, including equity considerations in planning, vaccine hesitancy, and public health communication. Speakers will discuss how COVID-19 continues to disproportionately affect Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities the most while vaccine rollouts lag and have tended to target whites. This event will feature brief introductions followed by a moderated roundtable discussion.”

Recording

Moderator

Nicole Basta
McGill University

BIO

Dr. Basta is an infectious disease epidemiologist specializing in designing, implementing, and analyzing biological, clinical, and behavioral studies to 1) evaluate the impact of vaccines and immunization programs, 2) increase vaccine awareness, acceptance, and uptake, and 3) advance our understanding of the epidemiology and natural history of infectious diseases. She has focused on a number of globally challenging diseases including influenza, meningococcal disease, HPV, measles, and COVID-19. Dr. Basta’s research combines methods and tools from epidemiology, biostatistics, vaccinology, immunology, ecology, and public health to generate critical evidence to inform infectious disease prevention and control strategies.

Presenter

Elaine Hernandez
Indiana University

Presenter

Mercedes Carnethon
Northwestern University

BIO

Dr. Carnethon is the Mary Harris Thompson Professor and Vice Chair of Preventive Medicine and Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care) at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease, obesity and diabetes in the population subgroups defined by race/ethnicity, geography, socioeconomic status, gender and sexual orientation/gender identity. Dr. Carnethon and her team have examined the role that health behaviors such as sleep, physical activity and diet play on health across the lifecourse. Her research findings have been disseminated broadly through major print (e.g., Chicago Tribune, USA Today, New York Times), local and national media.

Presenter

Catherine Troisi
University of Texas

BIO

Dr. Troisi teaches courses in public health and leadership with research interests in infectious disease epidemiology. Her research interests are in infectious disease epidemiology, and she has research grants in the areas of HIV, viral hepatitis, and improving immunization rates.
She has previously served as Assistant Director at the Houston Health Department. She is the recipient of the 2018 ASPPH Academic Public Health Practice Excellence Award. She is a member of the International Network of Epidemiology in Policy as a National Association of County and City Health Officials representative workgroup as well as many local and state public health advisory boards.

February 17, 2021, 12:00-1:00pm ET

“Adapting to the Pandemic Job Market”

The pandemic offers unique opportunities and considerations for trainees deciding next professional steps. Additionally, the new reality of virtual hiring necessitates different approaches for standing out as a job candidate. After outlining their professional trajectories, our panelists will discuss ways to distill your research focus into a captivating elevator pitch as well as conveying your capability during a hiring interview. Additionally, the panel will bring their experiences in academia, government, and industry to virtual interviewee strategies for higher education positions as well as non-academic tracks.

Recording

PRESENTER

Erika Braithwaite
Precision Analytics

BIO

Erika Braithwaite is co-founder and CEO of Precision Analytics, a Montreal based health data science start-up specializing in analytics and data visualization in the biopharmaceutical sector. After completing her BA and MSc in psychology, she earned her PhD in epidemiology and biostatistics from McGill University. Throughout her academic career, Erika worked as a freelance statistical consultant and upon graduation in 2017, started a small statistical consultancy with Kathryn Morrison, PhD. Precision Analytics provides support to organizations across all stages of the drug development process, from early stage biotechnology start-ups to post-marketing pharmaceutical research in larger firms. The services they provide include: expertise in study design, analytics including predictive modelling and causal inference, and customized software platforms for health data science.

Erika is also a passionate R user. She co-founded the Montreal chapter of the R-Ladies meetup group, which is part of a global non-profit organization that promotes gender diversity in the R programming community (https://rladies.org/about-us/). She co-hosts free monthly meetups, where members learn, share and network with people who are passionate about programming.

PRESENTER

Cheryl L Clark
Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs

BIO

Dr. Clark has more than 20 years of progressive experience in state government and public health field. She has been employed for 4.5 years at the Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs (AMCHP), a national membership and advocacy non-profit organization located in Washington, D.C. As the Associate Director of Equity, Epidemiology, & Evaluation, she provides leadership for AMCHP’s internal/external equity operational platform and metrics as well as implementation, technical assistance, and consultation on epidemiology, data, and evaluation for members, external partners, and fellow staff. In prior positions, she has served as a senior-level epidemiology consultant, manager of an applied epidemiology unit, federal/state grant manager, lead program evaluator, informatics consultant, and lead epidemiologist on state child and maternal death review committees at the Florida Department of Health. Currently, she is co-leading AMCHP on an organizational road to ensure equity in all internal and external operations by serving as a co-chair and a liaison to internal and external equity committees.

Dr. Clark has an MPH in Community Health Education from the University of South Florida and attained her Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) in Epidemiology & Biostatistics at Florida A & M. She is a long-time Registered Health Information Management Administrator (RHIA) with a BS in Health Information Management Administration.

PRESENTER

Rebecca Burne
Analysis Group

BIO

Rebecca Burne is a Manager at Analysis Group, a global economic consulting firm. Prior to joining Analysis Group, Rebecca completed her MSc in statistics in South Africa before going on to earn her PhD in biostatistics from McGill University, during which time she also was a research assistant and course lecturer. Since joining Analysis Group, Rebecca has specialized in health economics and outcomes research (HEOR), biostatistics, and epidemiology. Her experience includes retrospective analyses of various data sources such as medical insurance claims and electronic medical records, and the design of chart review studies. Rebecca has conducted research in multiple clinical areas, such as oncology, hematology, cardiology, and gastroenterology.

Analysis Group was founded in 1981, and is one of the largest international economics consulting firms, with more than 1,000 professionals across 14 offices. Analysis Group’s health care experts apply analytical expertise to health economics and outcomes research, clinical research, market access and commercial strategy, and health care policy engagements, as well as drug safety-related engagements in epidemiology. Analysis Group’s internal experts, together with its network of affiliated experts from academia, industry, and government, provide our clients with exceptional breadth and depth of expertise and end-to-end consulting services globally.

MODERATOR

Kendra Sims
Oregon State University

November 4, 2020, 12:00-1:00pm ET

“Practicing Consequential Epidemiology: The Work of CDC’s Disease Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS)”

Please join us for SER’s first collaborative webinar with The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Global Disease Detectives! Hosted by Dr. Eric Pevzner, the Chief to the CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Program, join us to learn about this world-renowned applied epidemiology fellowship program of the elite disease detectives! Following an overview of the program by Dr. Pevzner, two CDC EIS Officers will present their work. This will be an exciting look into the world of the famous Global Outbreak Detectives! The presentation is sponsored by the SER Membership and Nominations Committee and will be moderated by SER Member and Epidemiologist, Dr. Mike Jackson (CDC EIS Alum, 2008-2010). Following the presentations, the panelists will be available for questions about the program.

This event is sponsored by SER’s Membership & Nominations Committee

Recording

HOST

Eric Pevzner, PhD, MPH
CAPT, U.S. Public Health Service
Chief, Epidemiology Workforce Branch
Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS)
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

SER MODERATOR

Michael L. Jackson, PhD, MPH
Associate Scientific Investigator
Kaiser Permanente
CDC EIS Officer (2008-2010)
SER Member, Since 2011

GLOBAL DISEASE DETECTIVES

September 16, 2020, 12-1pm ET

“Strategies for Successful Remote Mentor-Mentee Relationships”

The importance and feasibility of mentorship from afar extends beyond current social distancing guidelines. Accordingly, this upcoming webinar focuses on the makings of successful mentors as well as mentees. Our panelists are eager to pass on their combined decades of experience remoting guiding trainees to early-stage scholars. Topics include expectation-setting, workflow management, and collaborations. Registering will give participants an opportunity to anonymously submit queries beforehand.

Recording

PANELIST

Anne Marie Jukic, PhD, MSPH
Investigator
National Institute
of Environmental Health Sciences
Epidemiology Branch

PANELIST

William C. Miller, MD, PhD, MPH
Senior Associate
Dean of Research
Professor
Ohio State University

PANELIST

Maureen A. Murtaugh, PhD, RDN
Professor
Division of Epidemiology
Department of Medicine
Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Population Health

PANELIST

Martha Werler
Professor and Chair of Epidemiology
Boston University
School of Public Health
President, SER

MODERATOR

Kendra Sims
Doctoral Candidate
Oregon State University

September 9, 2020, 12-1pm EST

“CSTE Applied Fellowship Program“

Please join us for SER’s first, collaborative webinar with The Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) Applied Epidemiology Fellowship (AEF) Program! Hosted by Amanda Masters, the Deputy Director for Governance, Strategy and Support Program (CSTE), join us to learn about this Applied Epidemiology Fellowship program! This unique fellowship program is designed for recent master’s or doctoral level graduates in Epidemiology (or a related field) whom are interested in public health practice at the state/local level. Following an overview of the program, two CSTE Applied Epidemiology Fellows will present their research. Following the presentations, the panelists will be available to answer any questions you might have regarding the program.

This event is sponsored by SER’s Membership & Nominations Committee

Recording

HOST

Amanda Masters, MPH
CSTE Deputy Director of Governance
Strategy and Support

CSTE Applied Epidemiology Fellows

MODERATOR

Robert C. Orellana, PhD, MPH

Senior Epidemiologist

CDC Foundation

August 19, 2020, 12:00pm – 1:30pm EDT

“Networking, the Job Market, and the Pandemic”

This upcoming professional development panel addresses early career advancement during the unique constraints posed by 2020. Professionals from government, industry, and academia will reflect upon their own winding career paths and discuss the state of the pandemic job market, opportunities and challenges. Participants will then have an opportunity to ask about remote networking advice and job search strategies. Registering will give participants an opportunity to anonymously submit queries beforehand.

Recording

PANELIST

Adan Z. Becerra, PhD
Research Assistant Professor
Associate Program Director for Clinical Research
Department of Surgery
Rush University Medical Center

PANELIST

Stephen E. Gilman, ScD
Senior Investigator and Chief
Social and Behavioral Sciences Branch
Division of Intramural Population Health Research
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute
of Child Health and Human Development

PANELIST

Jennifer Rider, ScD, MPH
Associate Director, Outcomes Science & Services

PANELIST

Rulla Tamimi, ScD
Weill Cornell Medicine
(Interim) Assistant Professor
of Population Health Sciences
Division Chief of Epidemiology
Associate Director
of Population Science
Sandra and Edward Meyer
Cancer Center

July 29, 2020, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT

“Health equity during the COVID-19 pandemic: urban-rural dimensions”

Sponsored by the SER Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Committee, this upcoming SERexpert event will explore the differential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in rural and urban communities in the US. Speakers will describe the impact of COVID-19 on rural and urban communities, challenges to confronting the virus and inequities in who is impacted within and between these settings. Given the differences in population density, access to health care and population demographics a focus on rural and urban communities will help highlight the dimensions of inequity exacerbated by COVID-19.

This event is sponsored by SER’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee

Recording

PRESENTER

Mary Bassett
Harvard University

PRESENTER

Carrie Henning-Smith
University of Minnesota

MODERATOR

Yvette Cozier
Boston University

May 13, 2020

Grant writing for early career epidemiologists, part III: Funding opportunities from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

The last in the three-part series on grant writing for trainees will highlight some non-traditional funding opportunities. Foundational grants are among the lesser known alternatives to those offered by governmental agencies, and are available to researchers at various career stages and often to non-U.S. citizens. During presentations of their projects as well as attendee Q and A, a panel of interdisciplinary researchers will be able to speak to the unique considerations involved in obtaining funding from private agencies.

This event is sponsored by SER’s Student and PostDoc Committee

Recording

PANELIST

Max Aung, PhD, MPH
University of Michigan
School of Public Health

PANELIST

Brittney Butler, MPH
Ohio State University
College of Public Health

PANELIST

Magdalena Cerda, DrPH
New York University
School of Medicine

MODERATOR

Kendra Sims, MPH
Oregon State University

February 19, 2020, 12-1pm EST

Grant Writing for Early Career Epidemiologists, Part II:
“Jumpstarting a career-building research project (pre-doctoral perspective)”

The second in the three-part series on grant writing for trainees will focus on pre-doctoral level fellowships. Three recent recipients of the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (F31) will briefly present on the training plans accompanying their dissertation project, before answering attendee questions. Learn how professional and personal experiences can inform the process of formulating research ideas, ways to leverage institutional resources as well as mentorship, and approaches for incorporating feedback.

This event is sponsored by SER’s Student and Postdoc Committee

PANELIST

Alexis Reeves, MPH
PhD candidate in Epidemiologic Science at the University of Michigan. Read more

PANELIST

Joëlla Adams, MPH
PhD candidate in the Department of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health. Read more

PANELIST

Mary Willis, MPH
PhD candidate in Environmental and occupational Health with a minor in Biological Data Science at Oregon State University. Read more

MODERATOR

Kendra Sims
Doctoral Candidate in Epidemiology at Oregon State University.

September 11, 2019, 12-1pm EST

“Grant Writing for Early Career Epidemiologists, Part I: Writing Your Own Postdoctoral Training Grant (Fs and Ks)“

Join us for the first in a 3-part series about grant writing for trainees! This webinar will focus on topics relevant to NIH postdoc Fs and Ks: general application requirements, submission timelines, and recommended resources. Our panel includes current and prior awardees, along with an experienced mentor. After describing their own experiences, the panelists will answer any questions you have about the process.

Recording

Mentor

Maria Glymour
University of California, San Francisco

K99 Awardee

Michael Harhay
University of Pennsylvania

K Awardee

Traci Bethea
Boston University

F Awardee

Stephanie Leonard
Stanford University

Moderator

Julie Petersen
Boston University

SERexperts

Career development events featuring experts in the field on a specific topic area. Some events are organized by the Student and Postdoc Committee. Events may be live webinar, or pre-recorded events.

Upcoming Events

"Managing your Mentor" March 22, 2023, 12:00pm -1:30pm EST

Moderator

Session Chair

Presenter

"Virtual Affinity Groups" March 29, 2023, 12:00pm -2:00pm EST

Session Chair

Session Chair

Moderator

Moderator

Moderator

Moderator

Moderator

Moderator

"The Power of Physician-Epidemiologist Teams In Clinical Practice and Research to Advance Population Health" April 5, 2023, 12:00pm -1:00pm EST

Session Chair

Presenter

Presenter

Moderator

Moderator

Capitalism and Health: Critical Epidemiologic Approaches April 19 2023, 12:00 - 1:30pm EST

Session Co-Chair

Session Co-Chair

Presenter

Presenter

Discussant

Language and Rigor: A conversation on the role of language in epidemiology April 26 2023, 12:00 - 1:30pm EST

Session Chair

Presenter

Presenter

Presenter

Presenter

Improving evidence synthesis in observational health research; the example of nutritional epidemiology May 3, 2023 | 12:00 - 1:30pm EST

Session Chair

Presenter

Presenter

Presenter

Presenter

Past Events

"An epidemiologist’s introduction to food insecurity measures" February 15, 2023, 12:00pm -1:00pm EST

Presenter

Presenter

"What is long COVID?" February 1, 2023, 12:00 - 1:30pm EST

Session Co-Chair

Session Co-Chair

Presenter

Presenter

Presenter

Presenter

Presenter

Aug 17 at 10 am Mountain Standard“The United States post Roe: Impacts on abortion access, public health, and research gaps”

Jennifer Ahern

Caitlin Gerdts

Ruvani Jayaweera

Heidi Moseson

July 27, 2022 12pm ET“SER Symposia 101: your guide to proposing, organizing, and hosting an symposium at the annual meeting”

Session Chair

Panelist

<img data-lazy-fallback="1" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-35125 size-thumbnail" data-no-script src="https://epiresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/mcerda-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" />Magdalena Cerda

Panelist

<img data-lazy-fallback="1" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-16926 size-thumbnail" data-no-script src="https://epiresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/jedwards-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" />

Panelist

Panelist

Panelist

<img data-lazy-fallback="1" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-35715 size-thumbnail" data-no-script src="https://epiresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/jpamplin-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" />John Pamplin

February 16, 12:00-1:00pm ET

“Investigating Structural Factors to Advance Population Health“

This event is organized and sponsored by the SER Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

PRESENTER

PRESENTER

MODERATOR

February 9, 12:00-1:00pm ET

“Peer Review 101 for students and postdocs“

This event is organized and sponsored by the SER Student and Postdoc Committee.

PRESENTER

PRESENTER

MODERATOR

September 15, 12:00-1:00pm ET

Aug 17 at 10 am Mountain Standard

“The United States post Roe: Impacts on abortion access, public health, and research gaps”

July 27, 2022 12pm ET

“SER Symposia 101: your guide to proposing, organizing, and hosting an symposium at the annual meeting”

Magdalena Cerda

John Pamplin

February 17, 2021, 12:00-1:00pm ET

“Adapting to the Pandemic Job Market”