Michael A. Schultz is a quantitative sociologist and social demographer who studies economic mobility, social policy, and workers’ careers. Schultz received his PhD in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed an NICHD postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin’s Population Research Center. His research has been published in leading social science journals, including the American Sociological Review, the Russell Sage Foundation Journal for the Social Sciences, and Social Science Research.
Schultz uses a structural inequality approach that focuses on how institutions, like education systems, job ladders, and welfare state programs shape worker mobility by race, gender, and class. He specializes in telling stories with data to provide insight into how workers and households navigate opportunities and constraints to advance their careers and gain economic security. Schultz is the PI on an NSF Education Core grant studying the job ladders in the STEM Skilled Technical Workforce and on a Strada Education Foundation grant investigating the occupational and wage outcomes of WA postsecondary school leavers in partnership with the WA Education Research & Data Center (ERDC). Schultz works in partnership with local and state governments and communities to conduct social impact research for the public good.
Rui Li, PhD, is a pain epidemiologist and Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology & Pain Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Principal Investigator at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and Director of the Biostatistics and Epidemiology Research for Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine (BEAP). Her research sits at the intersection of population health, developmental science, and health disparities, with a central focus on preventing chronic pain before it becomes a persistent driver of disability and inequity. Using population-based cohorts and longitudinal designs, she investigates when pain risk accelerates across development, why sex and gender disparities emerge, and how early-life family risk and resilience shape pain vulnerability into adulthood.
Dr. Li leads an NICHD R01 on early-life social determinants and sex-specific pubertal pathways in adolescent chronic pain development, and a UW pilot award developing a youth-centered chronic pain impact measure for pediatric care and population surveillance. She also serves as Co-Investigator on an NIH HEAL-funded national pediatric learning health system award to improve equitable, patient-centered care for chronic pain. Her work has been recognized with the G.F. Gebhart Journal of Pain Young Investigator Award, the Judy Su Endowed Research Training Award, and the PROMIS Health Organization Scholarship Award, among others. At CSDE, Dr. Li brings a prevention-focused lens to chronic pain and welcomes collaboration with scholars in longitudinal and life-course methods, causal inference, biodemography, and women’s and children’s health.
Christine Khosropour is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Washington and Associate Director of the Implementation Science Core of the UW/Fred Hutch Center for AIDS Research (CFAR). Dr. Khosropour’s work focuses on two complementary areas: (1) understanding the prevalence, reproductive tract sequelae, and public health control of sexually transmitted infections (STI) – specifically chlamydia; and (2) identifying optimal strategies to implement HIV prevention interventions in real-world settings. In parallel with this work, Dr. Khosropour has collaborated with over 20 state and local health departments to evaluate their STI/HIV prevention and control activities. These partnerships provide a strong, practice-informed perspective on the data needed to develop, implement, and evaluate population-based interventions.
Dr. Khosropour has taught several epidemiology courses at the University of Washington, including Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases, which she has taught since 2017. She has also mentored numerous public health graduate students and clinical fellows. Dr. Khosropour has served as a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Sexually Transmitted Diseases since 2019 and currently serves as the Chlamydia Section Lead for the CDC STI Treatment Guidelines. Dr. Khosropour received the School of Public Health Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award in 2020, the American STD Association Young Investigator Award in 2017.
Dr. Khosropour received her BS in Medical Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Wisconsin, her MPH in Epidemiology from Emory University, and her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Washington. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Applied Epidemiology at the University of Washington via CDC funding for capacity building with health departments.
Dr. Riley is a social and reproductive epidemiologist with a research focus on the structural and policy drivers of reproductive health. Dr. Riley received her PhD in epidemiology from the University of Washington and her MPH from Columbia University. She is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Qiuju Guo is an Associate Professor in the School of Sociology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, joining the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE) at the University of Washington as a visiting scholar for a one-year stay.
Dedicated to gerontological research, Dr. Guo’s core research interests include family and old-age support, aging health and well-being, and older migrants. She has published a series of peer-reviewed papers in both Chinese and English on sociological issues related to older adults. Currently, she is leading a research project on the impacts of intergenerational transmission and feedback on urban adaptation among rural older migrants, exploring social issues concerning aging migration and intergenerational relations.
During her visit to CSDE, Dr. Guo aims to conduct in-depth academic exchanges and collaborative research in demography and aging studies. Colleagues and students are warmly welcome to visit her at Office 218F for discussions on any topics of mutual interest.
Asia Bishop (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work and Criminal Justice at the University of Washington Tacoma. She is a transdisciplinary scholar whose research draws on social determinants of health, critical, and ecological frameworks to examine how institutional systems, policy environments, and social contexts shape patterned disparities across populations. To date, her work has focused on population-level inequities affecting multiply marginalized youth and adults impacted by the criminal legal system, gang-involved youth, and rural adolescents. She employs diverse methodological approaches, including quantitative analyses of population-based and administrative data, mixed-methods and qualitative inquiry, and applied program evaluation conducted in partnership with public agencies and community organizations. Her work advances population science by examining how structural conditions shape health disparities, service access, and equity, and by generating practice-relevant evidence to inform policy reform and community-centered responses. She received her PhD in Social Welfare, with a statistics concentration through the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, and her MSW in Policy Practice from the University of Washington. Prior to receiving her PhD, she conducted research focused on juvenile legal system reform and the evaluation of novel programs designed to address the complex needs of youth in contact with the juvenile legal system in Washington State.
Dr. Dougherty is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on recovery of physical functioning, psychological adjustment, and quality of life in persons who have suffered sudden cardiac arrest and have received an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD). She has conducted trailblazing research in exercise after an ICD, caregiver interventions after ICD implantation, and goals of care communication in advanced heart failure. Dr. Dougherty is a rare nurse scientist who bridges what is too often a chiasm between nursing research and nursing practice. Dr. Dougherty leads a large interdisciplinary research team, building a program of research that began by systematically characterizing the experiences of those who survived cardiac arrest in Seattle, WA, the home of pioneering work in resuscitation science. The impact of her work is evident in more than 100 publications and an excess of $20 million in research funding. Dr. Dougherty’s current funded research is to test an intervention to prevent the development of PTSD after an ICD shock and to translate exercise interventions into routine clinical practice for persons who have an ICD.
Dr. Dougherty received a BSN from the University of Nebraska, a MA from the University of Iowa, and a PhD from the University of Washington. She completed post-doctoral training at the University of Washington and the Centers for Disease Control and the University of South Carolina. She is certified as an advanced registered nurse practitioner in Adult Health and Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing. She is a Fellow of the American Heart Association Council on Cardiovascular Nursing and the American Academy of Nursing. Dr. Dougherty is the Past Chair of the Council on CV and Stroke Nursing at the American Heart Association.
María is currently a Lecturer at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), teaching statistics and methods. She graduated from the University of Washington with a PhD in Sociology. She holds an M.A. in Sociology from UW, and a BA in Sociology from UNAM. She was an affiliate doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research at the International Max Planck School for Population, Health and Data Science. María’s research explores the intersection of demographic processes and institutional contexts. Her dissertation explores the variations in deportation risk across different individual characteristics and temporal contexts in the United States. She has done research in international migration, migration and health, ethnoracial health disparities, and ethnic identity in Latin America.
Dr. Jeffrey Wall specializes in innovating and adapting methods and theories which bring the environmental and plant values of distinct cultures and traditions into meaningful conversation with each other. He has conducted impactful research on threatened culturally significant landscapes in numerous countries in the Near East, Central Asia and North America. A major threat to such cultural landscapes is rural exodus, a widespread demographic trend which is the focus of his E.U.-Sponsored research program, “Homeland No More: Seeking the Biocultural Origins of Rural Exodus in the Mediterranean Basin.”
Max H. McDonald is a Research Data Analyst at the California Department of Health Care Services, where he conducts applied demographic and economic analysis to support Medi-Cal enrollment and expenditure forecasting. He holds a Master of Public Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Demographic Research Methods from the University of Washington and is currently an MBA student at UC Berkeley Haas. His research interests focus broadly on applied demography and public economics, with particular attention to social insurance programs, population health, and fiscal forecasting. He is especially interested in how demographic change and policy design shape enrollment dynamics and public expenditures. Current and recent work examines policy-driven enrollment trends in Medicaid and the relationship between demographic change, climate-related shocks, and public health expenditures.