Dr. Chua is the Director of the Reproductive Biology and Culture Laboratory at Notre Dame. Her research combines evolutionary and biocultural anthropology perspectives to understand how chronic stress “gets under the skin” during pregnancy. She utilizes methods from anthropology, biology, and public health to explore the social and biological factors that create and sustain peri- and postnatal inequities. She also studies the role that cultural practices play in shaping health norms. Chua works closely with pregnant women in the Philippines and the U.S.
Chua is currently co-leading a project addressing how the maternal immune system responds to fetal cells circulating throughout pregnancy (Co-director: Amy Boddy, UCSB). This is part of a larger international, multidisciplinary project (“Microchimerism, Human Health and Evolution Project”) funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Because adverse pregnancy-related outcomes (e.g., preterm birth) have been linked with maternal immune dysregulation and an influx of fetal cells, an important component of this project is incorporating the social environment to provide a more holistic understanding surrounding the experience of pregnancy, stress, and biology.
Chua also leads the Pinoy-Pinay Health (PH) Project in collaboration with Mariano Marcos State University, Northwestern University, Laoag City, and the Governor Roque B. Ablan Sr. Memorial Hospital. This project examines how ecological stressors, including socio-political conditions, influence maternal-fetal dynamics and their biological systems among pregnant Filipina mothers. This project explores the political landscape and the range of political beliefs, cultural norms, and stress responses, connecting them to pregnancy and birth outcomes. The overarching goal is to understand what causes preterm birth, how health disparities manifest in this population, and how to address specific health-related needs.
Ongoing projects include exploring when preterm birth may be an adaptation and why gestation varies considerably across species. Chua also investigates how stress is conceptualized in different cultural contexts and its implications for public health initiatives in order to mitigate mental health disparities.
Chua was recognized as a 2023 STAT Wunderkind for her contributions to health and medicine. Her work has been published in Scientific Reports, Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, and other scholarly journals.
Kamryn S. Morris (she/her) is an Assistant Professor with the School of Social Work at the University of Washington. Dr. Morris earned her Ph.D. in Family and Human Development, where she was a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) T32 Predoctoral Fellow with training in prevention, dissemination, and implementation science. Her research seeks to promote thriving among Black youth through supporting school belonging and improving school climate. Using qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods, her program of research examines social (e.g., teacher-student relationships) and contextual (e.g., school racial segregation) factors that promote and/or prohibit Black youths’ development of school belonging and subsequent wellbeing. As part of this research, she learns from and amplifies the voices of educators and Black youth to cultivate pathways towards mitigating the pervasive effects of racism (e.g., interpersonal, structural) in schools and communities.
Jessica Acolin’s work centers on understanding how systemic, social, and environmental factors shape mental and behavioral health outcomes, with a particular interest in climate change impacts on youth and young adults. Dr. Acolin holds a PhD in Public Health (Health Services), postdoctoral training in psychiatry, and has over a decade of
professional experience in mental health research and practice. She holds advanced expertise in quantitative epidemiologic methods appropriate for population health research (e.g., geospatial data analysis, multilevel models) and is developing skills in qualitative and mixed methods. Further, she strongly values interdisciplinary
collaborations and is actively engaged with social scientists, clinicians, and climate scientists, among others. Her practice-oriented partnerships with local health jurisdictions are motivated by her commitment to ensuring her research results in real-world impact. She has 13 peer-reviewed manuscripts published or under review (7 first author), including in leading journals such as Social Science & Medicine and Prevention Science. Her current research focuses on climate change as an environmental stressor. To date, this work has resulted in 6 conference presentations (2 additional under review), 1 research manuscript under peer review, and 2 research manuscripts in preparation. She has served as Principal Investigator on multiple projects and has secured competitive funding, with over $70,000 awarded to date. She has experience with statistical methods appropriate for hierarchical or longitudinal data. She has worked with geocoded data, merged multi-level datasets, utilized generalized linear models, mixture models, and time-varying effects models, and Monte Carlo simulation models.
Dr. Yanfang Su is a health economist with more than ten years of work experience in health systems and policy. Dr. Su holds an ScD in Global Health and Population within Health Systems track from Harvard University. During her postdoctoral training at the University of Washington, Dr. Su applied econometric methods to health financing and published papers in The Lancet as co-first author and The Lancet Infectious Diseases as first author. Her publications focus on three areas: 1) economic evaluation of healthcare systems, including analysis of equity, supply, demand, costs, and quality; 2) public policy evaluation; and 3) global health and population measures. Dr. Su has been designing a new course on Comparative Health Systems and mentoring 20 trainees, including 18 from underrepresented groups. Dr. Su is the founder and Board Chair of a non-profit organization, the East West Alliance for Education and Health, which delivered equitable community services and conducted digital health randomized controlled trials in low-resource settings. Dr. Su worked at Tsinghua University and the Hong Kong Policy and Research Institute in China. Dr. Su has consulted for the World Bank, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Results for Development on primary health care systems strengthening. Dr. Su is a guest editor for a special issue on policy implementation science in Frontiers in Health Services. Dr. Su is an IS-2 scholar and her career goal is to become a leading scientist in policy implementation, with a focus on cardiovascular disease prevention.
Mark Henderson’s research focuses on environmental and social policy issues in the United States and China, often employing spatial analysis methods using Geographic Information Systems. Based on Northeastern’s Oakland, California campus, he has supervised over 200 student projects with local governments and community organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. Professor Henderson has a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy & Urban Affairs (75%) and Mills College at Northeastern University (25%).
Bethany Hoy (formerly Gordon) is the co-founder of jade lab. jade lab brings expertise in engineering, social science, and community engagement to bridge technical knowledge with lived realities to crease inclusive, transformative, actionable pathways for justice-driven change.
Before co-founding JADE Lab, Bethany was an Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington, where she led the PLACE(E) Lab, a research group focused on the behavioral science of climate adaptation and equity in sustainable systems. She also developed and taught courses that equipped engineering students with cultural and social competencies, preparing the next generation of engineers to work collaboratively with communities toward climate resilience.
Gabriella Levy is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington. She was previously a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Brown University (2023-2024) as well as a Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace (2022-2023). She holds a Ph.D. (2023) in Political Science from Duke University as well as a BA (2017) in Political Science from Columbia University.
Her research explores the ways that people interpret, evaluate, and respond to various forms of political violence, ranging from wartime civilian targeting to vigilantism to repression. Her work focuses on Latin America; primarily uses survey methodologies; and draws on international relations, comparative politics, and political psychology. Her research has been published in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, the British Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Peace Research, and the Journal of Conflict Resolution. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the International Organization for Migration, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the World Bank. At the University of Washington, she teaches courses on international relations, conflict, and political violence.
Spencer Wood is a Research Scientist and Data Science Fellow with the eScience Institute. He is also an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, the Director of the UW Outdoor Recreation & Data Lab, a Senior Fellow with the Natural Capital Project at Stanford University, and a UW Nature & Health Steering Committee member.
Spencer is an interdisciplinary scientist with broad interests and experience in ecology, sustainability, computer science, statistics, and economics. His research and publications have addressed a variety of topics including outdoor recreation, public land management, fire ecology, archaeology, and sustainable development. Since 2020, Web of Science has named Spencer one of the most highly cited researchers of the past decade, placing him in the top 1% of scientists globally.
Spencer’s expertise lies in using data, technology, and quantitative methods to improve policy and management decisions. His work is driven by real-world applications and co-developed through partnerships with non-profits, governments, and corporations who put data science into practice. At eScience, Spencer brings this experience to the mentoring of rising data scientists in the Winter Incubator and the Data Science for Social Good programs.
Before joining the University of Washington, Spencer received his PhD from the University of British Columbia and his postdoctoral training at Stanford University.
Kyu Lee, PhD, is a decision scientist and her research focuses on using disease simulation models to leverage scarce data in forecasting the future burden of disease and in evaluating the value of innovative health technology in many contexts including low- and middle-income countries. Her past research investigated the temporal trend in heavy drinking behaviors and features of Hepatitis C virus epidemiology observed in China. Her recent research project examined the impact of COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions on the population immunity and future flu epidemics in the United States. Dr.Lee currently develops projects on estimating the impact of new vaccine technologies (e.g. cell-based, recombinant, and mRNA vaccines) on the future burden of respiratory infectious diseases such as flu and RSV, using mathematical models.
Dr. Kris Ma is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at University of Washington, Seattle. She studies primary care and behavioral health integration, health service disparities, dementia caregiving, Asian American mental health and cultural adaptations. The overall goal of her research is to improve equitable access and delivery of high-quality behavioral health and aging services in primary care, with an emphasis on racially and ethnically minoritized populations. As an Asian woman and immigrant, she has witnessed firsthand the harms caused by significant service gaps for marginalized individuals. Therefore, she is committed to using knowledge and science to build better systems of care that meet the needs of diverse and marginalized populations. She has two main lines of research. Her first line of research is the integration of behavioral health services in primary care, with the goal of increasing patient access to evidence-based interventions that are effective in the treatment of mental health, substance use, and medical conditions. She studies workforce, payment, and cultural barriers to integrating behavioral health in primary care. Her second line of research is health disparities in older adults of color, including multilingual Asian American immigrants. Using community engagement strategies, she examines the systemic, cultural, and linguistic barriers to care and design culturally responsive interventions to improve the management of chronic diseases, behavioral health, and dementia in Asian Americans.