Current Students

Hamza Awad

Mary J Bentley

Admitted Fall 2005
Mary received a B.S. degree in Biology from Boston College and then entered the MPH program at UMass. She also worked for eleven years in the biomedical research field before entering the PhD program and gained extensive experience in clinical research and quantitative methods. Her primary research interests center on the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases including diabetes, obesity, arthritis, cardiovascular disease and cancer. She is currently using statistical methods and strategies in her dissertation, "Evaluation of Composite Disease Activity Measures in Rheumatoid Arthritis," to examine and develop new tools to diagnose and accurately measure disease activity levels in arthritic patients with the goal of facilitating optimal treatment efficacy.

Qualifying Paper

Dissertation Proposal

Publications

Poster Presentations

Development and Validation of a Modified Disease Activity Score (mDAS28) in Rheumatoid Arthritis for Use in Standard Care" Mary J. Bentley, George W. Reed. Annual European Congress of Rheumatology, EULAR 2009, Copenhagen, Denmark, 10-13 June 2009.

"Simplified Composite Disease Activity Measures in Rheumatoid Arthritis." Bentley MJ, Reed GW. Poster presented at the Clinical and Translational Research Retreat, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, 2007.

Yong Chen

Admitted Fall 2008
Yong graduated with a degree in clinical medicine in 2004 from Shanghai 2nd Medical University which is now known as the School of Medicine of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Prior to his graduate study in the Department of Health Policy and Management of Bloomberg School of Public Health, he worked for the Health Department in Shanghai where he successfully transferred his career from medicine to public health. He was TA for Medical Chinese and Healthcare IT during his graduate study. In addition, interested in performance measures and quality improvement, he was dedicated to research on hospital pay for reporting programs and pay for performance initiative when he was an intern with Maryland Hospital Association. His master paper focusing on hospital Value Based Purchasing has been presented at the Academy Health Annual Research Meeting. His goal is to be a leader who has the ability to design and advocate quality improvement and patient safety programs based on sound research results.

Yendelela Cuffee

Admitted Fall 2008
Yendelela earned her BS in Biology from Hampton University and her MPH from New York Medical College. She has worked as a Clinical Research Intern for Accorda Therapeutics in Hawthorne, NY, as Associate Research Scientist for Bayer Diagnostics in Tarrytown, NY and most recently, as Lead Clinical Research Associate for Stryker Orthopedics in Mahawah, NY. She is interested in working with either the Department of Health and Human Services or the Center for Disease Control conducting international public health research.

Shira Fischer

MD/PhD Student
A third year medical student, Shira graduated from Harvard College with a concentration in Biochemical Sciences and then spent a fellowship year abroad in Israel. She subsequently spent 3 years at the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies as a research associate, where she contributed to strategic planning efforts as well as to studies about new contraception methods, a national program for cord blood banking, and reducing birth defects in developing countries. Shira is interested in research in women's health and health disparities.

Hassan Fouayzi

Admitted Fall 2009
Hassan has an MS in Resource Economics from UMass Amherst and has worked for five years as a data analyst and technical liaison for multi-site collaborations of the HMO Cancer Research Network, part of the Meyers Primary Care Institute at UMass. He has co-authored multiple papers and is interested in cancer research, social disparities in health outcomes, and access and utilization of heath care. 

Lauren Gellar

Admitted Fall 2007
Lauren is a graduate of Johnson and Wales University AS program in Culinary Arts and Long Island University’s BS program in Clinical Nutrition. She holds an MS in Nutrition and Public Health and an MEd in Community Nutrition, both from Teacher’s College at Columbia University. Additionally Lauren is a Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES). She has worked as a clinical coordinator and data manager/implementer while working as a post-bach research fellow at the NIH Department of Statistics, Epidemiology and Prevention Research as well as an assistant evaluation coordinator at Columbia University. She has held internships at Schneider Children’s Hospital, Adolescent Eating Disorder Clinic and St. Charles Hospital Diabetes Outpatient Clinic. Lauren has a broad interest in behavioral and physiological factors associated with child and adolescent metabolic health.

Wei "Tiffany"Huang

Admitted Fall 2009
Tiffany is a graduate of Shanghai University College of Engineering with a degree in Computer Science, and holds an MS in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. For the last 12 years she has worked as an analyst and data base developer for the UMMS Center for Outcomes Research (COR) in the Department of Surgery. She has numerous publications and presentations. She is interested in studying the gap between clinical trial results and real world clinical practice and health outcomes in a wide variety of diseases.

Ashley Keller

Admitted Fall 2009
Ashley received her BA in Psychology from University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, and an MS in Research Methods in Psychology from Oxford University, UK. Ashley was the European Project Manager for a cardiovascular registry project at Oxford and has conducted human cognitive-behavioral experiments. She is interested in studying behavioral interventions for health promotion.

Yat "Gary" Leung

Qualifying Paper

Dissertation Proposal

Publications

Charmaine Lo

Charmaine has a BS in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Michigan State University and an MPH from the University of Alabama Birmingham. At UAB She worked as a Research Assistant on several studies, including the Rapid Cycle Education Improvement Study, the Impact of Patient Education in HIV Screening Study, the VA Nicotine Dependence Program and a project reviewing the policy of complementary and alternative medicine into Comprehensive Cancer Control Plans. She is interested in health care disparities.

Tanya Lord

Qualifying Paper

Dissertation Proposal

Patrick McCabe

Patrick earned a BA in Physics from Boston College, his MPH from UMass, Amherst (Worcester Campus). He has experience working as a research associate developing reverse osmosis membranes and is currently examining the relationship between adolescent cannabis use, tobacco use and early onset major depression. Patrick would like to specialize in examining large data sets and epidemiological surveys to look at rare outcomes, particularly in psychiatric epidemiology. His spare time, especially in warm weather, is mostly spent using or repairing one of his three electric garden tractors.

Richard H. McManus

Admitted Fall 2008
Rick McManus received his BA in Social Work from Bradley University and his Master of Social Work and Master of Public Policy degrees from the University of Michigan. He has worked for the last five years at the UMass Medical School's Center for Health Policy and Research where he has investigated issues related to the provision of publicly-supported long-term care issues in Massachusetts and Maine. Through this work he has developed knowledge in evaluation methods, policy analysis, and issues related to aging and health. His research interests include the effect of health promotion and prevention interventions on the course of disease for elders, as well as studying the compression of morbidity hypothesis.

Laura Mottola

Admitted Fall 2009
Laura has a BS in Biology from Loyola University Chicago and an MPH from Boston University. She has been a teaching assistant for the BU MPH program and a Research Assistant in cardiology for Northwestern Memorial Hospital , and for a study of elder fall risk for the UMMS Dept. of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine. She also worked as an intern for the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program. She is interested in contributing to clinical trial design.

Hoa Nguyen

"Failure to Close the Age and Sex Gap in the Use of Evidence-Based Therapies in Acute Coronary Syndromes: Perspectives from a Multinational Registry." Hoa L. Nguyen, MD, MS , Robert J. Goldberg, PhD , Joel M. Gore, MD , Frederick A. Spencer, MD , Ann Quill, MA , and Frederick A. Anderson Jr, PhD. Annual APHA meeting, 2009, Philadelphia, PA.

"A Scoring Index for Acute Bacterial Meningitis: Implications for the Population-Based Assessment of Hib, Meningococcal and Pneumococcal Vaccine Impact." Hoa L. Nguyen, MD, MS, Paul E. Kilgore, MPH, MD, Nyambat Batmunkh, MD, MPH and Anh D. Dang, PhD. Accepted Annual APHA Meeting, 2008, San Diego, CA.

Hilary Placzek

James Potts

Admitted Fall 2006
James earned his undergraduate degree in microbiology from the University of Oklahoma and his MPH/Biostatistics graduate degree from the University of Oklahoma's Health Science Center. James has done health policy research looking at exceptions to the underage drinking laws among different states and has valuable experience in infectious disease epidemiology from working as a part-time epidemiologist at the Oklahoma State Department of Health's Communicable Disease Division while doing his graduate work. James has provided statistical analysis on numerous projects for the UMass Medical School Dept. of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine. His research interests are in tropical infectious disease and he is currently working under Dr. Alan Rothman on the individual and combined clinical and laboratory findings of children with dengue illness.

Qualifying Paper

Dissertation Proposal

Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases
"Analysis of Clinical Laboratory Variables for Early Dengue Illness Classification"
Dissertation Award of $37,800 for 1 year

2009 Dean's Award for Outstanding Mid-Thesis Research Achievement. Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Runner-up, Young Investigator Award. Annual Meeting of The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 2008, New Orleans, LA.

Elena Salmoirago-Blotcher

Huifang Zhao