We are a small team of public health and medical professionals with a wide range of skills and experience. We love what we do, and we do it with passion.
UCSF
Travis Porco, PhD, MPH
Co-Principal Investigator
Travis is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and is based in the F. I. Proctor Foundation. He specializes in the mathematical modeling of disease transmission and the statistical analysis of clinical trials. He oversees execution of the MINDSCAPE proposal, and his role includes managing the team of UCSF investigators, and acting as the key liaison to the CDC for this cooperative agreement.
Seth Blumberg, MD, PhD
Co-Principal Investigator
Seth is an Assistant Professor at UCSF who enjoys identifying synergistic collaborations amongst the diverse expertise of MINDSCAPE members. His background is in using relatively simple mathematical models to help develop intuition for disease dynamics. For MINDSCAPE he has worked on transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in congregate settings and characterizing the role of superspreading for nosocomial MRSA infections.
Ashley Hazel, PhD, MSc
Research Analyst
Ashley Hazel is a Research Analyst with expertise in human ecology, field methods, and network and disease modeling. She has a PhD in Resource Ecology from University of Michigan and she conducted postdoctoral research in the Departments of Anthropology and Earth System Science at Stanford University prior to joining UCSF. For MINDSCAPE, she is applying her anthropological perspective to questions about patient mobility, health-center and community network links, and healthcare acquired infections.
Ariktha Srivathsan, MPH
Graduate Student
Ariktha is an analyst and a graduate student working alongside Dr. Blumberg. With a background in epidemiology, she is interested in using modeling techniques to understand patterns of disease transmission and dynamics. Within MINDSCAPE, her focus lies in conducting simulations of disease transmission and characterizing the severity of COVID-19 among hospitalized patients.
Daniel De la Rosa Martinez, MD, PhD
Post-Doctoral Scholar
Daniel is a postdoctoral researcher with experience in infectious disease prevention. His work focuses on clinical and translational research, with a particular interest in applied biostatistics and methodology. Currently, Daniel is interested in applying mathematical modeling to C. difficile and other healthcare-acquired infections to better understand their natural history and transmission dynamics in different clinical settings.
Mia Navarro
Graduate Student
Mia Navarro (she/her) is a PhD student at UCSF in the Epidemiology and Biostatistics department with research interests at the intersection of health equity, computational epidemiology, and policy analysis. Mia joined the team in October 2022 as a Research Analyst and is researching the impact of residence location on COVID-19 outcomes, with the aim of improving resource allocation strategies at the community and healthcare system level. Previously, Mia completed her M.S. degree in Epidemiology at Stanford University and her B.S. degree in Computational and Systems Biology at UCLA.
Joyce Lee, MD
Post-Doctoral Scholar
Joyce Lee is a post-doctoral researcher who joined the MINDSCAPE group in April 2023, working to explore the use of machine learning to improve antibiotic prescribing practices, and also modeling disease transmission in response to reactionary controls. She earned her medical degree at UC Irvine and then completed neurology residency at the University of Pennsylvania, and then went on to work in the health tech industry for several years. Previously, she completed her B.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering at Princeton University.
Taye Faniran, PhD
Post-Doctoral Scholar
Taye Faniran is a postdoctoral researcher at UCSF working on projects within the MINDSCAPE group. He applies infectious disease modeling to enhance the understanding of MRSA transmission dynamics across healthcare and community settings, integrating genetic and epidemiological data to improve control strategies. He has a PhD in Mathematical Modeling from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
Colin Hubbard
Senior Statistical Scientist, UCSF
Colin is a Senior Statistical Scientists in the Division of Hospital Medicine at UCSF. His work has focused on collaborating with clinician researchers on the design, analysis and dissemination of results from interventional studies, observational studies, and analyses of administrative healthcare data. His methodological research has focused on the intersection between longitudinal observational data, mixed effects models, and propensity score methodologies, and his applied research has focused on patterns and predictors of inappropriate antibiotic prescribing by dentists.
Tracy Lin, PhD, MSc
Assistant Professor @ UCSF
Tracy Kuo Lin, PhD, MSc is an Assistant Professor of Health Economics in Institute of Health & Aging, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Nursing. Her research centers on health system financing and examines healthcare cost and resource allocation globally. Tracy received her PhD from the University of California, Davis. Prior to joining the faculty at UCSF, Tracy completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the School of Pharmacy at UCSF and was a fellow in the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Xinran (Leo) Liu, MD, MS, FAMIA
Assistant Clinical Professor, UCSF Division of Hospital Medicine; UCSF Director of Clinical Informatics, St Mary’s Medical Center; Associate Program Director, UCSF Clinical Informatics Fellowship; Director, GME Clinical Informatics and Data Science Pathway
Xinran (Leo) Liu is an informatician and hospitalist in the Division of Hospital Medicine at UCSF. He is an assistant professor involved in operations, education, and research. He serves as the primary informatician for the MINDSCAPE group at UCSF, pulling and processing data for the group.
Priya Shete, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor @ UCSF
Dr. Shete is an Assistant Professor in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and UCSF and brings her expertise in health systems, critical care and health equity to support MINDSCAPE.
Victoria Chu, MD, MPH
Pediatric Infectious Disease Fellow @ UCSF
Victoria is a Pediatric Infectious Diseases clinical fellow at UCSF. Her research focuses on the use of metagenomics for the detection, acquisition, and transmission of antimicrobial resistance. Prior to starting her fellowship at UCSF, she was at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Epidemic Intelligence Service fellowship program. She brings her expertise in infectious diseases, public health, and transmission epidemiology to collaborations with the MINDSCAPE group.
NYU
Bo Shopsin, MD, PhD
Associate Professor @ NYU
Bo Shopsin, MD, PhD is an Associate Professor of Medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center (NYULMC). As the director of the Molecular Outbreak Program at NYULMC, he serves as the NYU lead investigator for MINDSCAPE. He has a particular interest in how whole-genome sequencing can inform inference of hospital-based disease transmission.
East Carolina University
Richard Medford, MD
Chief Medical Informatics and Digital Health Officer
Dr. Medford the Chief Medical Informatics and Digital Health Officer at East Carolina University. For this proposal, Dr. Medford will provide overall supervision of the research efforts at UTSW. In particular, he will be responsible for data retrieval at UTSW and associated testing of MINDSCAPE models. He will help author manuscripts and presentations and will regularly discuss overall project goals, solutions and direction with Dr. Porco to ensure project success.
UTSW
Trish Perl, MD
Consultant
Dr. Perl is the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographical holds the Jay P. Sanford Professorship. For this proposal, Dr. Perl will help formulate and guide the research efforts at UTSW. She will help author manuscripts and presentations and will regularly discuss overall project goals, solutions and direction with Drs. Medford and Porco to ensure project success.
Student Interns
Summer 2023
Young Woong (Jonathan) Min
B.A. from UC Berkeley, Mathematics & Statistics
If Jonathan could be any animal, he would be a sloth. It would be nice just hanging from a branch and enjoying the sun!
Haojun Zhuang
Rising Senior at UC Berkeley, Computer Science and Bioengineering
Haojun is working on a microsimulation focused on the transmission of healthcare-associated infections. If Haojun could be any animal, he would be a cheetah.
Richard Zhuang
Rising Senior at UC Berkeley, Computer Science and Applied Math
Richard is working with Haojun on understanding transmission patterns of Clostridium difficile in hospitalized settings. Currently his work focuses on inference of patient status from an observational model using deep learning techniques from synthetic data generated by simulations.
MINDSCAPE @ UCSF 