Before starting graduate school, I worked as a science journalist for over a decade, covering health and science stories for outlets including Science, Nature, the Washington Post, Wired, and Mother Jones. A documentary I produced for CNN on how problematic forensic science methods contributed to wrongful convictions won the 2006 Livingston Award.
In my reporting, scientific controversies often involved questions about how data was analyzed, and I spent a lot of time calling experts to better understand the issues. Eventually, I decided I wanted to understand data analysis better myself, and I went back to school for an MPH. That turned out to be a gateway drug: I realized how much more I wanted to learn and stayed for a PhD.
In my first position after graduate school, at Carnegie Mellon University, I fell in love with teaching, using my experience communication to develop strategies to help students engage with challenging technical material. I also learned to draw on my personal experience as a young stepmother and non-traditional graduate student, especially in supporting students facing challenges. At the University of Washington, I've been able to bring my interests full circle and return to public health. I'm honored to teach and work with students who are the future of the field.
Recently, I served as a faculty lead for the COVID-19 Trends & Impact Survey, which collected an average of 15,000 responses per day from April 2020-June 2022 and won the Policy Impact Award and the Warren J Mitofsky Innovators Award from the American Association for Public Opinion Research, and as a co-director of the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence, a multi-university NIST Center of Excellence.
Things I can't stop thinking about: disparities in health outcomes and health care access, the relationship between housing and health (and how housing became a scarce resource!), and statistical issues related to criminal justice.
Education
University of California, Santa Cruz
B.A., Biology
University of California, Berkeley
M.P.H., Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Ph.D., Biostatistics