Dr. Qi earned his medical degree in China and doctor of philosophy at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Dr. Qi’s research focuses on the genetic, nutrition, and biochemical risk factors and gene-environment interactions in relation to obesity, type-2 diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. He is now HCA Regents Distinguished Chair and Professor at Tulane University and adjunct professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He has published more than 470 scientific publications and edited a textbook. Dr.

Dr. Katherine Mills received her doctor of philosophy in epidemiology from Tulane University. Before returning to Tulane, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in cardiovascular disease epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University. Her research interests include cardiovascular and renal disease epidemiology, implementation science, and health disparities in the burden and treatment of cardiovascular and renal disease.

Dr. Patricia Kissinger is an infectious disease epidemiologist and Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs and Development. She has worked both nationally and internationally for over three decades in the field of HIV, sexually transmitted diseases, and women’s reproductive health in Africa, Haiti, and the US. Dr. Kissinger focuses on the dynamics of STI/HIV transmission, particularly among vulnerable populations, examining issues of HIV/STI partner notification, expedited partner treatment, sexual networks, substance abuse, pregnancy prevention, repeat STIs, and more recently COVID-19.

Dr. Hua He is a Professor of Biostatistics with research interests in the fields of mixture population modeling, causal inference, longitudinal data analysis, semi-parametric and nonparametric inference, ROC analysis, social network analysis, and applications of statistical methods to a wide range of disciplines in medical and health research.

Dr. Susan E. Hassig has been a faculty member of the Epidemiology Department since 1996, after more than a decade of work in HIV research, surveillance, and intervention programs in the U.S. and around the globe. She has also served in the Peace Corps, where she worked to improve disease diagnosis methods and blood transfusion safety in Thailand.  

Dr. Emily Harville is a perinatal epidemiologist with interests in how pregnancy and reproduction relate to health throughout the life course, including the mechanisms by which health disparities are created. She is the co-director of the Southern Center for Maternal Health Equity, one of the IMPROVE initiative's Centers of Excellence.

Dr. Jeanette Gustat's primary research interest is in the assessment of how behavior and the physical environment impacts health outcomes.

Dr. Engel's research focuses on the impact of mobile element activity on human health, in particular the human transposable elements (TEs), L1, and alu elements. Her main goal is to investigate the mechanism by which transposable elements contribute to disease and how environmental factors, such as heavy metal exposure, contribute to TE-mediated genomic instability and disease. Dr. Engel uses ex-vivo studies and the state-of-the-art whole-genome next-generation sequencing (NGS) approaches to investigate the contribution of mobile elements to human diseases such as cancer.  Dr.

Prescott Deininger is a molecular geneticist with a focus on genetic instability of the human genome in cancer. His work focuses primarily on mobile elements in the human genome and how they serve as risk factors for increased genetic instability. Dr. Deininger has served on the Board of Scientific Counselors for the NIEHS National Toxicology Program and the National Academies Committee for Disaster Resilience in the Biomedical Research Enterprise. He is an executive editor for Analytical Biochemistry and serves on numerous journal editorial boards. Dr.