Our Team



    

Brandon Marshall

Principal Investigator

Brandon is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health. He received a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia. During his doctoral training, he also worked at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. In 2011, he completed postdoctoral training at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Broadly, his research focuses on HIV/AIDS, substance use epidemiology, and the social, environmental, and structural determinants of health of urban populations.



Mark Lurie

Associate Professor of Epidemiology

Mark Lurie, PhD, is an infectious disease epidemiologist working on HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, silicosis and tuberculosis in sub-Saharan Africa. His current work focuses on training the next generation of social scientists in South Africa able to impact the HIV epidemic. Although he leads many projects outside of the Marshall Research Group, he offers the team valuable insight and recommendations throughout our many projects.



          

William Goedel

Assistant Professor (Research) of Epidemiology

Will is an Assistant Professor (Research) of Epidemiology in the Brown University School of Public Health. Broadly, his research aims to contribute to the goal of reducing the number of new HIV infections in the United States by 90% by 2030 as part of the Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative. His current work focuses on using agent-based modeling to assess implementation strategies to increase equity in pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) expansion and introduction of novel biomedical HIV prevention methods like long-acting injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis (LAI-PrEP) and HIV vaccines among gay and bisexual men.



 

Sam Bessey

Research Programmer/Analyst

Sam is a research programmer at the People, Place, and Health Collective (PPHC). They manage the Collective’s epidemiological modeling projects, including TITAN. In addition, Sam guides PPHC members through coding best practices and scientific transparency. They lead initiatives toward open science and open-source software, putting their values of collaboration into practice.





Mary McGrath

Lead Research Software Engineer

Mary is a Lead Research Software Engineer at Brown University’s Center for Computation and Visualization. She works with researchers to provide scientific and technical computing expertise, combined with best practices, to advance computational research. As a member of the TITAN team, she works on expanding the capabilities of the model with a focus on reliability, reproducibility, and performance. Prior to coming to Brown, she was a Health & Public Service Analytics Consultant working with Health and Human Services Agencies, Health Providers, and Health Insurers to solve a variety of their data-related problems. She received her B.S. in Engineering Science from Smith College and M.S. in Computer Science from Brown.



  

Carolyn Park

Data Analyst

Carolyn is a Data Analyst at the Centers for Epidemiology and Environmental Health at Brown University. She provides project management and analytic support for students and collaborators utilizing the TITAN model. She graduated from Yale School of Public Health with an MPH in infectious disease epidemiology. Throughout her time at Yale, she was able to gain experience at the state and local health departments, where she further developed her interests in community health research, substance use epidemiology, drug resistance and stewardship, and healthcare-associated infections.



      

Jesse Yedinak

Project Director

Jesse is the Project Director at the Center for Population Health and Clinical Epidemiology at Brown University, where she directs research projects related to substance use among young adults, opioid overdose, and HIV prevention. She helps the team by managing the grants that fund our TITAN model research and supervising the staff and students.



   

Brendan Jacka

Investigator (Research) of Epidemiology

Brendan is an Investigator at the Center for Population Health and Clinical Epidemiology at Brown University. He received his PhD in molecular epidemiology from the Kirby Institute at UNSW Sydney in 2015. Since then, Brendan has completed postdoctoral training at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC), UNSW Sydney and the Research Centre of the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal. His research interests are centered around the individual, social, and structural determinants of health for people who use drugs, including the intersection of HIV and hepatitis C virus.



        

Xiao Zang

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Xiao Zang, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Epidemiology at Brown University. He received doctoral training from the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University in Canada where he also worked at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. He has an academic background in engineering for his bachelor and master’s degrees. Xiao’s primary research interests are related to mathematical modelling and cost-effectiveness analysis, with a special focus on the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS and opioid overdose death.



        

Maxwell Krieger

Data Manager

Max is a Data Manager at the Center for Population Health and Clinical Epidemiology at Brown University. He supports the modelling team with website design, creating interactive Tableaus, and conducting literature reviews. He has a strong interest in substance use, overdose prevention, and HIV prevention in Rhode Island.

Students on the Team

 

Jason Gantenberg

Doctoral Candidate

Jason is a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology at Brown University. His main interests involve infectious disease epidemiology in general and agent-based modelling. He hopes to apply complex systems concepts and thinking to further the study of disease transmission in populations.

Focus: HIV/AIDs, STDs, Agent-Based Modelling
Education: MPH, Loyola University Chicago; MA, DePaul University



      

Alexandria Macmadu

Doctoral Candidate

Alex is a second-year PhD student in the in the Department of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health. Her primary research interests relate to opioid use disorder and overdose prevention. She hopes to one day develop a research program that examines the distribution and determinants of opioid-related harms and interventions to reduce these harms.

Focus: Opioid-related harms, Harm reduction
Education: Brown University School of Public Health





Collaborators

 

Alumni