Current PhD Students

I am a second year PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases. My research interest is in the implementation, evaluation and modeling of public health interventions and/or policies geared towards the control of infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, TB, hepatitis, and other diseases of global health importance.

Emmanuella Asabor is a joint MD-PhD Candidate in Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Yale University Schools of Medicine and Public Health. She has been named a Forbes 30 Under 30 Honoree and a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Research Scholar for her research and advocacy at the intersection of social medicine, epidemiology, and global health policy. Emmanuella has been invited to speak nationally and internationally including a broadcasted sit-down with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the 2022 Forbes International Women’s Day 30/50 Summit in Abu Dhabi as well as a plenary panel at the 2023 National Tuberculosis Conference in Atlanta, GA. Her scholarship has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Vanity Fair, USA Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and more. She also serves on the External Research Advisory Committee at the American Medical Association Center for Health Equity. Prior to Yale, Emmanuella shaped homelessness policy at the New York State Department of Health, and developed public-private partnerships for global health aid at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria in Geneva, Switzerland. She earned her bachelor’s at Harvard University where she studied the history of medicine and global health, and she holds a master’s in African Studies from the University of Cambridge. In her spare time, she enjoys travel with loved ones, Nigerian food and literature, K-dramas, and occasionally re-living her opera-singing past.

Meet Yale School of Public Health's Catherine Chant.

Melanie H. Chitwood is a doctoral candidate in the Ted Cohen Lab. She is interested in using mathematical models to understand the transmission and prevalence of tuberculosis in high burden settings. She has previously worked as a Research Associate in the Cohen Lab, where she was involved in projects in Brazil and on COVID-19 estimates and projections. Melanie received her BA from Hampshire College and her MS in Global Health and Population from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Mallory Ellingson, MPH, is a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial diseases. Her research interests include vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases, with a specific focus on improving vaccine communication and understanding vaccine acceptance and refusal. Prior to starting at Yale, she earned her MPH in Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. She also worked as a Public Health Program Associate in the Global Health department on projects related to maternal immunization and interventions to improve vaccine uptake.

My research focuses on translational studies of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa with an emphasis on parasite dynamics and treatment pharmacology and how these impact the emergence and spread of drug resistance. I currently work as an MD/PhD student in the Parikh Lab in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health. My previous research at the University of Texas at Dallas focused on altered cellular metabolism in cancer and other pathological conditions. I was previously enlisted as a cavalry scout in the US Army and deployed twice in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn. Afterwards I earned a BS in Biology and a MS in Biotechnology at UTD before joining the MD/PhD program at the Yale School of Medicine in 2017.

Kelly is a PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases. Her research interests focus on reducing vector-borne and zoonotic diseases in low income countries by identifying social, biological, and environmental risk factors of disease. Specifically, she hope to use molecular epidemiological studies to gain insight into pathogenesis and to improve the prevention and control of infectious diseases.

Rachel matriculated to Yale in 2018 to pursue MD/PhD training at Yale School of Medicine and Yale School of Public Health. She graduated from Duke in 2016 with a double major in global health and psychology. At Duke, she began conducting global mental health research, with her thesis focusing on adolescent mental health in rural Kenya. After graduating, she took a gap year to study malaria elimination in low- and middle-income countries at UCSF, and another to study the intersection of nutrition, epigenetics, and cardiovascular disease at the Framingham Heart Study. At Yale, Rachel is completing her dissertation on implementation of evidence-based tuberculosis care in Uganda in Dr. Luke Davis' lab. Rachel is also affiliated with Dr. Sarah Lowe's Trauma and Mental Health Lab to study the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare workers. Rachel hopes to advance her training in biostatistics and mixed methods throughout her MD/PhD training.

Katherine (Katie) Hill is a second year PhD student in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases. She is also a Public Health Workforce Development Fellow with Office of Public Health Practice at YSPH. Her research interests include sexual health and behavior, substance use, harm reduction, xylazine, kratom, and improving the health of incarcerated individuals.

After completing her undergraduate degree at Georgia Tech, Ann spent 9 months in India conducting public health research with a Fulbright research fellowship. Ann plans to continue public health research during her PhD with a mixed-methods approach. Ann enjoys spending time hiking and outdoors.

Meet Yale School of Public Health's Emily Johnson.

Jiye Kwon is a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases. She is primarily interested in the intersection of pathogen genomics, bioinformatics, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases. In the Pitzer-Weinberger Lab, she aims to integrate these areas to study the risk, development, and spatiotemporal spread of resistance and pathobionts to ultimately strengthen disease surveillance systems. Prior to her doctoral studies, Jiye earned her MPH with public health modeling concentration from Yale School of Public Health and conducted respiratory and gastrointestinal microbiome research with the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG) while working in the Pettigrew Lab.

Meet Yale School of Public Health's Sarah Lapidus

Dan Li (also known as Dan-Dan Li) graduated from Harvard College with a Bachelor of Arts with high honors in Chemical and Physical Biology and a minor in Mathematical Sciences in 2015. She is currently a fifth year MD/PhD candidate doing her PhD study in Former Dean Sten Vermund’s lab on the impact of COVID-19 on women and children. As an aspiring OB, Dan holds issues affecting women and children’s lives close to heart. She is the founder and CEO of Education without Barriers, a 501c(3) nonprofit aims to bridge the education accessibility gaps through free, real-time online education and mentorship for vulnerable children across the globe.

Elisabeth Nelson is a second-year Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases PhD student. She is interested novel forms of vector control and in optimizing wolbachia release programs to help with scale-up and expansion into low-resource endemic settings. She is currently working on a Wolbachia release randomized control trial in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Meet Yale School of Public Health's Abbey Porzucek.

Alexandra Savinkina is a first year PhD student in the Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases. She is interested in using mathematical modeling to answer questions at the intersection of infectious disease epidemiology and national and global health policy, with a focus on health equity. Prior to coming to Yale, Alexandra was a data analyst at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and then worked in simulation modeling at Boston Medical Center's infectious disease department.