Emma Aguila, PhD
Emma Aguila, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California, Sol Price School of Public Policy. Her research focuses on assessing the effects of safety net policies and social security programs on cognitive decline and the well-being of older adults, as well as exploring the interrelation between social and behavioral factors and health, including cognition and AD/ADRD. She serves as the Editor of the Journal of Pension Economics & Finance and has authored numerous articles in prestigious scientific journals, including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Demography, Social Science & Medicine, Review of Economics and Statistics, and the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. Dr. Aguila currently serves as a Council Member for the Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities (NICHMD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is the Co-Director of the USC Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementia Resource Center for Minority Aging Research (USC AD/ADRD RCMAR) alongside Dr. Zissimopoulos and Dr. Ailshire. Dr. Aguila obtained her PhD in economics at the University College London.
Vikesh Amin, PhD
Vikesh Amin, PhD, is a Professor at Central Michigan University, Department of Economics. His research areas are in health, education, and labor economics. A central theme of his research has been understanding whether education is a fundamental cause of health disparities by attempting to identify causal effects of education on health. He received a NIH RO1 grant to examine whether education moderates the genetic risk of poor health. His work has been published in the American Economic Review, Labour Economics, Journal of Population Economics, Health Economics, Economics of Education Review, Economics & Human Biology, Social Science & Medicine, Social Science & Medicine-Population Health. Dr. Amin obtained his PhD from Royal Holloway University of London.
Silvia Helena Barcellos, PhD
Silvia Helena Barcellos, PhD, is an Associate Professor (Research) at the University of Southern California, Department of Economics and the Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR). She is a health economist, and her work aims to understand the interplay between socio-economic status (SES) and health across the lifespan, with a focus on the role public policy plays on such relationships. One area of research investigates how education (and different educational policies) affects health, cognition, and SES at older ages, including how individual genetics shape such relationships. She is currently the PI of an NIA R01 on gene-environment interactions in education, cognitive functioning, and ADRD risk. Dr. Barcellos earned her PhD in economics at Princeton University.
Leandro Carvalho, PhD
Leandro Carvalho, PhD, is an Associate Professor (Research) at University of Southern California, Department of Economics. He is also a full Economist at the Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR). His areas of research are in social genomics, health economics, and behavioral economics. Leandro and his collaborators are combining natural experiments with genetic data to try to better understand some of the causal determinants of ADRD. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Demography, and others. He holds a PhD in economics from Princeton University.
Hyungmin Cha, PhD
Hyungmin Cha, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southern California, Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. His research focuses on two main areas: understanding the health consequences of dementia caregiving and conducting international comparisons to explore the associations between caregiving and health outcomes. In his previous work, he concentrated on unraveling the life course origins of dementia risk in the United States, with a specific emphasis on three key aspects: examining the functional forms of the education-dementia association, exploring variability in dementia onset based on educational attainment, and analyzing the intricate relationship between life course socioeconomic status and dementia-related life expectancy. His research has been published in journals such as Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences, Demographic Research, SSM-Population Health, and many others. Dr. Cha earned his PhD from University of Texas at Austin.
Eunyoung Choi, PhD
Eunyoung Choi, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southern California, Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. Dr. Choi’s research is centered on exploring how environmental factors influence cognitive health disparities in older adults. Her work integrates biopsychosocial aspects into the wider scope of ADRD research. Her ongoing projects explore a range of topics: the effects of neighborhood stressors on epigenetic aging; the influence of ethnic enclaves on mental health and cardiometabolic risks among Asian Americans; the social isolation pathways linking neighborhood environments and dementia, which are partially supported by pilot grants awarded from NIH-sponsored centers. More recent work focuses on unraveling the extent to which exposure to extreme temperatures influence ADRD risks, delving into specific psychosocial and neurobiological pathways. Dr. Choi received her PhD in gerontology from the University of Southern California.
Hassy Cohen, MD
Hassy Cohen, MD, is the Dean of the University of Southern California, Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. He pioneered the field of mitochondrial-microproteins, newly-discovered therapeutic-targets for diseases of aging, and is the founder of two biotech companies, CohBar and MENTSH Therapeutics. His awards include: NIA-“EUREKA”-Award, NIH-Director-Transformative-RO1, Glenn-Award, and the AFAR-Wright Award. He published over 350 papers focusing on aging, and his h-index is 105. His most recent discoveries include the novel microproteins MOTS-c, SHLP, SHMOOSE, and MENTSH which are precision-medicine solutions for aging-related diseases in unique populations. Dr. Cohen is leading new initiatives at USC including a novel program focused on technology and aging. Dr. Cohen received his MD from Technion.
Alyssa Goldman, PhD
Alyssa Goldman, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Boston College, Department of Sociology. Her research examines the intersection of social relationships, social inequality, health and well-being, aging, and the life course. In ongoing research, she is investigating how older adults’ social relationship dynamics, social participation, and residential neighborhoods shape health trajectories later in the life course, focusing on sensory functioning, cognition, and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. In other research, she is using ecological momentary assessments and activity space data to understand how social relationships play a role in older adults’ mobility patterns and daily experiences of their social environments in ways that have implications for longer-term well-being. Dr. Goldman earned her PhD in sociology from Cornell University.
Dana P. Goldman, PhD
Dana P. Goldman, PhD, is the Dean and C. Erwin and Ione L. Piper Chair of the University of Southern California, Sol Price School of Public Policy. He is also the Distinguished Professor of Public Policy, Pharmacy, and Economics. Dr. Goldman has served as director (now co-director) of the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics since its inception, establishing it as one of the nation’s premier health policy research centers. Dr. Goldman serves as a Principal Investigator for the Center for Advancing Sociodemographic and Economic Study of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (CeASES ADRD). He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the National Academy of Public Administration—three of his field’s highest honors. He is the author of more than 300 articles, and his research has been published in leading medical, economic, health policy, and statistics journals and other media. He has raised over $170 million in support for health policy research—including more than $50 million from the NlH. He serves (or has served) as an advisor to the Congressional Budget Office, California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, Covered California, NIH, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute, and several life sciences companies. He serves as a scientific advisor to GRAIL and Biogen and was a co-founder of Precision Health Economics. Dr. Goldman is a member of the editorial boards of Health Affairs and the American Journal of Managed Care and was founding editor of the Forum for Health Economics and Policy. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Economist, NBC Nightly News and other media. He is a former director of ISPOR and ASHEcon. Dr. Goldman received PhD in economics from Stanford University.
Sirena Gutierrez
Sirena Gutierrez is a PhD candidate at the University of California, San Francisco, Department of Epidemiology and Translational Science. Her research broadly centers on the social determinants of health in older adults across diverse global populations. One aspect of her work involves investigating how school segregation and other features of the schooling environment contribute to racialized disparities in cognitive aging. Her goal is to untangle how different levels of racism interplay across the life course continuum with various social, environmental, and policy factors. Sirena is also focused on understanding how intergenerational socioeconomic resources influence health outcomes in older adults. In her research, she emphasizes the use of causal inference methods and econometric techniques to help triangulate evidence across different research disciplines.
Sidra Haye, PhD
Sidra Haye, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southern California, Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. She is also a RCMAR Scholar with the USC AD/ADRD Resource Center for Minority Aging Research and a recipient of Alzheimer’s Association Research Fellowship Award. She is an applied microeconomist interested in examining how physicians make decisions and how those decisions impact patient healthcare use and outcomes. In particular, her current research focuses on understanding factors that affect the diagnosis rates and care patterns for persons living with dementia. Her ongoing projects include documenting the variation in dementia diagnosis rates across Primary Care Physicians, and examining how and why dementia diagnosis rates vary in Medicare Advantage and Traditional Medicare. She received her PhD in economics from the University of California, Irvine.
Mark Hayward, PhD
Mark Hayward, PhD, is a Professor and Centennial Commission Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, College of Liberal Arts. Hayward is a health demographer. Building on a long-standing interest in the developmental origins of adult health, his current work incorporates biosocial lenses to better understand how social exposures spanning the life course influence educational and racial/ethnic disparities in dementia risk. Other recent work investigates the “upstream institutional levers” that contribute to educational disparities in U.S. mortality. Dr. Hayward is a recipient of the Matilda White Riley Award from NIH for his contributions to behavioral and social scientific knowledge relevant to mission of NIH. He has served on scientific advisory boards for major foundations (Robert Wood Johnson and Pew), the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, and federal agencies (e.g., NIH and NCHS). Dr. Hayward recently served as editor of Demography and President of the Interdisciplinary Association of Population Health Science. He also serves as a Principal Investigator for the Center for Advancing Sociodemographic and Economic Study of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (CeASES ADRD). Dr. Hayward received his PhD in sociology from Indiana Univeristy Bloomington.
Yucheng Hou, PhD
Yucheng Hou, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston). As a health economist and health service researcher, Dr. Hou conducts research in the economics of payment and delivery system reform and post-acute care using large-scale administrative claims and causal inference methodologies. In particular, her research focuses on the impact of care coordination and referral patterns as a mechanism to improve patient outcomes in the context of Medicare payment reform. Dr. Hou is transitioning into AD/ADRD research by leveraging her expertise in payment incentives and care coordination. Her current research focuses on understanding the policies and interventions that aim to improve dementia care delivery and coordination across care settings, especially through alternative payment models. Dr. Hou received her PhD in health policy and management with a concentration in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Mireille Jacobson, PhD
Mireille Jacobson, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California, Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. She is an applied micro-economist with a diverse portfolio of research united by an interest in understanding how health care policies affect well-being. Much of her work focuses on the supply-side of health care markets, analyzing (i) the effects of direct supply changes (e.g., hospital closures) on access to care and (ii) the impact of reimbursement policy on treatment and outcomes, specifically in the oncology market. Other work focuses on the demand side, assessing the risk-protective value of health insurance for consumers. Her current projects include analyses of (i) tradeoffs in covering near-poor households with public insurance versus subsidies for the purchase of private health insurance, (ii) the impact of a transitional care pain management model on readmissions and health outcomes for opioid-tolerant patients, and (iii) the anticipatory effects of gaining Medicare on the mental health of seniors. She is the co-director of the program on aging at USC’s Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Economics and Policy and a research associate in the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Dr. Jacobson earned her PhD in economics from Harvard University.
Kimson Johnson, PhD, MA, MSW
Kimson Johnson, PhD, MA, MSW, is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (U-M ISR), Survey Research Center. Her dissertation research examined the impact of adversity over the life course on cognitive health trajectories among older adult populations. As a postdoctoral fellow, Johnson examines how various educational pathways and environments shape cardiometabolic and Alzheimer ’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) health trajectories, resilience, and biomarkers of health risk over the life course among racially and ethnically diverse older adult populations. Before joining U-M ISR, Johnson completed a joint PhD in Health Services Organization & Policy and Sociology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Geoffrey Joyce, PhD
Geoffrey Joyce, PhD, is Associate Professor and Chair of the University of Southern California, Department of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics. He also serves as the director of Health Policy at the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Dr. Joyce is the author of over 120 peer-reviewed articles, reports and book chapters, and his research has been published in leading medical, economic, health policy and statistics journals. Dr. Joyce’s work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, U.S. News and World Report, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, National Public Radio, and other media. His current research supported by NIH is examining the impact of Medicare Part D and potential reforms and the economic costs of dementia. Dr. Joyce earned his PhD in economics at City University of New York.
Genevieve P. Kanter, PhD
Genevieve P. Kanter, PhD, is Associate Professor at the University of Southern California, Sol Price School of Public Policy. She is an economist whose research focuses on the FDA and regulatory issues related to biomedical technologies; financial conflicts of interest; and payment models. Her research and essays have been published in leading academic journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and Health Affairs. She serves on the Medicare Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee, the federal committee that advises Medicare on coverage issues, and is Chair of the Advisory Committee for the AcademyHealth Health Economics Interest Group. She received a PhD in economics and in sociology from the University of Chicago.
Jourdyn A. Lawrence, PhD, MSPH
Jourdyn A. Lawrence, PhD, MSPH, is an Assistant Professor at the Drexel University, Dornsife School of Public Health. Broadly, her research interests include examining racism as a cause of racial health inequities, understanding the embodiment of racism (i.e., how racism “gets under the skin” to affect health), and assessing interventions, such as reparations, to mitigate the ongoing impacts of racism and other forms of social oppression. Specifically, she is working to understand how interpersonal and structural racism determines healthy aging and cognitive-related outcomes using interdisciplinary theories and advanced epidemiologic methods and how epidemiologic methods can be used to advocate for social change. Dr. Lawrence received her Ph.D. in population health sciences from Harvard University.
Kun Li, PhD
Kun Li, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University, Margolis Center for Health Policy. She is also an Adjunct Policy Researcher at RAND Corporation. Her research focuses on the organization of health providers, health care markets, and health care financing, with an emphasis on safety-net providers and socioeconomically disadvantaged populations. She received her PhD in health policy from the George Washington University.
Kevin Lu, PhD
Kevin Lu, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina, College of Pharmacy. Lu’s current research focuses on study design and the application of quantitative analysis of big data, including pharmacoeconomics, pharmacoepidemiology, and comparative effectiveness studies in pharmaceutical and health outcomes research. Dr. Lu is the current Chair of the Economic, Social, and Administrative Sciences Section (ESAS) of the American Pharmacist Association and sits on the editorial board of several leading journals in the field. He earned his Ph.D. in pharmaceutical health services research from the University of Maryland.
Hoda Abdel Magid, PhD
Hoda Abdel Magid, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine and the Dornsife Spatial Sciences Institute. Her research focuses on understanding how space and place affect health. She examines how social determinants of health affect chronic disease behaviors and outcomes; and the disproportionate risk to socially and racially marginalized communities that are largely due to the contextual health influences of the physical and social environment. Dr. Abdel Magid is currently working to develop a spatial epidemiologic framework for utilizing diverse data to reduce health disparities among socially marginalized populations. Prior to joining USC, Dr. Abdel Magid was at Stanford University, where she was an instructor and postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health. Dr. Abdel Magid earned her PhD in epidemiology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Will R. McConnell, PhD
Will R. McConnell, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL. Dr. McConnell is currently engaged in several lines of research related to social network analysis and Alzheimer’s disease. His collaborative work with the Social Networks and Alzheimer’s Disease lab at Indiana University examines the biopsychosocial mechanisms linking social interaction (or lack thereof) with the incidence and progression of cognitive decline. In addition, Dr. McConnell’s NIH-funded research on ADRD caregiver networks identifies how the network structure of caregiving affects caregiving-related outcomes, including institutionalization and other formal services use. Dr. McConnell earned his PhD in sociology from Indiana University Bloomington.
Tara McKay, PhD
Tara McKay, PhD, (she/her), is an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University, Department of Sociology. She is a nationally recognized expert in the field of LGBTQ population health, policy, and aging. Her research examines the social and policy contexts that shape health over the life course, primarily among LGBTQ+ populations in the US and African contexts. She is the Principal Investigator of the Vanderbilt University Social Networks, Aging, and Policy Study (VUSNAPS) funded by the National Institute on Aging and was recently featured on the PBS Aging Matters series (episode: Aging with Pride, June 2022). Dr. McKay earned a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Lycia Neumann, PhD
Lycia Neumann, PhD, is the senior director of Health Services Research at the Alzheimer’s Association. She is focused on advancing evidence-based policies and practices for equitable person-centered dementia care. With over 25 years of experience with social and public health programs, she’s contributed to publications on citizen-driven community development, program evaluation, aging, and population health. Dr. Neumann is a member of the Gerontological Society of America and the American Evaluation Association and serves on the editorial board of Innovation in Aging and on the advisory council of a local Area Agency on Aging. Dedicated to using research and evaluation to enhance organizational effectiveness, her interests span healthcare policy, global health, health equity, caregiving, and aging. Dr. Neumann earned her PhD in public health from the University of Pittsburgh.
Ann W. Nguyen, PhD
Ann W. Nguyen, PhD is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Case Western Reserve University. Her research broadly investigates psychosocial determinants of mental, physical, and cognitive health and well-being across the life course among Black Americans, with a special focus on mid- and late life. She received her doctoral training from the Program for Research on Black Americans at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. Dr. Nguyen earned a PhD in social work and psychology from the University of Michigan.
Addam Reynolds, PhD
Addam Reynolds, PhD, is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Southern California, Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. His research spans later life cognition and biological risk for age-related disease. Specifically, his research focuses on if social stratification (i.e. racial and economic) underlies associations between childhood risk factors and later life cognition. His current work focuses on biological risk in the US South as a mechanism for the health disparities noted in this region. Dr. Reynolds received his PhD in social work from Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
Bryan Tysinger, PhD
Bryan Tysinger, PhD, is an Assistant Professor (research) at the University of Southern California, Sol Price School of Public Policy. He also serves as the director of health policy microsimulation at the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. His research focuses on modeling health and economic outcomes over the life course, with emphasis on identifying policy solutions to improve initial trajectories for the young, course-correct for those at middle-age, and manage the aging process. He works extensively with dynamic microsimulation models, developing and refining the Future Elderly Model (FEM) and Future Adult Model (FAM) and expanding these models globally. Tysinger earned his PhD in policy analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School.
Qiao Wu
Qiao Wu is a PhD Candidate at the University of Southern California, Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. He studies and works at the Center on Biodemography and Population Health, under the mentorship of Dr. Eileen Crimmins and Dr. Jennifer Ailshire. He uses both clinical-level biomarkers including cardiometabolic risk indicators, and cellular-level biomarkers including DNA methylation aging measures and RNA-based cellular senescence measures, to understand physiological risk and late-life health outcomes at the population level. He also does cross-country comparisons using HRS family studies and the HCAP data.
Kai Zhang, PhD, MA, MS
Kai Zhang, PhD, MA, MS, is an Empire Innovation Associate Professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York, Department of Environmental Health Sciences. Dr. Zhang is primarily interested in exploring the role of social and environmental factors on the development of aging-related diseases. In particular, his research is investigating the biological mechanisms underlying the effects of life-course social determinants on the aging process, characterizing climate-related exposures and developing strategies to mitigate the adverse health effects associated with urban environmental stressors such as disasters, built environment and air pollution. Dr. Zhang’s expertise encompasses a range of fields, including exposure science, epidemiology, GIS, statistics, AI, and data science. Dr. Zhang received a PhD in environmental health at the University of Michigan.
Yuan Zhang, PhD
Yuan Zhang, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health. She also serves as a core faculty member of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center. Her research integrates theories and methods from gerontology, demography, economics, and epidemiology to understand how macro institutional contexts shape individuals’ life experiences and influence later-life health and wellbeing for the individuals and population. Using data from large-scale biosocial surveys of health and aging from various countries/cohorts, she examines how social and economic factors at different life stages influence biological, physical, and cognitive aging, as well as the morbidity and mortality experiences of populations and subpopulations and the underlying biosocial pathways leading to healthy longevity. She also conducts comparative research to understand the key drivers of population-level differences in health and wellbeing of older populations across places and times.
Erfei Zhao
Erfei Zhao is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern California, Leonard Davis School of Gerontology under the mentorship of Dr. Eileen Crimmins and Dr. Jennifer Ailshire. Their research focuses on incorporating biological measures into population-level studies, aiming to understand how socio-environmental factors impact older adults’ health. Zhao’s research spans various health outcomes, including mortality, comorbidities, functional loss, Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD), and psychological outcomes, with a particular emphasis on cognition. Currently, Zhao is working on a project that examines and compares health trajectories between centenarians and non-centenarians to better understand and quantify resilience against age-related health declines among the longest-lived individuals, with cognition being one of the health domains under examination.