Faculty

Primary Faculty

Alison Cohen, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology
  • Lifecourse
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • health equity, adolescent and young adult health, social determinants of health, community-based participatory research, program and policy evaluation, environmental health justice, research-practice partnerships


Mara Decker, assistant professor in UCSF Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Mara Decker, DrPH
Assistant Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Lifecourse
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • Sexual and reproductive health, youth and adolescents, applied research, social epidemiology, health and empowerment, program evaluation, health disparities, global health and development, demographic change and the environment, human rights, social ecology


Robert Hiatt

Robert A. Hiatt, MD, PhD
Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Cancer Epidemiology
  • Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology
  • Global Health
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • Robert Hiatt is Associate Director for Population Science at Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. His research interests include: cancer epidemiology, especially breast cancer, cancer prevention & screening, health inequities, health services & outcomes research, social determinants of cancer, environmental health research, environmental exposures in early development related to cancer, mathematical modeling of cancer, global health science


Yulin Hswen, ScD, MPH
Assistant Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Bioinformatics
  • Biostatistics
  • Machine Learning
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • Computational epidemiology, health disparities, natural language processing, social media, structural racism, social determinants of health, digital interventions, digital phenotyping, algorithmic bias, societal health


Suzanna Martinez, PhD
Associate Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Lifecourse
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • The interconnected relationship between sleep, physical activity and diet and as it relates to obesity and cardiometabolic health; food insecurity in higher education; food insecurity as it relates to dementia risk; health equity; minority health; Latino health


Nooshin Razani, MD, MPH
Associate Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Clinical Epidemiology and Methods
  • Global Health
  • Implementation Science
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • Pediatric mental health, family and community health, access to greenspace, outdoor play, pediatric resilience


Samira Soleimanpour, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Implementation Science
  • Lifecourse
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • school health, child and adolescent health, health equity, child and adolescent mental health, program and policy evaluation, community-based participatory research


Dara Torgerson, PhD
Associate Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Bioinformatics
  • Biostatistics
  • Genetic Epidemiology
  • Lifecourse
  • Machine Learning
  • Reproductive, Perinatal and Neonatal Epidemiology
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • Integrative Genomics, Metabolomics, Statistical Genetics, Minority Health, Neonatology, Respiratory Outcomes


Paul Wesson, PhD
Assistant Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Global Health
  • Infectious Disease
  • Research Methods in Epidemiology
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • HIV, health disparities, surveillance, population size estimation, sampling methods, social determinants, intersectionality


Jennifer Yarger

Jennifer Yarger, PhD
Assistant Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Lifecourse
  • Reproductive, Perinatal and Neonatal Epidemiology
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • sexual and reproductive health, contraception, sexually transmitted infections, urinary tract infections, adolescent and young adult health, health equity, access to care, telehealth, health insurance, health education, health literacy, program and policy evaluation


Secondary Faculty

Willa Brenowitz, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Epidemiology of Aging
  • Epidemiology of Cardiovascular and Neurological Disorders
  • Lifecourse
  • Research Methods in Epidemiology
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, role of sensory impairments and other chronic diseases in brain aging, social determinants of health, causal inference methods


Christine Dehlendorf, associate professor at UCSF Department of Epidemiology and biostatistics

Christine Dehlendorf, MD
Associate Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Implementation Science
  • Reproductive, Perinatal and Neonatal Epidemiology
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • contraceptive counseling and family planning disparities


Christina Mangurian, MD, MAS
Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Implementation Science
  • Infectious Disease
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • reducing healthcare disparities among racially diverse populations with severe mental illness, advancement of women and minorities within medicine


Shabnam Peyvandi, MD
Assistant Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Clinical Epidemiology and Methods
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • Neonatal health


Urmimala Sarkar, MD, MPH
Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Cancer Epidemiology
  • Implementation Science
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • Health equity, patient safety, implementation science, digital health, social media, cancer survivorship, and health information technology


Samuel L. Washington III, MD, MAS
Assistant Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Biostatistics
  • Cancer Epidemiology
  • Clinical Epidemiology and Methods
  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • healthcare disparities, outcomes research, prostate cancer, bladder cancer


Affiliate Faculty

Tomás J. Aragón MD, DrPH
Assistant Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • Population health improvement, Organizational performance, Health leadership


Emeritus Faculty

Lawrence Green, professor emeritus at UCSF Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Lawrence Green, DrPH, MPH
Professor
[email protected]

Research Area(s):

  • Social Epidemiology

Research Interests:
  • Program planning, evidence and evaluation issues in health services, public health and policy