University of California, San Francisco & Berkeley Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholars
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(2011-2013) Cohort 9 Scholars
Meredith Barrett, PhD
Meredith Barrett is an ecologist with a strong interest in how the environment shapes human and animal health on landscape scales. She finished her PhD in Ecology at Duke University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and worked across campus with the Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke Global Health Institute, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and the Biology Department. Her dissertation research investigated how environmental change, including increasing urbanization, deforestation and climate change, drives spatial patterns of wildlife and human health in Madagascar, and how these patterns influence the risk of disease transmission. This research can inform zoonotic disease surveillance and preparedness programs, as well as natural resource management, land use planning and conservation. She believes in the importance of multidisciplinary approaches to health, and has become involved in advancing the One Health perspective, which integrates diverse disciplines to achieve optimal human, animal and ecosystem health. Meredith spent a summer in Switzerland as a Visiting Scholar with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. As a Health & Society Scholar, she will work on applying the One Health approach in research and policy, will study the effects of climate change on health and will examine the existing barriers to, and incentives required for, building collaborative approaches to health. She received a BA in Earth & Environmental Sciences from Wesleyan University. Meredith loves spending time outdoors biking, running and traveling.
Olivier Humblet, ScD
Olivier Humblet is an epidemiologist whose research explores how environmental factors affect health by altering the immune system. His goal is to identify causes of the recent increase in prevalence of immune-related diseases such as allergies and asthma, especially among children. His current work focuses on the relationship between air pollution and immune function (in particular, that of newly discovered immune cells called regulatory T cells) in children with asthma, and how these associations are modified by genetics.
As a Health & Society Scholar, Olivier is expanding his focus to study stress and psychosocial factors in relation to health and immune function, and the extent to which these factors act synergistically with environmental pollutants. Prior to joining the HSS program Olivier was a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford School of Medicine in the division of Immunology and Allergy. In 2010 he received his doctorate in Environmental Molecular Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health, where his thesis research assessed how children's reproductive development is affected by industrial chemicals in the environment. In 2005 he received an MS in Occupational Epidemiology from UMass-Lowell.
(2010-2012) Cohort 8 Scholars
Emily Jacobs, PhD
Emily received her PhD in Neuroscience from UC Berkeley in 2010. There she began her investigation of the impact of ovarian hormones on prefrontal cortical function in humans. Using fMRI, PET and pharmacogenomics methods she examined the way endogenous hormone fluctuations over a woman’s menstrual cycle modulate neurochemical circuits, in turn shaping cognitive processes.
With the support of RWJ, Emily continues to clarify the impact of ovarian hormones on brain morphology and behavior, with the purpose of understanding the extent to which neuroactive hormones are relevant to observable sex differences in neurological disorders at the population level. Ovarian hormones are neuroactive, with estrogen receptor expression evident throughout the frontal lobe, yet few human studies have examined the behavioral and health-related consequences of this relationship within a model of brain circuitry and function. Emily and colleagues plan to probe this line of research on two levels, pairing large-scale exploratory analyses with controlled experiments of ovarian hormones.
Emily received her BA from Smith College in 2004 where she majored in Neuroscience. She grew up in southern Illinois.
Mark A. Pachucki, PhD
Mark A. Pachucki is a sociologist whose current work seeks to specify how our tastes in food, nutrition, and social ties with others are interrelated. While it is commonly accepted that what we eat affects our well-being, research that seeks to understand the links between eating behaviors and health outcomes has traditionally had difficulty when considering how the structure and meanings of relationships between people are involved. More generally, his research explores pathways by which the social world influences our health, and he is keenly interested in how diffusion and status processes are implicated in the networks of relationships that organize society. His published work explores how patterns of meaning that we construct in our everyday lives are associated with group-level social structure. Mark received a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Columbia University, received his MA in Sociology from Harvard University, and will complete his PhD in the same department at the conclusion of the 2009-10 academic year. His research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and his personal health has been supported by his interests in distance running, cycling, live music, and a belief in the numerous health benefits of hot peppers.
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Aric A. Prather, PhD
Aric A. Prather received his PhD (2010) in Clinical and Biological & Health Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh, and completed his clinical training internship in behavioral medicine at Duke University Medical Center. Trained in the field of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), Aric’s research focuses on psychological, behavioral, and physiologic correlates of immune function, with particular emphasis on restorative processes (e.g. sleep) that may buffer the deleterious effects of stress on health. For instance, his dissertation focused on whether natural variation in sleep parameters (e.g. sleep duration, efficiency, subjective quality) was associated with the magnitude of primary and secondary antibody responses to the hepatitis B vaccination series. While in the RWJ program, Aric plans to explore how larger social pressures (e.g. SES) shape biology and health behaviors across the life span to influence susceptibility to physical and mental illness in adulthood. When not working, he and his wife, Michelle, enjoy exploring their environment, including dining out at local restaurants, hiking/biking/walking around, and enjoying the cultural richness of the Bay Area.
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