Student Profiles & News

Student News

Jian Zou awarded the Mihaela Serban Memorial Award for best poster

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Congratulations to Jian Zou (BIOST '23) who was awarded the Mihaela Serban Award for best poster in the American Statistical Association (ASA) Pittsburgh Chapter's 2022 poster contest for his presentation "CGMM: an algorithm for constrained model-based clustering". Jian’s work is advised by Dr. George C. Tseng  

Ellen Tan receives Student Research Award

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Xiaoqing (Ellen) Tan (BIOST '22) received the Student Research Award at the 35th New England Statistics Symposium for her work "A Tree-based Model Averaging Approach for Personalized Treatment Effect Estimation from Heterogeneous Data Sources". This is the work that has recently been accepted to the Thirty-ninth International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML ’22), the leading international academic conference in machine learning.   

Clemens and Sun honored by the Allegheny & Erie Regional Chapter of the Society of Toxicology

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Congratulations to Zachary Clemens and Yuchen Kristine Sun, two second-year doctoral students in Pitt Public Health’s Department of Environmental and Occupational (EOH), who won awards at the annual meeting of the Allegheny & Erie Regional Chapter of the Society of Toxicology, May 31 – June 1, in Morgantown, Va.  

Cai awarded for best research presentation at Graduate Student Research Conference

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Congratulations to Manqi Cai (BIOST '24) who is one of four prize winners of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) Graduate Student Research Conference 2022. Cai is recognized for the best presentation of original research for her presentation titled "Robust and accurate estimation of cellular fraction from tissue omics data via ensemble deconvolution." In addition to a reward certificate, Cai will receive a check in the amount o... 

Yue receives abstract scholarship and award at annual American Thoracic Society conference

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Congratulations to Molin Yue (BIOST) on receiving the abstract scholarship and 3rd place American Thoracic Society (ATS) Pediatric Trainee abstract award in San Francisco at the annual American Thoracic Society conference, the most prestigious clinical conference in pulmonary medicine. Yue presented two talks; his award-winning "Transcriptome-wide Analysis of Nasal Epithelium Predicts Time to First Severe Exacerbation in Childhood Asthma" as wel... 

Real-time genomic surveillance quickly detects hospital outbreaks

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HEALIO - Alexander Sundermann (IDM '14, EPI '22) and colleagues find real-time genomic surveillance is able to detect hospital outbreaks using an approach they call Enhanced Detection System for Healthcare-Associated Transmission, which would allow hospitals to detect outbreaks early and intervene quickly. Sundermann says, "We believe that this will substantially improve patient safety" and that "sequencing surveillance will eventually become ro... 

Dean’s Day 2022 Second Place, Doctoral Category: Jessie Klousnitzer

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EOH student Jessie Klousnitzer won second place among doctoral students for the project, “Characterization of Lysine and Arginine Rich Antimicrobial Peptides”.  

Dean’s Day 2022 First Place, Doctoral Category: Chinwoke Isiguzo

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BCHS student Chinwoke Isiguzo, won first place among doctoral students for the project, “Effects of discrimination and microaggressions on exclusive breastfeeding: the role of stress”.  

Dean’s Day 2022 First Place, Master’s Category: Rachel Merritt

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IDM student Rachel Merritt won first place among master’s students for the project, “Effects of Climate Change on Lyme Disease Incidence: A Literature Review”.   

Dean’s Day 2022 Second Place, Master’s Category: Monica Henderson

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BCHS student Monica Henderson won second place among master’s students for the project, “Black Hair Politics: A Public Health Concern”.  

Dean’s Day 2022 DEI Award, Doctoral Category: Donald Bourne

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HPM student Donald Bourne won the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award, Doctoral Level for the project, “Changes in Medication Utilization and Adherence Associated with Homeless Adults’ Entry into Permanent Supportive Housing”.  

Dean’s Day 2022 DEI Award, Master’s Category: Emily Arthur

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EPI student Emily Arthur won the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award, Masters Level for the project, “Maternal Health in Rural Virginia”.  

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Student Profiles

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Meet Jonathan Yasin, BSPH student 

Meet Jonathan Yasin, BSPH student

“For the longest time, I wanted to be a physician,” says Jonathan, a native of Long Island, N.Y.  “But, I never thought about it in a global context or considered all the things that shape health until my volunteer work.  I started really thinking about public health and how it could be a window in... (01/11/2022)
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Salunke accepted into Internal Medicine Residency at the University of Connecticut 

Salunke accepted into Internal Medicine Residency at the University of Connecticut

Graduating master's student in IDM's community practice track Rajeev Salunke (IDM '20) has been accepted into the internal medicine residency program at the University of Connecticut. Hear directly from Rajeev about his background, his experiences at Pitt Public Health, and his aspirations for the ... (04/28/2020)
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Beth Hoffman, using systems science and social media data 

Beth Hoffman, using systems science and social media data

Doctoral student Beth Hoffman (BCHS '19 '23) uses system science methods to analyze social media data related to health topics such as vaping and vaccination. Her master's thesis examining anti-vaccine sentiment on Facebook through social network analyses was featured by multiple media outlets incl... (03/05/2020)
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Jessica Frankeberger, modeling social-ecological contributions to postpartum opioid use 

Jessica Frankeberger, modeling social-ecological contributions to postpartum opioid use

In her dissertation work, doctoral student Jessica Frankeberger (BCHS '23) will use spatial analysis and modeling approaches to understand the social-ecological contexts that contribute to opioid use and related problems among postpartum women. (03/05/2020)
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Meet Ruishen Lyu, MS student in biostatistics 

Meet Ruishen Lyu, MS student in biostatistics

Just like with his interest in preventative medicine, Ruishen Lyu (BIOST MS '20) had two main reasons for choosing Pitt from among the other universities to which he was accepted. The first was the great reputation of a large research university like the University of Pittsburgh. The second was the... (01/29/2020)
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Students share practical advice on practica 

Students share practical advice on practica

A panel of six current students highlighted last week’s sixth annual Practicum and Internship Symposium, sharing their own experiences and tips on how to secure an internship. Perspectives were provided by faculty, staff, and administrators engaged in internship/practicum sites and advised students... (01/14/2020)
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Meet Ashika Mani, accelerated MS student in statistics and biostatistics 

Meet Ashika Mani, accelerated MS student in statistics and biostatistics

Ashika Mani (BIOST MS '21) joined Pitt Public Health this year via our Accelerated Bachelor's/Master's Program. “It was a pretty natural choice as I was looking to jumpstart my graduate studies early,” she said. “I was almost done with my undergraduate requirements.” She felt like she had so much m... (12/11/2019)
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Meet Dominic DiSanto, MS student in health data science 

Meet Dominic DiSanto, MS student in health data science

“I’m especially excited about my health data science concentration. It’s a very dynamic skill set and one that translates well to all different kinds of problems," said Dominic DiSanto (BIOST MS '21). "The curriculum in general looks like a very applied curriculum and the idea of having a consultin... (12/11/2019)
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Meet Arvon Clemons, MS student in statistical and computational genomics 

Meet Arvon Clemons, MS student in statistical and computational genomics

Part of what led Arvon Clemons to Pitt Public Health was the city of Pittsburgh. He felt a connection to a city that was similar to his hometown of St. Louis. His academic background doesn’t feel as congruous with his current study. But ultimately, both the city and the program are turning out to b... (12/09/2019)
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Meet Lingyun Lyu, Pitt Biostats MS graduate and PhD candidate  

Meet Lingyun Lyu, Pitt Biostats MS graduate and PhD candidate

Lingyun Lyu (BIOST PhD '22) is a second-year Ph.D. student in Biostatistics at Pitt Public Health. She came to Pitt in 2016 and earned her M.S. in Biostatistics in 2018. She loved the master’s program and thinks that it’s really well-designed. In addition to many essential statistical theory and ap... (12/09/2019)