PhD in Epidemiology and Clinical Research

Jonathan Altamirano graduated from Stanford with a Bachelors in Human Biology as well as a Masters in Biology. Before returning to graduate school, he worked in Stanford Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics and in the Office of Faculty Development and Diversity as a research manager and a data analyst. This joint role gave him the opportunity to lead and support research efforts for multiple domestic and international studies and to explore his interests in public health, global child health, and health equity. Most recently, he has led a number of COVID-19 projects, including studies of household transmission, on the social determinants of health in pregnant women with COVID-19, and on the considerations for safe reopening of schools during the pandemic. During his graduate research, Jonathan is eager to return to global health, and is interested in infectious disease epidemiology in resource-limited settings. Outside of his work, Jonathan enjoys reading, binging television (particularly bad TV), and drinking any and all coffee he can get his hands on.

Shalmali Bane graduated from Stanford in 2016 with a degree in Biology with a concentration in Neurobiology. Prior to graduate school, she worked in healthcare consulting at the Analysis Group, where she worked on qualitative evidence dossiers, systematic literature reviews, and survey research for pharma and biotech clients. She also conducted pro bono research with NGOs in Haiti, which forged her path to epidemiology and women’s health. Her research interests are in reproductive epidemiology, namely examining methods to reduce bias when studying pregnant populations as well as investigating social determinants of maternal health. She is passionate about reproductive health equity and the inclusive study of pregnancy. Outside of work, Shalmali enjoys sewing, video games, post-workout endorphins, and puzzles of all kinds. 

Christopher (Chris) Bennett, MD, MA completed his undergraduate training in Biology at Winthrop University, graduate training in Genetics from Duke University, and his MD from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also obtained postgraduate research training at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and then at The Johns Hopkins Institute of Genetic Medicine as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellow. After medical school, he finished his internship and residency training in emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. As a resident at Harvard, he was concurrently a researcher with the Emergency Medicine Network.

He joined the Stanford faculty in 2020 as an Assistant Professor (UML) of emergency medicine. In addition to being a member of Stanford’s Bio-X Institute, he attends in Stanford’s emergency department and runs a research group. His group focuses on better understanding regional differences in access to emergency care in the US and characterizing regional differences in access to emergency department based HIV testing. Outside of Stanford, Christopher is active in academic emergency medicine; he was previously a member of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) Board of Directors. He currently serves on the SAEM Foundation Board of Trustees. In his free time, Christopher and his husband enjoy hiking, baked goods, and ample coffee.

Cayley Bowles, MD, MS graduated from Princeton University in 2012 where she majored in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology with a minor in Biological Engineering. She then proceeded to obtain a Masters degree in Epidemiology from Harvard School of public Health where she primarily studied the spread of vector-borne and water-borne diseases. She then attended medical school at UCLA and fell in love with the cardiovascular system. She graduated in 2018 and started residency at Stanford in the Integrated Cardiothoracic Surgery training program.

She completed 2 years of residency and developed an interest in working with large clinical datasets and exploring racial disparities in cardiac surgery which led her to the epidemiology program. Cayley enjoys powerlifting, surfing, traveling, and exploring new restaurants in her free time.

Andrew Nepomuceno graduated from Stanford in 2018 (Biomechanical Engineering). Before joining Stanford Epidemiology, he conducted research in neurosurgery and mental health and volunteered as an emergency department Spanish interpreter. Andrew serves as a resident fellow at Magic—an intentional community of people dedicated to applying science to further common good—where he has lived since 2011.

His research and professional interests include developing flexible and robust randomization methods, applying scientific methods and principles to questions of value, and advocating a more rigorous and inclusive definition for “science.”

Andrew enjoys making common cause to realize aspirations to adaptive personal change. He relishes frequent forays into nature, yoga, swimming, lifting, making music, dancing, consciously evolving idiolect, conversation about living and dying well and contributing to others' doing so, and cultivating awareness and gratitude in these and myriad other aspects of life.

Anna Nguyen completed her MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics and BAs in Public Health and Data Science at UC Berkeley, where she conducted research on child growth failure, WASH interventions, and school-located vaccinations. During her time at Cal, Anna was also involved with data science and HCD initiatives, inspiring her to leverage advanced computational tools and design thinking to improve population health.

Anna's research lies at the intersection of infectious disease epidemiology and data science. She is interested in applying machine learning techniques to understand the influence that environmental and socioeconomic factors have on disease transmission. In her free time, Anna enjoys making poorly curated Spotify playlists, collecting fake plants, and trying new flavors of kombucha.

Hanyang Shen received her MPH degree in Epidemiology from Drexel University in 2015. She also has a Bachelor of Medicine degree in Dentistry from Lanzhou University and a Master of Science degree in Environmental and Public health Management from Hong Kong Baptist University. Before joining the PhD program, she worked on HIV and mental health prevention in multiple academic and clinical settings.

Hanyang’s research interests are understanding how social determinants, genetic risks, and behavioral and environmental factors affect the risks of mental disorders and the long-term effects of mental diseases. Her goals are to identify effective treatments and prevention technics for common mental diseases. Hanyang enjoys singing a cappella, reading novels and history books, playing video games, trying new restaurants, traveling, and hiking in her spare time.

Simon John Christoph Soerensen, MD, graduated from Aarhus University in Denmark with an MD in 2021. Prior to joining the PhD program, Simon worked on different interdisciplinary projects (mainly in urologic epidemiology) at Stanford on three occasions between 2018 and 2020. For his latest stay at Stanford, Simon took a year off from medical school to conduct prostate cancer outcomes research and work on different projects in AI in medical imaging. This included spearheading the development and prospective clinical implementation of a deep learning model to speed up and optimize an essential part of the MRI-guided targeted prostate cancer biopsy pipeline at the Department of Urology at Stanford.

Simon's research interests lie within cancer epidemiology and examining methods to reduce cancer burden. On top of this, he is interested in social determinants of health, machine learning for medical imaging, translational science, and addressing health inequities. In his spare time, Simon likes to travel, spend time in nature, and play badminton and chess.

Shamsi Soltani (she/her) earned an MPH in Epidemiology at Tulane University and a BS in Neuroscience with French minor at UCLA. She draws on deep applied public health experience, including over six years as a senior epidemiologist for the San Francisco Department of Public Health. She excels at leveraging data to inform education, research, and policy– once spurring the CDC to adopt ICD-10-CM medical codes to identify e-scooter related injury. Shamsi is interested in the interplay of technology, bias, and health disparity, particularly with respect to big data.

Born and raised in San Francisco, Shamsi is a child of immigrants. She is fond of hiking the North and East Bay year round, reading reams of fiction, and sweating through rhythm & motion dance classes. Shamsi delights in food shared with friends and has yet to meet a hot spring she doesn't like.

Chloe Su completed her undergraduate degree in Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology with a minor in Biomedical Research at UCLA. Chloe is passionate about improving cancer prevention and advancing cancer treatment to improve the lives of cancer patients and their families. She has a strong interest in the intersection of informatics and epidemiology.  Prior to joining Stanford, Chloe was a clinical trial project and data manager at UCLA Health where she managed trials in early lung cancer detection and helped build a patient database for biomedical informatics research. In addition, Chloe also pursued various roles in the industry including clinical operations, medical affairs, as well as the development and commercialization of an ultra-rare disease drug in Japan. Chloe is currently studying the risk factors and building predictive models for recurrence in primary lung cancer. Beyond work, Chloe is a proud mum of a 12-year-old Shih Tzu, Cookie, an avid traveler, an advanced scuba diver with a newfound interest in surfing, a rookie yogi, and an aspiring Japanese conversationalist.

Annabel Tan obtained a Masters in Public Health in Epidemiology from the Yale School of Public Health and completed her undergraduate degree in bioengineering at Imperial College London. Prior to Stanford, she worked at the Yale Global Health Leadership Initiative as a program manager where she worked on organizational change projects based in the UK, Ethiopia, and Mozambique, and conducted positive deviance research in the United States. Research wise, she is interested in leveraging machine learning and AI tools to examine questions in aging and cardiovascular health. Annabel was born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and enjoys reading, eating, cooking, and pop culture. She is mom to Bertram the human and Tintin the sheepadoodle.

Axel Wolff, DPT, OCS graduated with a Bachelor's of Science from West Point and was commissioned an Armor Officer in the U.S. Army in 2007. After serving overseas in Europe and Iraq, he earned his Doctorate in Physical Therapy and completed his Internship at Baylor University in 2016. His graduate studies focused on developing direct-access neuromusculoskeletal knowledge and clinical skills, culminating with research exploring cervical multifidi stiffness using shear-wave elastography. Upon graduation, Axel operationally embedded in the First Infantry Division, serving in several Brigade Combat Teams and as Chief of Rehabilitation, contributing to large-scale population health programs focused on human performance optimization and injury prevention. His research interests are in the assessment and prevention of injury, illness, and disease in the military, particularly overuse musculoskeletal injuries, and associated healthcare utilization and military readiness costs. Axel enjoys family time with his wife and children, traveling, fitness, the arts, and Settlers of Catan.

Andrew (Andy) Chang, MD, MS completed his undergraduate studies at Yale University, then obtained his MD and MS in Epidemiology from Stanford. He finished his residency training in the global health track of Stanford's Internal Medicine program in 2016 and served as Chief Resident in 2017. He is now in his final year of his cardiology fellowship at Stanford. Andy is passionate about utilizing population health science methodologies to investigate and combat the impact of cardiovascular disease in global vulnerable populations. His current projects include assessing and improving the quality of care for rheumatic heart disease patients in Low- and Middle-Income Countries, characterizing the effects of the US opiate epidemic on incident heart disease, and describing the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on cardiovascular care systems. In whatever spare time he has outside of his coursework and clinical duties, Andy enjoys hiking, tennis, cooking, and inventing new ways to get his newborn son to go to bed.

Michael Hittle completed his undergraduate degree in Human Biology at Stanford in 2019 after a first career in web engineering and marketing entrepreneurship. His pivot to computational epidemiology is driven by a passion for digital health, and a desire to leverage technology to improve both our understanding of disease and the outcomes of those impacted by disease. Michael's interests lie at the intersection of neurology and the mobile phone platform, and include novel digital endpoints, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and remote patient monitoring. Michael is an avid mountain biker, snowboarder and outdoor enthusiast; he also enjoys reading, playing and listening to music and spending time with his growing family. 

Samuel Jaros graduated from Loyola University Chicago in 2020 with a BS in Bioinformatics and a BA in Sociology. Before Stanford, he researched HIV in Accra, Ghana through Washington University and worked in West Virginia in health advocacy. Sam’s current projects include helping build a California-wide dashboard for examining how socioeconomic determinants of health influence the geography and timing of disease. He is also working on designing a program to help people who have received invasive surgery find non-opioid methods for pain reduction. He is a part of the BSSR Training Grant which emphasizes the combination of large-scale health data with often ignored social data to generate highly applicable human-focused discoveries. Outside of research, he is passionate about health care reform and finding equitable ways to pay for chronic disease treatment. When he is not at Stanford, you will likely find Sam cooking, biking, skiing, or learning a new way to make coffee.

Xiaojuan Liu, MS obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Preventive Medicine and a BS in Financial Mathematics in 2016, and graduated with a Master's degree in Epidemiology and Biostatistics in 2019 from Shandong University, China. She completed her Global Learning program at Duke Kunshan University and internships at Provincial Health Commission, Provincial CDC and local hospitals before coming to Stanford. Her research interest includes cardiovascular epidemiology, with a focus on risk assessment, disease prevention and prediction based on large longitudinal cohort studies, and casual inference, especially adopting cutting edge approaches to simulate randomization and generate causality from observational study. She also has passion in applying novel biostatistics models to dealing with nonstandard study designs, integrating heterogeneous data and promoting precision medicine. Alongside research and work, Xiaojuan enjoys singing, movies, exercising and traveling.

Yan Min completed her medical training and surgical residency at Peking University, Beijing, as an undergraduate student. She then pursued her master’s degree in health economics at Stanford University. She took a gap year during the master program working as a health policy analyst in the health finance cluster at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. After she returned from Geneva, Yan also took a leadership role in establishing the Wellness Living Laboratory Cohort at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. Yan is extremely passionate about rigorous causal inference theories and applying causal inference models to large-scale observational studies. She currently focuses on constructing a causal model to address the effects of surgeon volumes and hospital volumes on long-term patient outcomes in six cardiothoracic surgery procedures. On the side, she is also having fun in statistical learning and employing bioinformatic methodology to her studies of microbiome, metabolomics, and human health. Outside of work, Yan enjoys karate, photography, backpacking, and carpentry. Also, she is willing to take on any challengers on any racket sports.

Megan Roche, MD completed a medical degree from Stanford in 2018 and a BS in Neuroscience from Duke in 2012. She is interested in bone health in athletes, genetic predictors of sports injury, and sports epidemiology. Megan is a five-time trail running national champion and a co-author of the book, “The Happy Runner.” She co-founded Some Work All Play, a coaching group centered around finding long-term fulfillment in the process of running. Megan is pursuing her PhD in Epidemiology and is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Stanford Center on Longevity. Outside of work, Megan enjoys biking, reading, strong coffee, nearly all forms of music, and trying to keep up with her dog, Addie, and her husband and co-author, David.

Sindiso Nyathi graduated from Princeton University in 2016 with a bachelor's degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.  He spent two years working as a Systems Modeler at the Global Obesity Prevention Center at Johns Hopkins University.  His work with the GOPC focused on assessing the effectiveness of obesity-related interventions in communitites using systems science tools.  His research interests include Global Health, Infectious Disease modeling and Health Policy in Low and Middle Income Countries.  Sindiso is passionate about working to leverage the range of mathematical and computational tools available today to improve public health and combat disease in LMICs.  His current research includes vaccine policy work, mathematical modeling of temperature dependence of arthropod vectors and vector control modeling work.  Outside of class and research, Sindiso enjoys reading, swimming, photography and exploring the outdoors.

Biyao Zou graduated with a Bachelor of Economics and a BA in English Literature from Tsinghua University, China, and obtained her Master of Public Policy at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Before joining the PhD program in Epidemiology and Clinical Research, she worked as a research coordinator in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Stanford, where she studied the disease and economic burden and risk factors of liver disease in the United States and Asia. She has given oral and poster presentations at international conferences such as DDW, AASLD, and EASL. Currently, she focuses on identifying causal risk factors for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and the causal role of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in various diseases including cardiovascular disease and cancer using a genetic epidemiology approach. Biyao enjoys cooking, hiking and spending time with her labradoodle puppy.

Jessica Hinman completed an undergraduate program at the University of Southern California in 2010 and obtained a MS in Epidemiology at the University of Iowa in 2017 prior to joining the PhD program at Stanford. Her research centers around leveraging technology to improve design and analysis methods in the study of complex disease etiology, particularly with respect to progressive neurological disorders. She feels that an interdisciplinary approach is crucial to untangling the interactions between genetic risk, environmental exposures, and lifestyle factors that underpin these disease courses. She believes epidemiologic research must be motivated by, and grounded in, measurable improvements to health access, equity, and outcomes for patients. Outside of work, Jessica enjoys reading, hiking, eating, and spending time with her husband and their rescue dogs at their home in the East Bay.