Current PhD Students

Francisco is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health and an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. Francisco has a background in Ecology, studying climate through the use of tree rings. His research interests meet in the health effects of climate variability, particularly extreme weather events.

Pengfei is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. She earned a Bachelor's degree in Medicine (MBBS) with honors research distinction in public health at Sun Yat-Sen University. Her research interests include per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), early-life exposure, birth cohort, maternal and child health. She received Macmillan International Dissertation Research Fellowships, and currently is a European Studies Graduate Fellow at Yale Macmillan Center. She has served as a reviewer for peer-reviewed journals such as American Journal of Epidemiology and Current Pollution Reports.

Chengyi Lin is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health. She is interested in the health effects of air pollution. Her current project evaluates the association between ozone and mortality.

Meet Yale School of Public Health's Elizabeth Lin.

Xiuqi Ma is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, Connecticut. Ms. Ma graduated from Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, with a bachelor’s degree in medicine in 2019. Her undergraduate research focused on evaluation of environmental contaminants in the Yangtze River in Wuhan and associated reproductive health effects of metal pollutants among male residents. Now she is investigating ubiquitous environmental pollutants, such as PFAS and air pollution, and their association with liver cancer and other outcomes.

Yiqun Ma is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Yale School of Public Health. She is interested in the intersection of climate change, air pollution, and human health, such as heat-related cause-specific mortality and the effects of air pollution on mental health. She also hopes to learn more about the exposure assessment of air pollution and air temperature. Yiqun holds a Bachelor of Management Sciences from Zhejiang University, China.

Meet the Center for Perinatal, Pediatric and Environmental Epidemiology's (CPPEE) Xuejuan Ning.

Yale MPH, class of 2021

Xiaoting Shi is a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. Her research and training focus on synthesizing evidence, conducting meta-research (i.e., research on research) projects, and applying causal inference methods in environmental epidemiology. In particular, she has developed an interest in and currently works on various research projects that: 1) synthesize and assess the evidence from literature, including systematic reviews, and umbrella reviews. 2) evaluate current publication practices, including evaluation of preprints, investigation of retracted publications, and estimation of publication fees. 3) conduct research on regulatory science, including evaluating regulatory policies by the US FDA and developing tools to facilitate real-world data to inform regulatory decision-making. Specifically, Xiaoting is part of the 2021-2022 CERSI Scholars Program to support regulatory science research that addresses the mission of the FDA. 4) utilize causal inference methods, including quantitative bias analysis and Mendelian randomization methods. As a graduate teaching fellow at Yale, she has taught multiple courses and led various online workshops on research skills training for master students. She is also passionate about gaining more teaching experience in the future. Before coming to Yale, Xiaoting received her Bachelor's Degree in Preventive Medicine with a minor in Statistics in 2019.

Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei COVID-19 Telmedicine Clinic, Taiwan Center for Disease Control (CDC) , Ministry of Health Taiwan COVID-19 Community Vaccine Center, Taiwan Center for Disease Control, Ministry of Health Taiwan

Jingyuan is a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. She holds a master's degree in Social and Behavioral Sciences from YSPH and completed her undergraduate studies in Psychology at UC, San Diego. Her current research interests center around the early origins of neuropsychiatric disorders and possible transmission of disease risks across multiple generations due to adverse intrauterine exposures.

Jean is a PhD student in the Environmental Health Sciences department at YSPH. As a member of the Pollitt Lab, Jean is interested in measuring personal exposure to complex environmental pollutants using the Fresh Air wristband and understanding how these exposures can adversely affect human health. She is also interested in learning about statistical approaches for analyzing multivariate, high-dimensional non-parametric data. Jean earned her MPH from YSPH in 2019. Before coming back, she worked as an environmental health scientist at an environmental and risk sciences consulting firm based in Boston. Her work involved evaluating epidemiology and toxicology literature, as well as analyzing exposure assessment data in support of causation analyses in litigation and human health risk assessments.

Haoran is a doctoral student  in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences. Her research interests center around the understanding of how environmental exposures during critical periods of early life development may affect the risk of health conditions in pregnancy complications, neonatal outcomes, and childhood neurodevelopment. With backgrounds of environmental science and engineering in her undergraduate study, Haoran is also interested in exposure related research like chemical mixtures and geospatial analysis.