CURRICULUM VITAE

Graduate student researcher: Immigration policy and population health                         July 2020 – Present

Department of Public Health, University of California, Merced

Young Lab, PI: Maria-Elena De Trinidad Young, PhD

• Spearheaded the Latino Youth Health Survey Aim 4 project development and analysis.

  • Conducted a literature review and policy scan to identify federal, state, and local immigrant policies that have been linked to immigrant health in the U.S.

  • Constructed county-level measures of sociopolitical climate that may influence the health of Latinos and Latino immigrants using a structural racism framework.

  • Constructed an index of county-level sociopolitical climate measures to generate composite scores that describe and combine the political and social dimensions of county-level immigration policy climates.

  • Generated maps of the composite scores to assess the geographical patterns in local sociopolitical climate across 58 California counties.

  • Disseminated the study methodologies and findings at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.

• Coordinated the COVID-19 and Latino Immigrant Families in Rural California Study.

  • Conceptualized and designed the study to investigate the social, economic, and health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on rural Latinx immigrants in California.

  • Conducted 32 interviews with Latinx immigrants living in Tulare, Merced, Fresno, and Imperial counties to elicit rich descriptions of their household, workplace, and healthcare experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • Implemented qualitative methods and grounded theory to analyze 39 interviews.

  • Disseminated findings at immigration roundtables with local immigrant-serving organizations; at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting in Boston, MA.  

  • Coauthored a policy brief and 3 peer-reviewed papers reporting the study findings.

• Supported the development and advancement of the Rural Policy Project.

  • Conducted qualitative interviews with local immigrant-serving organizations in four rural counties in California with large Latinx immigrant communities.

  • Analyzed 20 interview transcripts with immigrant-serving organizations to understand the impacts of immigrant policies on their organization and services.

  • Coauthored two peer-reviewed papers reporting the study findings.

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Graduate student researcher: Air pollution and COVID-19                                              Aug 2021 - Present

Department of Public Health, University of California, Merced                                                        

Chan-Golston Lab, PI: Alec Chan-Golston, PhD

• Course development

  • Implemented 36 R coding labs for undergraduate and graduate statistics courses.

  • Translated undergraduate and graduate statistics coding labs from STATA to R.

• COVID-19 Study

  • Implemented multilevel regression models using a Bayesian framework to assess the association between exposure to traffic-related air pollution and COVID-19 morbidity and mortality among nursing home residents in California. Accounted for spatial associations at the county level with conditional autoregressive (CAR) priors.

  • Presented study findings at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.  

 

Undergraduate research assistant: Geochemistry and climate                                      Jan 2014 – May 2017

Department of Earth Science, University of California, Santa Barbara

Paleoclimate and Stable Isotope Lab, PI: Syee Weldeab, PhD                                                        

• Assisted in the study of paleoclimate trends to understand the effects of climate change on monsoon rainfall and Himalayan glaciers.

• Prepared samples of foraminifera G. ruber from marine sediments and of cave stalagmites to conduct stable isotope analysis of oxygen-18/16 and carbon-13/12.

• Coauthored a peer-reviewed paper reporting the study findings.

 

Undergraduate research assistant: Biogeochemistry and migration                               Jan 2015 – May 2016

Department of Anthropology , University of California, Santa Barbara

Walker Bio-archaeology and Biochemistry Lab, PI: Danielle Kurin, PhD

• Prepared samples of human bone collagen and dental apatite used to reconstruct human diet and migration patterns during historical socioeconomic and environmental shifts.

• Extracted human bone collagen to conduct stable isotope analysis of carbon-13/12 and nitrogen-15/14.

• Extracted human dental apatite to conducted stable isotope analysis of oxygen-18/16 and carbon-13/12.