Dr. Murphy leads the Disaster Management Program, leveraging his nearly two decades of practice-based experience shaping and implementing local, state, federal, and private sector public health emergency preparedness, health security, homeland security, and disaster management programs.
Dr. Kirsten Dorans received her doctor of science in epidemiology from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. After her graduate training, she completed a science policy fellowship with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and postdoctoral work in the Department of Epidemiology at Tulane.
Martha Silva has over 20 years of experience in international public health in the non-profit sector, academic institutions, and independently as a research and evaluation consultant. Her research focus includes health services research and social and behavior change evidence generation for program and policy improvement.
Dr. Aaron Hoffman's research focuses on the molecular epidemiology of cancer, with a particular interest in the influence of genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of circadian disruption on cancer susceptibility. He is also interested in more broad analyses of the inter-individual variability in gene expression, and the extent to which epigenetic mechanisms such as post-transcriptional gene regulation by small non-coding RNA species and other non-traditional regulatory instruments (e.g.
Karis Schoellmann holds a joint appointment with Tulane and the Louisiana Department of Health, Office of Public Health, Bureau of Family Health (BFH). At the BFH she serves in a key leadership position as the Director of the Communications, Innovation and Action team, and is responsible for developing and managing the BFH's health communication/education activities, partnerships and community networks, best practice health promotion strategies, and system level actions.
Marsha Piacun is a registered dietitian and the program director of the dietetic internship at Tulane. Her degrees are from the University of Texas in Austin and Loyola University. She began her career at Charity Hospital where she directed the School of Nursing food service and compiled information to begin the dietetic traineeship program. She then directed the program for three years. After staying home with her 3 children for several years, she returned to work part time as a dietitian consultant to several healthcare facilities. Over the years, the numbe
Jeffrey Shaffer, PhD, is a biostatistician and data capture and management specialist. His current work involves capturing, managing, and analyzing clinical and laboratory data for infectious diseases in West Africa (including Lassa fever, Ebola virus disease, and malaria) where he oversees the data management and biostatistics cores for two large federally-funded research projects. He has extensive international research experience and regularly provides training workshops and sets up data capture and management systems across West Africa. His earlier research focused o
Claudia Herrera is a microbiologist with expertise in several specific areas including immunology, molecular biology and molecular epidemiology, molecular genetics and phylogenetics of parasites. She has more than 15 years of experience in serological diagnosis and molecular parasitology.
Janna Wisniewski focuses her research on health system strengthening in fragile and post-conflict settings, and on the ways in which the health system contributes to health disparities. Her current work includes an evaluation of a large health system strengthening program in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a field experiment on disparities in access to medical appointments in the United States. In addition, she teaches courses in comparative health systems and an introduction to health management and policy. Dr.
Julie Hernandez is a geographer with technical expertise on geographic information systems, digital data collection, and use of ICT to support public health programs and research. Her current work focuses on access to sexual and reproductive health services in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with specific emphasis on community-based provision of family planning services, barriers to service delivery, contraceptive logistics and health information systems strengthening.
