Dr. Liu's areas of expertise and research interest include next generation sequencing data analyses, e.g., bulk and single cell RNA-seq data analyses (Hepatol Commun. 2022 Aug;6(8):2170-2181.; Biochem Biophys Rep. 2022 Mar;29:101200.), meta-genomics (Brief Bioinform. 2022 May 13;23(3)) and other high-dimensional clinical data analyses (Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2022 Nov 1;206(9):1174-1177.; Virchows Arch. 2022 Jul;481(1):49-61.).
Eva Silvestre works in the monitoring and evaluation of health and education programs domestically and internationally. Her educational background is in nutrition, anthropology, and public health, and she has experience with both quantitative and qualitative data collection. Dr. Silvestre has worked in the areas of HIV prevention, treatment, and communication, reproductive health, health information systems, health systems strengthening, and technology use in healthcare settings.
Dr. Jylana L. Sheats is an Associate Professor and Course Director for Social Innovation Tools in the Social Behavioral and Population Sciences Department. Her research and practice span sectors, focusing on key themes of health equity and chronic disease prevention, technology-driven health interventions, citizen science and community engagement, interdisciplinary health and environmental solutions, and evidence-based systems-level change. Her work examines the structural and contextual determinants of chronic diseases, focusing on addressing racial and ethnic health disparities.
Valerie A. Paz-Soldan is a Peruvian-American social scientist based permanently in Peru as the Director of Tulane’s Health Office for Latin America (~19 years). She obtained her PhD in Maternal and Child Health (2003), with a minor in Population Studies, for which she took courses on demography, health econometrics, health policy, and qualitative research, and used mixed methods for her dissertation work on reproductive health in Malawi.
Jian Li is a biostatistician and bioinformatician. His research includes both development of analytical methodology and analyses of high-throughput data.
Joshua Yukich is an epidemiologist and health economist. His research focuses on preventing and eliminating malaria and other vector borne disease with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. His main area of work involves the use and collection of surveillance data for malaria and the measuring of malaria transmission in intervention suppressed areas. Dr. Yukich was trained in epidemiology, public health, and health economics, and much of his work is centered around the synergy of these topics.
Mark Wiser's primary interest is the molecular and cellular biology of protozoan parasites and their interactions with the hosts. Major research accomplishments include the description of proteins synthesized by the malaria parasite and exported to the host cell; a proposed novel secretory pathway of the malarial parasite which functions to target proteins to the host erythrocyte, as well as a characterization of protein kinases and chaperones of the malarial parasite.
Dawn Wesson's background in medical/molecular entomology and vector biology has led to her role as a principal investigator on many research projects on vector-borne pathogens (particularly dengue, West Nile, and Chagas disease), and as an instructor of graduate and undergraduate courses on vector biology and ecology in the Department of Tropical Medicine at Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
Patricia Scaraffia earned her Ph.D from Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina. She has expertise in insect metabolism, specifically in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, vectors of dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, and Zika virus. Her research interests include medical entomology, vector control, parasitology, and development, optimization and application of mass spectrometry techniques. Her laboratory uses traditional and cutting-edge approaches, including RNA interference, isotopically-labeled compounds and mass spectrometry.
Eric Dumonteil's primary research interest is in the development of new control tools for Chagas disease and other neglected tropical diseases. These include research on vector ecology and vector control interventions, epidemiological studies and pre-clinical evaluation of therapeutic and preventive vaccines. He received a MSc in endocrinology from the University of Lyon, France, and a PhD in biochemistry and biophysics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
