Public Health Residents, Fellows, and Postdoctoral Associates
Diego Cuadros, PhD (974-4492-8321), dfc2002@qatar-med.cornell.edu), is a Postdoctoral Associate, working with Dr. Laith Abu-Raddad at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar. Dr. Cuadros received his B.S. degree from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogota, and his PhD in Biology from the University of Kentucky in Lexington. He has been a research assistant at the Corporacion Colombiana de Investigacion Agropecuaria in Mosqera, Colombia, and at the University of Kentucky Department of Biology. He was a teaching assistant at the University of Kentucky for the courses Principals of Biology Labs I and II, and Introduction to Biology. At the University of Kentucky, he received the Gertrude Flora Ribble Graduate Fellowship in Biology as well as a Dean’s Scholarship. His research focuses on exploring the variation in HIV infectious spread generated by biological cofactors across individuals and populations, and how this variation would help in understanding HIV natural history and epidemic typology, with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. He has three first-authored publications in this field in the International Journal of Epidemiology, PLoS One, and BMC Infectious Diseases.
Judith Fontana, PhD (212-746-6913, juf2011@med.cornell.edu), is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Community and Public Health Programs, working with Mirella Salvatore, MD, on her study of non-integrating lentiviral vectors as influenza vaccines. Dr. Fontana earned a BS in Biology from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA, and a PhD in Immunology and Molecular Pathogenesis from Emory University in Atlanta, GA. She was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Microbiology and Immunology Department of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) in Bethesda, MD. She also has experience as a Research Assistant in the Measles, Mumps, Rubella, & Herpesviruses Laboratory Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, GA; and as a Howard Hughes Teacher-Scholar and a Teaching Assistant at Emory University. She is currently a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Society for Microbiology, and the American Society for Virology. She has published 3 articles, with 2 as first author.
Ashley Giambrone, PhD, MS, is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology. Dr. Giambrone received her BS in Statistics from the University at Albany and her MS and PhD in Biostatistics from the University at Albany School of Public Health. Her dissertation is titled: Non-Likelihood Based Model Evaluation and Comparison with Application to Genetic and Clinical HIV-1 Outcomes.
Having worked as a biostatistician for the New York State Department of Health, interning with GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals, and consulting for Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Dr. Giambrone has developed a great interest in health outcomes research. She has participated in several research projects, including economic modeling using the largest publicly available all payer claims database and utilized a nationwide health insurance claims database to assess health outcomes, specifically comparing the costs and outcomes in the ambulatory setting after completion of antibiotic therapy. Dr. Giambrone also has great interest in survival analysis and through her dissertation work gained experience utilizing current statistical methods as well as developing novel statistical methods to analyze a high-dimensional genetic dataset from a clinical trial.
Zachary Grinspan, MD (646-962-9414, zag9005@med.cornell.edu), Instructor in Pediatrics and Assistant Attending Pediatrician, is a Fellow in Quality and Medical Informatics. His areas of expertise include pediatric epilepsy and neurogenetics. Dr. Grinspan completed his Bachelor of Science in Physics and Mathematics at Yale University. He went to medical school at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, NY, where he received his medical degree with a Distinction in Neuroscience. He went on to complete his residency in Child Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, MA, where he also served as Chief Resident. Dr. Grinspan returned to the Bronx for specialized training in Neurophysiology as a Fellow at Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Sandra Hurtado Rúa, PhD (646-962-8021, sah2024@med.cornell.edu), is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology. Dr. Hurtado Rúa completed her PhD in the Department of Statistics at the University of Connecticut, where she held a Multicultural Scholar Program fellowship and was honored with the H. Fairfield Smith Award for best performance in the applied statistics sequence. Her thesis topic was “A New Class of Bayesian Survival Models and Beyond.” She previously completed an MS in Mathematics with a concentration in Statistics from Northern Illinois University, and a BS in Engineering from the National University of Colombia, where she was honored as exceptional teaching assistant. Dr. Hurtado Rúa has also worked as a statistician for two Colombian brokerage companies. She is a coauthor of one submitted journal article and is working on two more, all with her thesis advisor, Dr. Dipak Dey. She has also authored many proceedings and technical reports based on her research. In the Division, Dr. Hurtado Rúa will perform consulting work for projects from the Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) and the Biostatistics and Research Methodology Core, as well as for other long-term contacts with various departments.
Dr. Hurtado Rúa's website
Douglas Noble, BMBCh, MPH, MD (Res) (646-962-8036, djn2004@med.cornell.edu), is a Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice, a program funded by the Commonwealth Fund. This program provides a unique opportunity for mid-career health services researchers and practitioners from Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom to spend up to 12 months in the United States, conducting original research and working with leading U.S. health policy experts. Dr. Noble's Harkness project, "The Role of Accountable Care Organizations in Improving Population Health and Public Health," is exploring the meaning of population health, public health and community health as relates to ACOs. This involves four detailed case studies and interviews with ACO leaders and public health professionals in different parts of the U.S. He is also qualitatively exploring what an ACO's contribution to improvement of health on a geographical basis might be. The first paper from this research project was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). His fellowship mentor is Lawrence P. Casalino, MD, PhD.
Dr. Noble is a public health physician and honorary clinical senior lecturer in the global health, policy, and innovation unit at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry. Before this position, he worked as a clinical advisor to the chief medical officer for England, where he was involved in researching and writing parts of three successive annual reports of the chief medical officer on the state of public health in England. Dr. Noble has also been a public health advisor to the U.K. Cabinet office as well as a medical officer for the World Health Organization. He has published peer-reviewed articles in journals such as the British Medical Journal and Quality and Safety in Health Care. He received his medical degree from the University of Oxford, his master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins, and his research doctorate from Queen Mary, University of London.
Jashvant Poeran, MD, MSc, PhD (646-962-2262, vip2016@med.cornell.edu), is a Postdoctoral Associate of Epidemiology in the Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Department of Public Health. Dr. Poeran, originally from Suriname, finished his academic training in The Netherlands. He obtained his MD degree from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam (The Netherlands). After some clinical work in OBGYN, he subsequently enrolled in a PhD program on perinatal health in which he received training in Perinatal Epidemiology. During his PhD he also obtained a Master’s degree in Epidemiology from The Netherlands Institute for Health Sciences in Rotterdam (The Netherlands).
Dr. Poeran has mainly conducted research ordered by local and national (public) health authorities, and has used large databases for this purpose. Research topics mostly pertained to policy decisions on centralization of acute obstetric care, selecting priority research topics in perinatal health(care) and selecting priority regions in which to implement intensified preconception care and antenatal risk selection. He has also engaged in the writing of several health reports from which several publications in peer-reviewed journals followed. Dr. Poeran is very familiar with the statistical methods of logistic and linear (multilevel) regression, standardization, principal component analysis, and diagnostic test evaluation methods. In addition, he enjoys teaching and has taught several courses for medical students and midwifery students. In the course of his work, Dr. Poeran has applied SAS and SPSS programming as well as geographic software (ArcMap by ESRI).
Andrew G. Shuman, MD (shumana@mskcc.org), is a fellow in head and neck surgical oncology in the Department of Surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and is also completing a dual fellowship in medical ethics at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He completed his residency training in the Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Michigan Hospitals. Originally from New York, he is a graduate from the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts, and also graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School. In addition to completing training and research in medical ethics, he served for the past eight years on the University of Michigan Hospital’s Adult Ethics Committee. Dr. Shuman has lectured and published in the areas of otolaryngology, emergency medicine, and medical ethics. His current research interests include ethical issues that arise among head and neck cancer patients.
Matthew Simon, MD (212-746-7587, mss9008@med.cornell.edu), is a Resident in General Preventive Medicine. Dr. Simon received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania and his MD from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. He trained as an Intern and Resident in the Weill Cornell Medical College Department of Medicine, and then held a position as a Hospitalist in Internal Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center/Weiler Division. He returned to Weill Cornell to pursue an Infectious Diseases Fellowship in the Department of Medicine. Dr. Simon is a member of the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Disease Society of America, and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. In 2009 he received the David E. Rogers Memorial Research Award for work on cryptococcal meningitis at Bugando Medical Center in Tanzania. His current research interests include clinical decision analysis and cost-effectiveness research in infectious diseases.
Umut Ozbek, PhD, MS, (646-962-8025, umo2001@med.cornell.edu)is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology. Dr. Ozbek received her BS in Statistics from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, and her MS in Biostatistics from Ankara University School of Medicine. She earned her PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. Her dissertation is titled “Statistical Methods for Recovering GWAS Data.”
Dr. Ozbek’s research interests lie broadly in statistical methodology and application of statistical techniques to scientific research in health-related fields, and she has worked as a statistician at Ankara University and a biostatistician at the University of Pittsburgh. She is specifically interested in methods in statistical genetics and genetic epidemiology. She is experienced in performing statistical analyses such as item response theory and longitudinal multivariate modeling by using SAS, MPLUS and PARSCALE, analyzing the marker data collected on disease families in order to map genes involved in the disease via linkage and association tests by using R and various genetic analysis applications. She has collaborated with clinical breast cancer scientists at Magee-Women’s Hospital of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and members of Turkish Federation of Breast Disease Associations. She has been a co-author of a number of published manuscripts and abstracts and she has extensive teaching experience.
Katherine R. Van Oss, MD (646-962-8034, Krv9011@med.cornell.edu), is a Resident in Preventive Medicine. Dr. Van Oss earned her BS degree from Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and her MD from the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. She completed three years of a General Surgery Residency at the University Hospital of the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. Dr. Van Oss is the lead author of an article published in the Journal of the National Medical Association titled "Characteristics of obese children aged 1-4 years at a referral clinic" (2008) and she has several other articles in progress.
