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CSDE Trainee Spotlight: Emily D. Pollock

Posted: 10/6/2019 (CSDE Research)

Does human behavior and our wider environment interact together to influence our exposure to infectious diseases? This is the type of critical question CSDE Trainee Emily D. Pollock seeks to answer.

Emily received her B.A. in Anthropology from Stanford University, her M.A. in Biological Anthropology from the University of Washington, and is currently a PhD Candidate for Biological Anthropology here at UW. Emily is pursuing her PhD under the supervision of CSDE Affiliate and Professor of Anthropology Dr. Steven Goodreau and her dissertation will explore the question of how human behavior and the wider environments in which young adults exist in have an affect on young adult health, especially in terms of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) such as Chlamydia. In addition, Emily and Dr. Steven Goodreau presented their newly developed research tool at the 2018 National Coalition of STD Directors for STD Engage. They have developed a user-friendly tool for health departments to estimate the impacts of behavior change on adolescent STI burden.

Emily is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow—this is a prestigious program through the NSF that supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported disciplines. Emily was also a Blalock Fellow with the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences (CSSS) at UW and an IPEM/IGERT Research Fellow, with which she researched “Model Based Approaches to Biological and Cultural Evolution” under the direction of Dr. Steven Goodreau.

Emily takes an interdisciplinary approach to her biological anthropology research as she collaborates with individuals such as Assistant Professor of Epidemiology Christine Khosropour and CSDE Affiliate and Professor of Sociology & Statistics Martina Morris. In addition, Emily completed her CSDE Graduate Certificate in Demographic Methods—demonstrating her ability to intertwine demography, computational methods, and population science within her research interests and skills.

Finally, Emily provides crucial support for the CSDE with her position as the CSDE Lightning Talks & Poster Session organizer for this Fall quarter. CSDE is grateful for Emily very proud of her accomplishments!

And don’t forget! CSDE trainees and students must submit project proposals for this quarter’s Lightning Talks & Poster Session HERE by Friday, October 11th!

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