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SER-Student Caucus’ 2008-2009 Executive Committee

Past President - Danielle Iuliano

Hello, my name is Danielle Iuliano and I will be serving as the SER-SC Past President for 2008-2009.  I’m currently a third year PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH).  My research area includes Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Statistics. and Genetic Epidemiology.  My research project is focused on genetic associations with various outcomes of the Hepatitis C Virus.  Before beginning my PhD program, I earned a Masters in Public Health in Epidemiology from the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University (2002).  After completing my MPH, I worked as an Association of Schools of Public Health Fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the field of Reproductive Health. While working for CDC, I had an opportunity to participate in outbreak activities and research for West Nile Virus and vaccine research for Smallpox and Anthrax.  I have also had some experience writing and publishing my research in peer reviewed journals. 

I am committed to creating a better environment for learning and student success.  At GSPH, I serve on the Curriculum Committee and I was selected to participate in the Salk Fellowship for Health Ethics.  I have served on the SER-SC board for the past three years as Treasurer, Co-Program Chair, and President Elect.  During my time on the board, I helped to increase the amount of information on the SER-SC website, raise awareness of SER-SC and the benefits of becoming a student member.  I am looking forward to creating more opportunities over the next year for students to develop professionally.  Please feel free to contact me with your suggestions or comments at adi3@pitt.edu.

President - Vanessa Moore

I am currently a third year doctoral candidate in epidemiology at the University of Rochester pursuing a dissertation in nosocomial infectious diseases.  I am primarily interested in foodborne illnesses, bioterrorism, and healthcare epidemiology.  In June of 2006 I qualified and have since been preparing to propose in June of 2007. 

I am involved in several activities that will have prepared me to effectively serve as the president elect.  My experience as a current member of the student caucus and program committee provides me with a strong background in the organization of the committee.  Having attended the 2005 SER/CSAB meeting in Toronto, I am able to identify areas of the meeting that are not student-friendly.  Within my department, I have organized a major named lectureship as co-coordinator of the 2007 Saward-Berg Memorial lecture.  This entailed organizing the nomination and voting procedures, as well as contacting and inviting potential speakers and arranging the lecture, meetings, and meals.  Since 2005 I have served as a student representative on the graduate programs committee, which is responsible for the ongoing review of degree curricula and course content.  Additionally, I am the coordinator for the 2006-2007 academic year seminar series in the division of epidemiology.  As the coordinator, I am responsible for scheduling and advertising all student journal clubs, faculty and student meetings, and division seminars.  I am also the research coordinator for an NCI funded study of viral etiology of lymphoma part time.  Overall, I feel that these activities have given me strong organizational, communication, and multi-tasking skills that will allow me act in the best interest of the student members of SER attending the annual meetings.  I hope to identify what is most important to our student colleagues and make every effort to bring these goals to fruition for the 2008 annual meeting in Chicago.

President-Elect - Arijit K. Nandi
School: John Hopkins School of Public Health

Arijit Nandi will hold the position of President Elect for 2008-2009. Arijit is a PhD candidate in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH). Arijit is concerned with the impact of macro-level factors on population health. His thesis work focuses on understanding how economic processes, particularly deindustrialization, influence neighborhood environments and patterns of drug use. In other research, he explores the social epidemiology of common mood-anxiety disorders and substance use disorders and substance use disorders and outcomes. Other research areas of interest include migration and obesity. After completing his PhD, Arijit will be joining the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars program at Harvard University.

Apart from his research endeavors, Arijit co-founded the Social Epidemiology Student Organization (SES.org), a multidisciplinary forum for the dissemination of theory, methods, and findings related to macro-level factors influencing health. Activities include a monthly journal club, an invited speaker series, research-in-progress seminars, and working groups. Arijit hopes his experiences leading a student group will facilitate his service as SER-Student Caucus President-Elect. As President Elect, Arijit looks forward to working with the President and Past President to promote the mission of the SER-Student Caucus.

Secretary - Jennifer A. Smith

University of Michigan

As a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan for the past several years, I have focused on research pertaining to the genetic epidemiology of complex diseases, including cardiovascular disease, dementia, and dyslipidemia. At the University of Michigan, I am currently the Doctoral Student Representative to both the Department of Epidemiology Curriculum Committee and the Symposium Planning Committee for the 2008 Doctoral Student Research Symposium: Multi-Disciplinary Approaches Toward Improving Health. I am also the Co-Chair and a founding member of the School of Public Health Doctoral Students group and was previously a member of the Epidemiology Student Organization. As the Secretary of the SER-Student Caucus, these leadership and service experiences will compliment the organizational and administrative
skills that I have developed throughout my education and employment. The two fields of my masters degrees, Statistics and Health Management/Policy, both require extreme attention to detail and have further developed my proficiency for accurate documentation and record keeping, effective communication with co-workers, and large-scale data analysis. These skills have been reinforced by employment positions that I have held, including two management positions in survey research studies. In these positions, I was responsible for hiring, training, and supervising interviewers as well as data collection, management, and quality. My diverse background and skills in administration, leadership, and survey data analysis uniquely qualify me to meet the challenges of the Secretary position, and I look forward to supporting and furthering the goals of the SER-Student Caucus.

Abstract Review Committee Chair/Treasurer
Michael Lowe, University of Utah

I started at the PhD Public Health Program at the University of Utah in the Summer of 2007 and earned my MSPH at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Currently I am working at the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) in the HIV program where I am responsible for HIV surveillance and program planning. In the past I worked as an epidemiologist at the UDOH. One thing that I am drawn to is international health and traveling abroad. I lived in Kazkahstan as a Peace Corps volunteer, worked in Russia for the Red Cross, and want to eventually return overseas.

I feel that I could contribute a lot to the SER-SC Executive Council. I have participated on community planning committees where I have learned to understand a variety of viewpoints and then set mutually agreed upon funding and program goals. I also have experience working as a liaison between policy makers, health care professionals, the community, and vulnerable populations. If elected, I would focus on a few issues. The first would be to get more information out about SER and get more students interested in joining SER. I have worked in public health for ten years and only recently heard of SER. Another focus would be to help students get published in journals. I think that many students would greatly benefit from publishing, but lack the confidence and technical details of how to go about the process.

Nominations/Membership Committee Co-Chair
Whitney R. Robinson, University of North Carolina School of Public Health

I will receive my PhD in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2008. My dissertation explores reasons why obesity prevalence is much greater in young U.S. Black women than in young U.S. Black men. Specifically, the research investigates to what extent adolescent behaviors and family demographics are associated with this gender disparity. I also hold a master’s degree in epidemiology from UNC, where I researched the association between early-life body size and rate of prostate cancer later in life.

In September 2008, I will begin a two-year appointment as a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar at the University of Michigan. As a Health & Society Scholar, I plan to estimate causal associations between obesity and various health outcomes. Previous experience that will enable me to serve effectively includes serving as a co-chair of the Speakers Committee of UNC’s Minority Health Caucus (2002-2003). In this position, I gained organizational and outreach skills that will be helpful on the SER-SC board. In addition, since attending my first SER meeting in 2001, I have acquired a long-term perspective on student involvement in SER. I have participated in activities like the SER student workshop and breakfast roundtables at the annual meeting. If elected to the board, I will support the maintenance of a robust roster of activities for students at the annual meeting. As the Membership/ Nominations Committee Chair, I will continue enhancing communication between SER and students by recruiting more student-champions to disseminate information to fellow students at the schools.

Nominations/Membership Committee Co-Chair
Karen Schliep, University of Utah Public Health Program

Originally from Minnesota, I have lived in Utah for the past fifteen years. My educational background includes undergraduate degrees in english (Carleton College, MN) and biology (University of Utah, UT) and a master of science degree in public health (University of Utah, UT). I am broadly interested in the epidemiology of pregnancy, infancy and childhood. My research background includes evaluating energy balance among postpartum adolescents, examining the competitive food environment of Utah’s largest school district, and assessing the development and implementation of school wellness policies within Utah schools. Currently, I am working as a research assistant where I am involved in several projects including peri-conceptional exposure assessment and neonatal outcomes associated with infertility. I am interested in serving as co-chair of the Membership/Nominations Committee. My prior experience as the Student Advisory Committee Chair for our department well prepared me to serve in a leadership position with a student group. My current volunteer positions as Educational Director for the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) Rocky Mountain Chapter, Board Secretary for Girls on the Run Salt Lake and Campus Liaison for the American Public Health Association have also given me valuable experience in membership outreach and recruitment in addition to conference coordinating.
If elected, I would work to promote increased student and fellow membership in SER and also to expand on the SER-SC Champion program. Additionally, I would like to help build the student resource section, using skills I have obtained through the AMWA core and advanced certificate programs.

Programs Committee Co-chair - Derek Ng
School: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

My name is Derek Ng, a first year epidemiology student at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. After graduating from Yale in 2005, in health psychology and neuroscience, I worked for a small health consulting company for two years. At this job, our mandate was to address policy issues like tobacco control using epidemiology. While managing innovative projects, such as evaluating a national stopsmoking clinical trial, I found my vocational calling in epidemiology.

I am now enrolled full time as a student, developing research skills necessary for sound epidemiologic science. With a background in psychology, industry and epidemiology, I see the need for quality research that uses information in unique ways. I see this first-hand in my current part-time research position at the Cochrane Eyes and Vision Group, preparing meta-analyses of clinical trials. Here, I learned the impetus for the development of the clinicaltrials.gov registry, which is a triumph for the field with wonderful opportunities for improvements. The field is heading in the direction of increased clarity and use of information to answer practical questions, especially as we have more data and technology at our disposal. I would be privileged and honored to contribute however I can as a program committee chair to help present creative research and engage our colleagues with exciting programming at the annual meeting. It is a vibrant time to be an epidemiologist, and I’m very interested to see and help with the clever research the SER-SC will present to address growing public health challenges!

Programs Committee Co-chair - Stella Aslibekyan
School: Harvard School of Public Health

This year marks an exciting turn in my journey as an epidemiologist— in June, I will receive my Master’s degree from Harvard School of Public Health and move fifty miles south to continue as a doctoral student at the Department of Community Health at Brown University. A perfect fit for my interdisciplinary background, my Ph.D. project will focus on gene-environment interactions in cardiovascular disease epidemiology.
My involvement with SER-SC so far has been fun and rewarding! As a current member of the Program Committee, I am enjoying planning a ‘speed-networking’ event for our members during the Annual Meeting in Chicago. One of my favorite perks of being an SER-SC member is the chance to interact with other epidemiology students and early-career professionals from across the country, and I will work hard to develop such opportunities for all of our members. To ensure that the connections forged at the Meeting can become meaningful professional relationships and friendships, I plan on creating and moderating a web space (e.g. a Google group) to facilitate post-Meeting followup and other communications between members.

If elected to serve as the Program Committee Chair, I will serve the Executive Council and the SER-SC members with dedication, responsibility, and contagious enthusiasm. Thank you for your vote.