Alumni

Vignetta Charles, PhD, has joined the staff of the National AIDS Fund (NAF) as Vice President of Programs and Evaluation, where her responsibilities include overseeing NAF’s strategic grantmaking programs, spearheading efforts to measure and document program outcomes, and developing an expanded portfolio on the translation of science to community.

Prior to joining NAF, Dr. Charles developed and rigorously evaluated innovative, theory-and evidence-based, sexual, reproductive health, and HIV prevention programs. She has dedicated most of her career to issues disproportionately impacting politically disenfranchised communities, focusing on urban sexual and reproductive health with an emphasis on HIV prevention. Dr. Charles’ professional experience includes conducting scholarly inquiry at academic institutions, evaluating national teen pregnancy prevention programs, assessing the effectiveness of black women’s health interventions, serving as the national health educator for the Commonwealth of Dominica, West Indies, initiating a teen pregnancy prevention portfolio for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and coordinating HIV and pregnancy prevention programs in both San Francisco and Oakland, California.

Hong Zhu has been selected to receive the Statistics in Epidemiology Young Investigator Award at the upcoming Joint Statistical Meetings in Vancouver, Canada. The award is based on the manuscript "Incorporating Sampling Bias in Analyzing Bivariate Survival Data with Interval Sampling and Application to HIV Research". The award will be presented at the reception of the Statistics in Epidemiology Section of the American Statistical Association on Tuesday, August 3, 2010.

Nicholas Reich has been selected to receive the Statistics in Epidemiology Young Investigator Award at the upcoming Joint Statistical Meetings in Vancouver, Canada. The awards are based on his manuscript "Estimating Case Fatality Ratios from Infectious Disease Surveillance Data" He will receive his award at the reception of the Statistics in Epidemiology Section of the American Statistical Association on Tuesday, August 3, 2010.

Sandrah Eckel has been selected to receive the Statistics in Epidemiology Young Investigator Awards at the upcoming Joint Statistical Meetings in Vancouver, Canada. The award is based on her manuscript "Modification by Frailty Status of Ambient Ozone and Particulate Matter Air Pollution Effects on Lung Function in Older Adults". She will receive her award at the reception of the Statistics in Epidemiology Section of the American Statistical Association on Tuesday, August 3, 2010.

Hao Wu was the 2010 co-recipient of the 2010 Margaret Merrell Award, which recognizes outstanding research by a Biostatistics doctoral student.

Yong Chen was the 2010 co-recipient of the 2010 Margaret Merrell Award, which recognizes outstanding research by a Biostatistics doctoral student.

Matthew McCall was the 2010 recipient of the 2010 Helen Abbey Award, which recognizes outstanding commitment to teaching by a Biostatistics student.

David Hausner has been living in New Delhi, India for a little over one year with his wife, Gita Pillai (JHSPH, PhD, 2001), and three children, Ravi (15), Arjun (11), and Uma (5). He is focusing mostly on HIV and AIDS and working for John Snow, Inc. (JSI) as the Country Representative for the AIDSTAR-One Project in India. This is David's second time living and working in India, having lived here for 5 years between 1994 and 1999. David and his family moved a year ago from Almaty, Kazakhstan where they lived for 5 years, working for JSI in the five former Soviet Republics of Central Asia, also focusing on HIV. He worked for USAID in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for 3 years before that. He and his family have enjoyed exploring many parts of the world, learning new cultures, tasting various cuisines, and meeting many fascinating people. He is happy to welcome visitors.

Karen Kinder recently received her MBA.

Rachel Thornton has been named a White House Fellow. The White House announced its 2010-2011 class of 13 Fellows on June 22, 2010.

As a pediatrician, Thornton cares for children in Hopkins Children’s Harriet Lane clinic, whose patients and families are drawn from the neighboring East Baltimore community. A researcher, she examines racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care, with a focus on childhood obesity.

Rohit Chitale works in the Global Disease Detection program at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, GA.

Yung-Chieh Yen is the director of the Department of Psychiatry at E-Da Hospital in Kaohsiung, Taiwan recently. He is also assistant professor in the College of Medicine at I-Shou University in Kaohsiung. His research focus is in geriatric psychiatry.

The International College of Geriatric Psychoneuropharmacology (ICGP) awarded him the International Junior Investigator Award in 2008.

Pitakpol Boonyamalik was recently promoted to director of Nakhon Phanom Psychiatric Hospital in Thailand.

Omar Galarraga is working in Mexico on a project to test the feasibility and acceptability of using conditional cash transfers to prevent HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in high risk populations (men who have sex with men and male sex workers). He is funded through a K-01 award from the NIH (Fogarty International Center). He has joint academic appointment at the Mexican National Institute of Public Health (INSP) / Mexican School of Public Health; and at the Institute of Business and Economic Research (IBER) at the University of California, Berkeley.

Rita McWilliams is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, and a member of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute.

David Hausner has been living in Almaty, Kazakstan for the past four years with his wife, Gita Pillai (PhD, 2001), and three children, Ravi (13), Arjun (9), and Uma (3). He is working for JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc. as a Regional Director of the CAPACITY Project (funded by USAID) and the TUMAR Project (funded by the Central Asia AIDS Control Project), both of which focus on HIV and AIDS in the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan).  He provides technical support to build capacity among non-government and government AIDS service organizations to improve the quality of comprehensive HIV prevention and treatment services and increase coverage among most-at-risk populations.  Central Asia is a fascinating and beautiful historical region.  He and his family have enjoyed learning about Amir Timur, eating the local breads called "naan," hiking and skiing in the Tian Shan mountains, viewing 2,000 year old petroglyphs, sleeping in a yurta, riding horses in the mountains, and gazing out at camels on the never ending steppe. He is happy to welcome visitors.

Amanda Kalaydjian Richardson was selected as a 2008-2009 AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow and was assigned to the U.S. Deptartment of Health and Human Services in the Office of Medicine, Science and Public Health under the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Defense.

Rebekah Kent has been working as a post-doctoral fellow at the Arbovirus Diseases Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Fort Collins, CO for the past 18 months. She is studying arbovirus ecology and mosquito-vertebrate-virus interactions. In July 2007, she was awarded the Robert E. Shope International Fellowship in Infectious Diseases by the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene to study West Nile virus ecology in Guatemala. In July 2008, she accepted an American Society for Microbiology post-doctoral fellowship to continue working at CDC for an additional two years.

Darryl Brown was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy at the Drexel School of Public Health on July 1, 2008.

Ulyana recently completed the Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellowship at the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Population, where she was involved in a project on collecting, storing and protecting biological samples and data. Ulyana is currently a Scientific Affairs Manager in the Department of Government Relations and Practice at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in Washington, D.C. She provides scientific and technical expertise for ASH's legislative/regulatory activities and scientific programs.

Julie Rajaratnam is now a Research Scientist at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and welcomes contact from JHSPH students and recent alumni with an interest in global health metrics who would like to learn more about the post-graduate fellowship program.

Paul Rathouz was recently selected as the the new chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics at the University of Wisconsin.

Joan Griffin was recognized by the University of Minnesota School of Public Health as a Community Partner Star as part of the 2009 Community Partner Awards on September 17, 2009.

Rola Dashti was elected to the Kuwait Parliament, one of the first four women to hold a seat in the institution. For the complete story visit link

Ravi Rao lives in Los Angeles and is a consultant and trainer in emotional intelligence for executives in the entertainment, financial services, public sector and health care industries. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Los Angeles.

Mark Danese recentky celebrated his fifth anniversary as president of his own epidemiology and health economics consulting company, Outcomes Insights, Inc. Currently, the company has 5 full-time and 3 part-time employees, and is based in Southern California.

Dr, Shaya is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. She has launched a new public-private partnership program in Baltimore, the MVP program (Maryland Men's CardioVascular Promotion Program). Funded by CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, MVP is based on the propagation of cardiovascular medication and health information through social networks.

Andrea Kalfoglou contributed a chapter to a new book entitled 'Motherhood: the Elephant in the Laboratory'. She is now a tenure-track assistant professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

I recently retired from the World Health Organization and would like to share my 20 years of experience with former colleagues.

Janet Hiller, professor of public health at the University of Adelaide, directs the Adelaide Health Technology Assessment group, which undertakes evaluations to inform reimbursement decisions for pharmaceuticals, medical devices, tests and programs.

She was recently awarded a National Health and Medical Research Council grant to investigate disinvestment from existing health care interventions that are cost-ineffective or inappropriately applied within health care.

Carl W. Dieffenbach was recently appointed as the Director of the Division of AIDS (DAIDS) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a component of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Dieffenbach has been with DAIDS since 1992 and has held a number of senior positions including Associate Director of the Basic Sciences Program from 1994-2007. In 2007, Dr. Dieffenbach agreed to serve as the Acting Director of DAIDS and was officially appointed to the position in July 2008. As the DAIDS Director, Dr. Dieffenbach oversees a billion dollar research portfolio encompassing: 1) fundamental basic laboratory research, 2) discovery and development of therapies and treatment strategies for HIV/AIDS and its co-infections through basic research and clinical trials, and 3) discovery and development of vaccines, topical microbicides, and other prevention strategies through basic research and clinical trials.

Patricia O'Campo was the 2008 recipient of the Greg Alexander Award for Advancing Knowledge Award-Advancing public health knowledge through epidemiology and applied research. The purpose of this award is to recognize individuals and organizational teams from a variety of disciplines who have made a substantial contribution to advancing the knowledge base aimed at improving the health of women, children and families.

Elayne Kornblatt Phillips received the NIOSH award examining the "Impact of Needlestick Safety & Prevention Act (HR5178) on Hospital Worker Injury"

The second edition of William Dupont's text "Statistical Modeling for Biomedical Researchers" will soon be published by Cambridge University Press. This text introduces intermediate-level biostatistics to non-statisticians, and is intended for students who have had an introductory course in biostatistics.