Current PhD Students

Anlan Cao is a doctoral student in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. She received a Bachelor of Medicine degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2020. Her research is focused on exploring the association between lifestyle factors, body composition and cancer survivorship, with a special focus on ovarian cancer.

Tiffany E. Chang is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health. Her dissertation research examines the sex-specific impact of patient- and system-level factors on hypertension outcomes among young Veterans. Prior to her doctoral studies, Tiffany worked as a health services researcher (contractor) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as a quality improvement director at the American Heart Association. Tiffany earned her MPH from Yale School of Public Health and her BA from Cornell University.

Meet Yale School of Public Health's Abigail Girgis.

Jiaqi Hu is a doctoral student at the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, Yale School of Public Health. Having graduated from Peking University in 2021 with a Bachelor of Art degree, she continued to study and conduct research in genetic epidemiology. Her research interest is to identify genetic variants that increase risk for complicated diseases and combine genetic and environmental information to predict individual risk of disease.

Meet the Center for Perinatal, Pediatric and Environmental Epidemiology's (CPPEE) Esther Kang.

Yining Li is a doctoral student at the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology, Yale School of Public Health. She finished her undergraduate study at Peking University with a Bachelor of Medicine degree. She is currently interested in incorporating analytical methods to identify common variants related to different phenotypes, especially those in chronic non-communicable diseases.

Meet Yale School of Public Health's Zicheng Li.

Emma J. Mew is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology. Emma has worked in a variety of research and applied public health settings with focus on mental health and health equity research. Emma is interested in global mental health research with focus on youth and the intergenerational transmission of trauma. Emma holds a Bachelor of Science from Dalhousie University and a Master of Public Health from the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

Reed Mszar, MPH, MS, is a first-year PhD student in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. His research encompasses cardiovascular and clinical epidemiology, health outcomes and disparities research, and cardio-oncology. Before returning to Yale, he worked in the Division of Clinical Effectiveness and Decision Science at the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) where he supported the development of research funding announcements and managed a diverse portfolio of funded studies. Reed also conducted research at Yale's Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation (CORE) leading projects focused on patient-reported outcomes and shared decision-making, subclinical atherosclerosis imaging, atrial fibrillation ablation disparities, and financial hardship from medical bills.

Leah Puklin, MPH, is a PhD student in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology. As a member of Dr. Melinda Irwin's research team, her doctoral work focuses on nutritional epidemiology and breast cancer. Her mission is to use implementation science strategies to make nutrition and physical activity counseling part of routine care for all cancer patients. She earned her MPH from the Yale School of Public Health in 2019. Before returning to Yale, she spent a year at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy working on the Global Dietary Database; the most comprehensive and reliable estimates of food and nutrient intake worldwide. She attended Connecticut College for her undergraduate and graduated in 2015 with a major in Environmental Studies and a minor in Mathematics.

Katerina Santiago is a PhD student in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health. She earned her Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine and her Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in Biology with Honors from the University of Miami. Prior to her doctoral studies, Katerina worked as a research associate at the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine where her research focused on occupational exposures and their association with various health effects such as injuries and cancer and how such risks vary by race and ethnicity. Her current research interests are epidemiology of cancer, with a specific interest in gastrointestinal cancers, and how genetic risk interacts with environmental and occupational exposures.

Sunny Siddique is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. He holds a Master of Public Health (MPH) in Epidemiology from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Molecular Biology from Princeton University. Prior to Yale, Sunny served as a Cancer Research Training Award Fellow at the National Cancer Institute where he studied age-related functional outcomes among cancer survivors, pain management among cancer patients visiting the ER, and follow-up and surveillance strategies to improve detection of cancer recurrence. Sunny has also conducted substantial work in analyzing cancer center catchment areas and identifying neighborhood level disparities in cancer treatment and outcomes. His current research interests include: risk factors and screening for early-onset gastrointestinal cancers (particularly colorectal, pancreas, stomach, and liver cancers), access and utilization of novel treatments, and the functional outcomes of long-term cancer survivors.

Meet the Center for Methods in Implementation and Prevention Science's (CMIPS) and Meet the Center for Perinatal, Pediatric and Environmental Epidemiology's (CPPEE) Paulina Tolosa Tort.