Postdoctoral Research Associate(s)
Jiawen Liao is the post-doctoral fellow working in Dr. Zhanghua Chen research group, Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California. He obtained PhD in Environmental Health Sciences at Emory University in 2020 with training in air pollution exposure assessment and environmental epidemiology. At USC, he will work on analyzing maternal and child health effects of air pollution exposure in related epidemiological studies. I will also apply various analytical tools to integrate ‘exposome’ with omics data, in order to understand environmental factors for complex diseases.
Research Coordinator / Biostatistician(s)
Chenyu Qiu majored in Biostatistics and achieved master’s degree from University of Southern California in 2020. In the fall of 2019, Chenyu joined Dr. Zhanghua Chen’s team exploring the association of targeted metabolites and diet with obesity and insulin resistance in young adults. At present, she is a senior research coordinator continuing to investigate the association of air pollutants with metabolomic features, and the effects of metabolomic features on altering newborn’s birth weight.
Current Student(s)
Citlalin Lopez-Torres is a first year Master of Public Health Student at the Department of Preventive Medicine at USC. As a Double Trojan, she graduated with an undergraduate degree in Human Biology in 2020. Citlalin is interested in learning about the impacts of social determinants of health, especially environmental health, within low income communities of color. She is also passionate about how these issues can be alleviated through health policy work. As a SoCal native, Citlalin loves to spend time at the beach or spend time indoors watching movies.
Suzan Sargsyan is an undergraduate student at the University of Southern California majoring in human biology. She is also enrolled in the pre-med degree track. Suzan jointed Dr. Zhanghua Chen’s laboratory to conduct literature review in air pollution, metabolomics and autism studies.
Muhammad Rayeed Islam is an undergraduate student at the University of Southern California majoring in Economics/Mathematics. He is passionate about applying statistical skills to environmental health research. He worked with Dr. Chen in the longitudinal studies of gestation diabetes women to investigate the environmental chemical exposure effect on diabetes development.
Recent Alumni
Tingyu Yang is a Statistician working on the Maternal and Developmental Risks from Environmental and Social Stressors (MADRES) project. She graduated with master’s degree in Biostatistics from USC and her master thesis “Associations between Perfluoroalkyl Substances Exposure and Metabolic Pathways in Youth” was mentored by Dr. Chen.
Xin Li was a former master student in biostatistics at USC. She completed her master’s thesis with Dr. Chen’s support focusing on linking air pollution to integrative gene and metabolites networks in young adults with asthma. Currently, Xin is a research associate of Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry at USC.
