Speakers

Emily Carnahan, M.P.H.

Emily Carnahan has worked in global public health for more than ten years, at the intersection of data science, health systems, and digital health. In her role as a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Manager at PATH, she collaborates with project teams to design and implement measurement and learning approaches to accelerate impact. Emily has expertise in mixed methods approaches, complex evaluations, and promoting data-driven action. Prior to joining PATH, Emily was a fellow at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. She holds an MPH from the University of Washington and a BA in Economics from Northwestern University.

Grace John-Stewart, Ph.D.

Dr. John-Stewart's major research interest focuses on advancing HIV prevention and treatment. She directs studies aimed at defining mechanisms of HIV transmission from mothers to infants, HIV prevention in women, and pediatric/adolescent HIV. Particular research interests include prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) clinical trials, implementation science and evaluation studies, studies of PrEP in MCH and FP clinics, pediatric and adolescent HIV studies, HIV treatment programs and evaluation. Her group also focuses on maternal-child epidemiologic studies in the context of infectious diseases including studies of the mechanism of breastfeeding protective effects, child growth and neurocognitive outcomes, preterm birth, viral infections with EBV, CMV, STIs, and TB. Studies of TB, growth, birth outcomes, and STIs include both women and children living with HIV and those without.

Maria Lemos, Ph.D.

Maria P. Lemos is a Staff Scientist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center focusing on HIV exposure during sexual activity, and on prevention strategies that can act at the mucosal portals of entry. Before coming to Seattle, she worked at Rockefeller University/Weill Cornel Medical Center. Her recent work combines cell-phone-based applications with biomarker monitoring, to improve on the quality of sexual behavior questionnaires as well as to support detection of early exposures to HIV.

Sean Munson, Ph.D.

Dr. Munson is an Associate Professor at the University of Washington's Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering. Working primarily on challenges of health, wellbeing, and exposure to diverse information, Sean designs and evaluates techniques for helping people make sense of data about themselves and the world around them.

In addition to his research and teaching, Dr.Munson directs the HCDE PhD program, chairs the HCI+D Interdisciplinary Faculty Group, is a member of the DUB group, and is methods co-director for the UW Alacrity Center.

Dr. Munson completed a BS in Engineering at Olin College in 2006 and his PhD at the University of Michigan School of Information in 2012. Previously, he was a political blogger and, while at Boeing, designed concepts for future passenger airplane interiors.

Larsson Omberg, Ph.D.

Dr. Omberg’s research effort focuses on two areas – using remote sensors and mobile phones to measure disease; and collaborative genomic research. Currently his group focuses heavily on open and team based science to get a large number of external partners to collaborate on data intensive problems.  This includes establishing norms and methods for measuring disease phenotypes using remote sensors and developing analytical approaches for turning raw signals from sensors into digital biomarkers. Dr. Omberg and the Systems Biology group have been involved in over two dozen mobile health studies ranging from Chronic Anemia to Parkinson's Disease to cardio respiratory fitness.  As a graduate student and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas and Cornell University Dr. Omberg developed machine learning and statistical approaches for extracting genomic phenotypes and disease signals from system level biological data. After establishing a data science group at Sage Bionetworks his expertise was applied to coordinating data integration and integrative analysis for the TCGA Pancancer collaboration, The Progenitor Cell Biology Consortium as well as the international ICGC/TCGA Whole Genome Pan-Cancer Analysis among other projects.  Dr. Omberg received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin.

Andrew Secor, M.P.H.

Andrew Secor is a Monitoring & Evaluation Officer with PATH, where he provides analysis and evaluation support on projects related to vaccine coverage, self-injectable contraceptives, and malaria vector control in East Africa. He is also working towards his PhD in Global Health Implementation Science at the University of Washington. Prior to joining PATH, he worked on Ebola survivor and community health worker program evaluations in West and Southern Africa. His research interests include health information system strengthening and making data available and interpretable for decision-making at all levels of the health system.

Dykki Settle

Dykki Settle has more than 25 years of experience in leadership and development of digital technology, data systems, and their enabling environments in more than 20 countries and global organizations. Mr. Settle is currently PATH’s Chief Digital Officer and Director of PATH’s Center of Digital and Data Excellence, setting digital transformation strategy for the organization and leading more than 80 staff to deliver a global portfolio of digital and data projects and investments.

Mr. Settle is a Commissioner on the Lancet/Financial Times Governing Health Futures 2030 Commission, exploring the convergence of digital health, artificial intelligence (AI) and other frontier technologies with universal health coverage (UHC) to support attainment of the third Sustainable Development Goal (SDG).

He also chairs the board of Digital Square, the USAID/BMGF-funded PATH-led flagship global project for digital health supporting more than 40 implementing partners and over 20 open source software global goods used by almost every country in Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Mehdi Snène, Ph.D.

Dr. Mehdi Snène is the Research and Development Director of the I-DAIR project currently hosted at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. He is a Swiss-Tunisian computer scientist and digital health research leader with a rich clinical, neuroscience and Data science expertise. In 2012, he founded the Conscious Analytics System Laboratory at the University of Geneva (Caslab). He has led and contributed to a wide range of digital health projects and clinical trials covering medical topics such as Alzheimer’s, dementia, cancer, comorbidity, CVD and diabetes. He has developed an award-winning patented medical device designed to increase the well-being of dementia patients. Immediately prior to joining I-DAIR, he was the technical project manager for the Human Brain Project at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), a billion euro project with more than 130 partners. He has a masters degree from the Polytechnic School of Grenoble and he completed his PhD from the University of Geneva in the area of Computer and Information Systems security in 2004.

Patrick Sullivan, Ph.D.

Dr. Sullivan is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, and Co-Director of the Prevention Sciences Core at Emory’s Center for AIDS Research (CFAR).  Before coming to Emory, Patrick has worked in at CDC as an EIS officer and in HIV Surveillance programs.  Dr. Sullivan’s research focuses on HIV among men who have sex with men, including behavioral research, digital interventions, and public health surveillance.  

Yifun Zhu, Ph.D.

Dr. Zhu trained in the interdisciplinary field of applying statistical theories on infectious disease epidemiology. He worked on infectious disease a) Statistical transmission models to understand the key properties that determine disease natural history b) Evaluated the efficacy of transmission prevention measures, c) Developed various models that focus on transmission network heterogeneity, and d) Analyzing various measurements on adherence to study medication in HIV prevention trials. Dr. Zhu's experience in Bayesian inference and model selection, specifically in infectious disease setting where missing data is often unavoidable, would directly benefit the research aims and improve synergy between proposed projects. His previous knowledge from modeling multiple outbreaks of SARS, influenza, tuberculosis with complex population clustering and time varying temporal-spatial pattern is important for establishing valid assumptions for inference and prediction.