2025 Summer Fellows

Alise Mendoza is an MS Biostatistics student in the School of Public Health with experience in statistical modeling. She worked closely with MDH’s Measles Team to conceptualize and build a dashboard that maps vaccine coverage, historic measles cases, and sociodemographic data for schools and daycares across Minnesota.

Abigail Sheila Morara joined us as an undergraduate fellow through UMN’s Pathways to Research Program. She is planning to double major in Psychology and Statistical Practice. She worked alongside MADMC’s team to analyze latent tuberculosis care cascades in Minnesota using EHR data. She also developed skills in decision analytic modeling on a self-selected project related to psychosis.

Brent Strong, a PhD candidate for Biostatistics in the School of Public Health with experience in both Bayesian methods and mathematical modeling. Brent worked with MDH and the California Department of Public Health to adapt an existing congenital syphilis model to fit Minnesota and expanded the model to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of prevention interventions.

Sophie Wiitala is an MPH Public Health Data Science student in the School of Public Health and student worker at MDH. She worked with MDH and the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services to analyze patterns of healthcare utilization for patients with active tuberculosis using EHR data.

Chris Wojan is a PhD candidate for Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior in the College of Biological Sciences. He worked with MDH to build a user-interactive tool for public health jurisdictions across the U.S. to use for scenario planning early on in novel disease outbreaks.

2024 Summer Fellows

Kenneth Chen is an undergraduate at Harvard University. He worked with MDH’s Influenza Team and MADMC’s Geospatial Team to deploy geospatial cluster detection methods using SatScan software to identify influenza hotspots across Minnesota.