Lab Director
Alvin Tran, Sc.D., MPH
Alvin Tran, Sc.D, MPH is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Administration and Policy at the University of New Haven. His research focuses on the intersection of body image, disordered eating behaviors, health policy, and racial and sexual minority health. Dr. Tran is a member of the Academy for Eating Disorders and currently serves as a co-chair for the organization’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee. Prior to pursuing his doctoral training in public health, Dr. Tran was a Health Care Reporter for Kaiser Health News (KHN) in Washington, D.C. At KHN, he covered a variety of health topics, including the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, palliative care, and medical education and training. Dr. Tran has published 12 studies and his work appeared in The Washington Post, National Public Radio, and PBS NewsHour.
Research Collaborators
Gilberto Lopez, Sc.D., MPH
Dr. Lopez is a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center, where his research focuses on the social determinants of cancer and cancer control in rural America. As a broadly trained social scientist, he is particularly interested in identifying structural and cultural factors that pattern the unequal distribution of chronic disease. Specifically, his research program focuses on the relationships between socioeconomic status, place, and cancer (outcomes, behaviors, and perceptions) with a focus on: 1) rural communities; 2) ethnic minorities in rural communities; and 3) developing scalable interventions to reduce the risk for, and the burden of, cancer. Dr. Lopez’ ultimate goal is to produce data that will guide the development and implementation of interventions to reduce the burden of cancer while also reducing its disparities. Dr. Lopez is a native of California’s Central Valley who received his MA in medical anthropology from Southern Methodist University, MPH from Johns Hopkins University, and doctorate from Harvard University.
Heather Mattie, Sc.D.
Heather Mattie is an instructor of data science and the executive director of the Health Data Science Master’s program in the Biostatistics department at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She teaches several courses including Introduction to Data Science, Reproducible Data Science, and Data Science II: Deep Learning. Her research interests include methods for minimizing algorithmic bias, methods for social network data imputation, the estimation and prediction of tie strength in large-scale social networks, and studying the causes and potential pathways of improvement for health disparities. Heather is also highly involved in the diversity and inclusion efforts of the School and teaches and mentors underrepresented minority students each summer as part of the Summer Program in Biostatistics and Computational Biology hosted by the department of Biostatistics. Heather also works as a data scientist for Wellframe, a Boston-based digital health company, working to improve health management targeting efforts.