Abhishek Aggarwal, Ph.D. (he/him) is a postdoctoral research associate with the Center for Disease Risk and Exacerbation (CADRE) at Brown University School of Public Health. He completed his Ph.D. in Health Behavior, Education, and Promotion from the University of South Carolina. He works at the intersection of HIV prevention behaviors and substance use among vulnerable groups. He aims to leverage real-time data-capturing techniques to investigate the dynamics of socio-ecological determinants of substance use, as well as develop and evaluate digital interventions that provide contextualized and timely support.

Dr. Sreeram Anantharaman is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Biostatistics. Sreeram obtained his Ph.D. degree in Statistics at University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut in August 2024, under the supervision of Professor Nalini Ravishanker. Previously, he obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in statistics at Loyola College, Chennai, India. His research revolves around modeling irregular high-frequency financial time series using Bayesian hierarchical models. 

Dr. Anantharaman will be working with Joseph Hogan, Carole and Lawrence Sirovich Professor of Public Health, Professor and Chair of Biostatistics on developing methods for clinical decision support systems for a large HIV care program in Kenya, development and application of novel methods of causal inference for complex trial designs, and developing models for infectious disease surveillance in Rhode Island. 

Dr. Andrews obtained her Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Chicago (Chicago, IL), May 2025, under the supervision of Professor Mesrob I. Ohannessian. She is a proud graduate of the Spelman College Dual Degree Engineering Program, earning a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Spelman College (Atlanta, GA) and a Bachelor of Computer Engineering from Auburn University (Auburn, AL). 

Her interdisciplinary research revolves around the design, implementation, and evaluation of decision-making tools— such as machine learning models and human-robot interaction algorithms — to advance algorithmic justice. Dr. Andrews’ work is centered on methods to promote more accurate considerations of marginalized individuals through proper visibility, ensuring justice-oriented access to fair outcomes with primary applications in real-world settings (e.g., healthcare, education, public policy). She will be working with Rebecca Hubbard, Ph.D., the Carl Kawaja and Wendy Holcombe Professor of Public Health, Professor of Biostatistics and Data Science. 

Dr. Lia Antico creates and evaluates interventions based on mindfulness aimed at reducing burnout and enhancing resilience and flourishing at work. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Mindfulness Center at Brown University, School of Public Health. Her research investigates the behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying various states of mind and body, focusing specifically on burnout and anxiety. She seeks to enhance understanding of how mindfulness-based training can influence these states and develop effective and evidence-based strategies for preventing or alleviating burnout and fostering professional well-being, especially among healthcare professionals.

Dr. Antico is also a qualified teacher of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program and leads mindfulness meditations in both secular and spiritual contexts, in collaboration with the Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life at Brown University, to cultivate wisdom, curiosity, and compassion.

In 2020, she obtained a Ph.D. in Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, where her research focused on social exclusion and empathy for pain.

Dr. Mariel Bello is a Postdoctoral Research Associate working with Drs. Rachel Cassidy and Suzanne Colby in the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University School of Public Health. She earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Science with an emphasis in quantitative methods from the University of Southern California and her Clinical Psychology Predoctoral Internship at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Dr. Bello has demonstrated a strong commitment to conducting substance use research focused on health equity and minority health since 2013. As a clinical psychologist and addiction scientist, her program of research has focused on three lines of research: 1) understanding how structural and social-contextual factors (e.g., financial stress) synergistically interact with the psychopharmacological effects of smoking to disproportionately enhance vulnerability to substance use in disparate groups; 2) examining social-contextual and structural determinants of health and substance use in youth and young adults; and 3) investigating the impact of mental health symptomatology on tobacco withdrawal symptoms in diverse groups who smoke. Utilizing human laboratory-based, behavioral pharmacology methods, she hopes that findings from her work contribute to informing policy, prevention, and intervention efforts aimed to reduce the public health burden of substance use in disadvantaged, minority groups. Currently, Dr. Bello’s NIDA-funded K99/R00 grant provides her support to develop expertise in mixed methods approaches and community engagement to investigate the impact of social and contextual stressors (e.g., financial stress) on smoking cessation mechanisms and lapse risk among socioeconomically disadvantaged young adults who smoke cigarettes daily.

Jeung Hyun Kim is a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research at Brown University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of aging and the family life course, as it pertains to the psychological and cognitive well-being of older immigrants and their ethnic communities. Kim’s work offers comparative perspectives on race and ethnicity to understand the sociocultural origins of health inequality. Currently, she is investigating the migration of Puerto Rican older Medicare beneficiaries who suffer from dementia and other chronic diseases. Kim developed her research interests from her master’s thesis in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge where she shed light on the transnational movement of migrants from the less developed countries to the U.S. Building on the topic, she completed her doctoral research in the Department of Sociology at Syracuse University.

William (Bill) Nardi holds an Sc.M. and Ph.D. from Brown University. His postdoctoral research appointment is in the department of Behavioral and Social Sciences and the Mindfulness Center. He is interested in patient-oriented research for the development of comprehensive, integrative treatments for comorbid substance use and anxiety. Specifically, his work focuses on designing and testing mobile health applications as adjunctive therapies to primary substance use treatments utilizing mixed methods research. 

Dr. Jue Yang is a postdoctoral research associate in the Social EPI Lab at the Brown University School of Public Health's Center for Health Promotion and Health Equity. She received a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Georgia and M.A. in Geography from the University of Florida. Her research focuses on associating, understanding, and measuring environment and children's health. Jue is also interested in employing spatial analysis methods to tackle various health-related issues, such as healthcare accessibility; health crisis affecting human mobility; etc. In the Social EPI Lab, she focuses on studying how exposure to green spaces influences children's sleep and mental health using geographical data.

Dr. Dongliang Zhang is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Biostatistics. He obtained his Ph.D. in Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland in May 2024, under the supervision of Professor Martin Lindquist. Previously, he obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics and statistics at McGill University, Montréal, Québec, under the joint supervision of Professors Masoud Asgharian and Abbas Khalili. His research revolves around methodological development to identify influential observations on variable selection under the high-dimensional settings, with application to neuroimaging and physical activity datasets. At Brown, Dongliang will be working with Professor Ani Eloyan, Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Biostatistics on modeling Positron Emission Tomography imaging data to understand brain changes related to Alzheimer’s disease. In his spare time, Dongliang enjoys working out at the gym and making airplane or marine models. He is a fan of the Montréal Canadiens.