Team Members

Dr. Khoshnood is an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Yale School of Public Health and executive committee member at Yale Council on Middle East Studies. He is Faculty Director for Humanitarian Research Lab. Dr. Khoshnood is trained as an infectious disease epidemiologist and has more than three decades of domestic and international experience in HIV prevention research among people who use drugs and other at-risk populations. Dr. Khoshnood's research interests include: 1) epidemiology and prevention of HIV/AIDS, 2) research ethics and 3) humanitarian health.

Nathaniel A. Raymond is Executive Director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH) and a Lecturer in the Department of the Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases (EMD) at YSPH. He was formerly a Lecturer of Global Affairs at the Jackson School for Global Affairs from 2018 - 2022. His research interests focus on the health implications of forced displacement; methodologies for the assessment of large-scale disasters, including pandemics; and the human rights and human security implications of information communication technologies (ICTs) for vulnerable populations, particularly in the context of armed conflict. Previously, he was the founding Director of the Signal Program on Human Security and Technology at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health from 2012 – 2018. From 2010 to 2012, he was Director of Operations for the George Clooney-founded Satellite Sentinel Project at HHI, which utilized high resolution satellite imagery to detect and document attacks on civilians in Sudan and South Sudan. Raymond was Director of the Campaign Against Torture at Physicians for Human Rights from 2008 – 2010, leading investigations into the role of US health professionals in the Bush Administration’s “enhanced” interrogation program. Raymond served as a humanitarian aid worker with Oxfam America and was deployed to Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, and the US Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Raymond has formally advised multiple UN, governmental, and non-governmental agencies, including the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations in South Sudan, the UN High Commission for Refugees, Save the Children, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Association of South East Asian Nations, the US Naval War College's Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response program, and others. His work has appeared in Nature, The Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, Annals of General Psychiatry, Disasters, and other peer-reviewed publications.

Caitlin Howarth is Director of Operations for the Conflict Observatory team based at Yale Humanitarian Research Lab.  From 2016-2021, Howarth worked with the Signal Program on Human Security and Technology at Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI), where she specialized in atrocity warning and led research in applied IHL and humanitarian ethics, teledemography, and remote sensing. She co-authored The Signal Code: A Human Rights-Based Approach to Information During Crisis. Howarth was formerly Reports Manager for the Satellite Sentinel Project at HHI from 2011-2012. She has served as Director of Leadership Development at the Truman National Security Project, Deputy Director of the Telecommunications Equality Project at the Roosevelt Institute, and COO and National Policy Director at the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network.  Howarth’s consultant work includes operational leadership for mass atrocity early warning and rapid response, research on weaponized information ecosystems, the design of the award-winning MediCapt mobile forensic evidence collection app, and training and consultation in strategic communication; past clients include Physicians for Human Rights, Internews, Vigil Monitor, and New Leaders Council.  A Washington, DC native, she holds a BA in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia and a MPP in International & Global Affairs from the Harvard Kennedy School.

Dr. Danielle (Dani) Poole is a population health scientist notable for her contributions to the evidence base for humanitarian decision-making. Within the broader field of humanitarian health research, her work is centered around two themes: 1) measuring needs among populations affected by crises with a focus on health during displacement, and 2) developing novel research methods for complex settings. To address these lines of inquiry, Dr. Poole applies methodological approaches spanning the epidemiological, geospatial, and biostatistical sciences. Recent and ongoing research contributions that have informed humanitarian response include the Yale University independent review of the Joint Intersectoral Analysis Framework (in partnership with UNOCHA), development of the Humanitarian Data Strategy for UNFPA’s Humanitarian Office, and geospatial analysis of health facility attacks in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip. Findings from her work have been featured at numerous conferences, including meetings of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as peer-reviewed and popular media publications. Dr. Poole completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Neukom Institute for Computational Science of Dartmouth College. She earned a ScD from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, an MPH from Brown University, and a BA from Seattle University.

Hani Mowafi, MD, MPH is an Associate Professor, Chief of the Section of Global Health in the Department of Emergency Medicine and he serves as the Director of the Yale-London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Fellowship in Global Health and International Emergency Medicine. Dr. Mowafi's work focuses on developing the science and practice of emergency care with emphasis on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) where the burden of emergency conditions is highest and where there is a large unmet need for emergency care. Internationally known for his work on emergency and trauma care in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), Dr. Mowafi has extensive experience conducting training, research, and program development in the Middle East and Africa. He has served as an expert consultant for the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, the World Bank and the World Health Organization where he is currently an Emergency Care Consultant for the WHO's Global Emergency and Trauma Care Initiative. He is the Co-Director of the NIH-funded Middle East and North Africa Program for Advanced Injury Research (MENA PAIR) - a partnership between Yale University and the American University of Beirut.Dr. Mowafi has served on scientific review panels for both global injury and humanitarian research including the National Institutes of Health Research (UK), and Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (UK). He serves as the Associate Editor for Trauma for BMC Emergency Medicine.Dr. Mowafi's research interests are assessing the health burden and impacts of trauma and injury in LMICs; health and human security in humanitarian emergencies; and developing metrics for global emergency care. Dr. Mowafi has a long track record mentoring junior investigators and practitioners in global health careers including trainees in the United States, East Africa and the Middle East.Dr. Mowafi has been recognized for his leadership and serves on the International Committee of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), previously as the Chair of the ACEP International Section, and Chair of the of the Global Emergency Medicine Fellowship Consortium. In 2017 he was awarded the Humanitarian Service Award from the Global Emergency Medicine Academy of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine in recognition of his work studying and mitigating the impacts of humanitarian crises around the world.

Madhury (Didi) Ray, MD, MPH, CEM is an innovator in disaster management working at the intersection of medicine, data, health equity, and public health at the New York City Health Department. As the inaugural Paul Farmer Resident in Anti-Racism and Preventive Medicine, Dr. Ray is conducting a scoping review with the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab to advance knowledge of how health systems can be strengthened to improve the health of displaced and migrant populations in the context of climate change. Her projects integrate diverse disciplines, from inventing a novel, participatory method to define disaster risk to standing up NYC's first COVID-19 mass vaccination sites to designing NYC's first hyperlocal emergency response. Her interdisciplinary approach to innovation began when she graduated as a triple major in Russian, Mathematics, and Premedicine from the Pennsylvania State University, followed by a medical degree from Drexel University and a Masters in Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School with a specialization in Global Health and a concentration in Humanitarian Studies. Dr. Ray counts her time as a Fulbright Scholar in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution as one of her most formative experiences. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the International Center for Conflict Resolution (IC4CR) and was named a 40 Under 40 Rising Leader in Public Health by the deBeaumont Foundation. Dr. Ray's current work centers climate change's impact on human health, the greatest emerging public health threat of our time.