Mentors & Instructors | NYU School of Global Public Health

Faculty Mentors

Stephanie Cook, DrPH

Assistant Professor of Biostatistics/ Assistant Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences | NYU School of Global Public Health

Department Webpage

: @DrStephanieCook

Karyn Faber, EdD

Director of Undergraduate Experiential Learning and Clinical Assistant Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences | NYU School of Global Public Health

Department Webpage

Alexis Merdjanoff, PhD

Clinical Assistant Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences | NYU School of Global Public Health

Department Webpage

: @lexmerdj

Jose Pagán, PhD

Chair and Professor of the Department of Public Health Policy and Management | NYU School of Global Public Health

Department Webpage

Graduate Student Mentors

Gabriella Meltzer

Rising Fifth year doctoral candidate in Social and Behavioral Sciences | NYU School of Global Public Health

My public health research interests broadly encompass how environmental exposures—ranging from natural hazards, technological disasters, biohazards, and industrial pollution—create and exacerbate health disparities at critical and sensitive periods of the life course, including infancy, childhood and adolescence, pregnancy, and old age. I use a variety of methods to explore these issues, including quantitative data analysis, in-depth interviewing and qualitative data analysis, community-based participatory research, and geospatial analysis. My dissertation explores how the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the context of cumulative environmental stress affected children’s and adolescents’ physical and mental health in southern Louisiana. Prior to NYU, I received my BA in Health and Societies from the University of Pennsylvania and was a Global Health Research Associate at the Council on Foreign Relations.

: @gabriellameltz

Gabriella will support Dr. Merdjanoff during the summer program.

Manuel R. Vazquez-Sanchez, BS

Second Year MS Biostatistics Student | NYU School of Global Public Health

I am an incoming second-year MS Biostatistics student at NYU GPH. I work as a research assistant and lab coordinator in Dr. Melody Goodman's Measurement, Learning, & Evaluation Lab. One of the research projects I am currently working on involves analyzing COVID-19 survey data from Mexico. I am fluent in Spanish and English. During my free time, I enjoy surfing, playing video games, and hanging out with my dog.

: @mannyvazquez16

Manuel will support Dr. Faber during the summer program.

Vivian Hsing-Chun Wang, RD MS MPA

Rising Third year doctoral candidate in Public Health and Policy Management | NYU School of Global Public Health

Vivian Wang is a doctoral student in the Department of Public Health Policy and Management. Drawing from her experiences as a registered dietitian, Vivian centers her research on identifying policy levers that can support efforts to reduce health disparities. Specifically, she focuses on examining systemic barriers to inform social and health care services design to achieve health equity. Vivian's current projects include: racial/ethnic disparities in diet-related outcomes and interventions, population-level variations in attitudes and behaviors related to public health interventions, and application of implementation science principes to smoking cessation programs. An amateur cook, Vivian rarely follows recipes and thoroughly enjoys culinary art as an agent to connect with self and others.

: @vivianhcwang

Vivian will support Dr. Pagán during the summer program.

Erica P. Wood, MPH

Rising Third year doctoral candidate | NYU School of Global Public Health

Erica Wood is a third-year doctoral student in the Social and Behavioral Sciences track at New York University’s School of Global Public Health. Erica's work focuses on examining intersections of different forms of minority stress (e.g., sexual orientation-related discrimination and/or racial/ethnic-related discrimination) and mental and physical health outcomes among sexual and gender minorities. Erica’s primary research interests include examining pathways of risk and resilience among racially/ethnically diverse populations of sexual and gender minorities across the life course.

: ericapwoodMPH

Erica will support Dr. Cook during the summer program.

Jing Xu

Second year MS Biostatistics student | NYU School of Global Public Health

Jing received a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Wellesley College, and is a Biostatistics Masters Candidate at the School of Global Public Health at NYU. She works as a research assistant at NYU Langone where she studies survival outcomes in cardiac arrest patients. Currently, Jing is examining the relationship between brain regional oxygen saturation and survival outcomes for patients who are admitted to hospitals during cardiac arrest.

Twitter: @Jingistired

Instagram: @jingeatscereal

Instructors

Zoé Haskell-Craig, B.Sc., B.A.

Rising second year doctoral student in Biostatistics | NYU School of Global Public Health

Zoé will be starting the second year of her PhD program at NYU in fall 2021. She has a wide range of research interests including spatial statistics, machine learning, infectious diseases, environmental health and health disparities. Her current projects include a systematic review of spatial methods to study health disparities in air pollution exposure and susceptibility, and incorporating air pollution into prediction models using machine learning techniques. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2020 with a B.Sc. in Physics and a B.A. in Social and Political History

Zoé will be teaching the Introduction to Statistical Computing course.

Temitope Ojo, MPH

Rising fifth year doctoral student student in Social and Behavioral Services | NYU School Global Public Health

Temitope Ojo is a rising 5th year Ph.D. student in Public Health at NYU School of Public Health with 10 years of clinical and public health research and practice. She has had the unique opportunity of working in the US and in other countries (such as Uganda, Nigeria Switzerland, and Ghana), on different public health projects addressing non-communicable disease prevention and management in low and middle-income countries. She has a strong interest in implementation research in public health, which evolved from working in diverse settings and populations and exploring ways to transition evidence-based research into practice in an impactful way in public health. She is currently conducting a study to capture the perceptions of researchers and implementers on the influence of contextual factors on the feasibility of evidence-based cardiovascular health interventions in low- and middle-income countries.

Temitope will be teaching the Introduction to Epidemiology course.

Jessica Randazzo, MS

Rising second year doctoral student in Biostatistics | NYU School of Global Public Health

Jessica is a 2nd year doctoral student in the Biostatistics concentration. After receiving her BS in Applied Math from Stony Brook University, she taught Math and English in Mozambique as a Peace Corps Volunteer. She discovered public health through this opportunity and decided to pursue an MS degree at Tulane University School of Public Health in biostatistics. She has research experience in clinical trials, infectious diseases, oncology, missing data, and survival analysis. Her current research focuses on applying pseudo-observations to survival analysis.

: @jrazz12

Jessica will be teaching the Introduction to Biostatistics course.

Social Mentor

Jing Xu

Second year MS Biostatistics student | NYU School of Global Public Health

: @Jingistired

: @jingeatscereal