Research Team Members

Current Team Members

Postdoctoral Positions

 

Marcia Otto

Marcia received her MS in Environmental Science from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. She completed her PhD at the University of Texas School of Public Health with focus on micronutrient intakes and their relationships with inflammation and cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes in a multiethnic population. Marcia’s research interests are on the effects of different aspects of diet and diet quality on cardiovascular and metabolic health. Her current research projects include evaluating the effects of circulating fatty acids on cardiovascular disease incidence and progression, and the development of novel metrics to characterize dietary diversity and quality and their relation to cardiovascular and metabolic disease risk.

 

Liana Del Gobbo

Liana received her PhD in Human Nutrition at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. Her research interests include: 1) the role of dietary minerals and biomarkers in cardiovascular disease risk and 2) public health interventions to prevent the development of chronic disease. Her current project involves evaluating the effects of key nutrients and dietary patterns on cardiometabolic risk using cohort data and meta-analysis.

 

Gitanjali Singh

Gita is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. She received her SB degree in Chemistry at MIT, her PhD in Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, and her MPH in Quantitative Methods at Harvard School of Public Health. She has combined her backgrounds in basic science and quantitative population science to examine global distributions of metabolic and dietary risk factors as part of the Global Burden of Diseases (GBD), Risk Factors, and Injuries project.  Her current work focuses on elucidating the complex relationship between diet,  metabolic risk factors, and chronic disease both using data collected as part of the GBD project, and in meta-analyses of the primary literature.

 

Jessica Smith

Jessica received her PhD in Physiology and Endocrinology at the Université Laval in Québec, Canada. Her research interests include: 1) obesity prevention through diet and lifestyle, 2) the role of specific foods in long-term weight change in adults, 3) the metabolic consequences of obesity, and 4) the role of excess adiposity and body fat distribution in the development of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Her current research focuses on the associations between diet and lifestyle and long-term weight change in the Nurses’ Health Study, Nurses’ Health Study II and Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study.

 

Predoctoral Positions

Qianyi Wang

Qianyi is a doctorate student at the Harvard School of Public Health, majoring in Cardiovascular Epidemiology. Her research interests are the effects of dietary factors on risk of cardiovascular disease. More specifically, she is interested in investigating the association between trans fatty acids (TFAs), originate from partial hydrogenated vegetable oil, and cardiovascular risk factors as well as disease outcomes.  Her current projects involve using the Cardiovascular Health Study database to evaluate relationships of plasma phospholipid TFA biomarkers with total mortality, cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular cause of deaths, as well as incidence of stroke and total coronary heart disease. In addition, she is also involved in “The Cohorts of Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE)” Consortium to investigate associations between TFA biomarkers and incidence of type-2 diabetes mellitus (DM-2), as well as the potential effect modifiers (age, gender, race, BMI and major susceptible genetic loci for DM-2) of such associations.

 

Mohammad Yakoob

Mohammad is currently a doctoral student in Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. His research interests include: nutritional epidemiology, particularly the nutrition transition occurring in developing countries, and the role of dietary and lifestyle risk factors in prevention of cardiometabolic diseases, such as coronary heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. His current projects focus on: 1) comparative risk assessment analysis of dietary intakes and metabolic risk factors on mortality due to these diseases in South Asian region conducted as part of wider Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study; and 2) the association between circulating dairy fatty acid biomarkers with stroke and type 2 diabetes.

 

Ashkan Afshin

Ashkan is a postdoctoral fellow at the department of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health. His research interests include population prevention of cardiovascular disease, in particular global policies related to diet and lifestyle. During his time at Harvard, he has worked on several research projects, including the collaborating as a key author on an American Heart Association systematic review and scientific statement related to policy measures for the prevention of cardiovascular disease; leading a systematic review and meta-analysis on nuts and legumes consumption and the risk of cardiovascular and diabetes; and an original work he has led on dietary consumption patterns in the Middle East and North Africa as part of the WHO Global Burden of Diseases project. In addition, he has served as the co-investigator in two other projects including a systematic review and meta-analysis on food quality and food price; and a systematic review of the magnitude of the effects of dietary risk factors on development of cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes. Ashkan is currently conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis on effectiveness of mass media campaigns to improve dietary behaviors and leading a systematic review on the effectiveness of food pricing strategies on dietary consumption patterns.

 

Luisa Miranda

Luisa received a 5-year degree from Porto University, Portugal in Sports and Physical Education in 2002. In 2006, she finished a 4-year degree in Nursing. She completed her PhD in Physical Activity and Health at the Porto University in 2011. Her PhD work focused on the associations between cardiovascular risk factors, physical activity and autonomic function. During her PhD, she trained in research with Dr Dariush Mozaffarian at the Harvard School of Public Health. Her main research interests are in the role of physical activity on primary risk and secondary prevention of chronic disease. Her current projects focus on 1) physical activity and telomere length 2) physical activity associations with stroke, CHD and CVD in older adults, and 3) physical activity and heart rate variability in older adults.

 

Research Assistants

Shahab Khatibzadeh

Shahab is an MD from Tehran University of Medical Sciences who graduated from Harvard School of Public Health with MPH in Quantitative Methods in 2010. His research interests are the effect of lifestyle, especially dietary habits, on cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancers. His current projects are: 1) Global Burden of Nutrition and Chronic Disease; which aims to measure the impact of dietary factors and nutrients on cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancers at the national levels for the world; and 2) Global Dietary Habits among Women, Price and Income Elasticities, and Validity of Food Balance Sheets; which focuses on systematic evaluation of dietary quality among adult women, its economical determinants, and measurement considerations.

 

Statisticians

Peilin Shi

Peilin joined Dr. Mozaffarian’s research group as a statistician in 2009. Before coming to the Harvard School of Public Health, he was at the Aging Brain Center, Hebrew Senior Life in Boston. He moved from Canada to the United States with his family in 2007. While in Canada, he was a research associate at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology & Evaluation, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of British Columbia, starting from 2004. Between 2002 and 2004, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Victoria. He also taught at Camosun College, Victoria, briefly in 2002. Before obtaining his PhD degree in Canada, he was an associate professor at the Department of Mathematics, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. Currently, he is involved in the quantitative analyses of the risks of mercury exposure, and its relationship to incidents of diabetes, hypertension, and cognitive decline.

Tao Hou

Tao joined the Cardiovascular Disease Working Group in September 2007. Before coming to Harvard, he was a research associate at Duval County Health Department in Jacksonville, Florida. His current projects focus on: 1) the Omega-3 Fatty Acids for Prevention of Post-operative Atrial Fibrillation (OPERA) trial and 2) diet and long-term weight change in Nurses’ Health Study, Nurses’ Health Study II and Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study.  Tao has an MPH degree from the University of South Florida.

 

Administrative and Clinical Trial Support Staff

Namasha Schelling

Namasha was hired in February 2011 as the Project Coordinator and Staff Assistant to Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian in the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Program. Before coming to Harvard, she was an Environmental Health Organizer at Clean Water Action. She graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a Bachelors in Science in 2006 and received a Masters from Harvard Extension in Environmental Management in 2010.

 

Past Team Members

Postdoctoral Positions

Renata Micha                    Jyrki Virtanen                       Kyong Park

Jason Wu                          Fumiaki Imamura

Students/Trainees

Martin Lajous                    Deirdre Banel                        Goodarz Danaei

Shadi Kalantarian             Anahita Ghorbani                  Pattra Wirojratana

Mayuree Rao                    Divay Chandra                       Sarah Wallace

Statisticians

Hongyan Huang

Clinical Trial Support Staff

Sarah Lynn King               Kristen Mills