About
The SDOH & Place Project provides access to spatially indexed and curated databases, specifically designed for conducting health equity research. We will achieve this goal by:
- Developing and disseminating a toolkit on integrating User-Centered Design principles in place-based web applications.
- Creating an innovative product for place-based data discovery to link data needed for app development and related neighborhood health data exploration.
Our mission is to make the process of building web applications that support community health by being more accessible, enjoyable, and empowering.
Core Team
Our team is based out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign via Dr. Kolak's Healthy Regions & Policies (HEROP) Lab at the Department of Geography & GIScience, and Dr. Zhai's team at the Department of Computer Science.
This project is funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Marynia Kolak
Principal Investigator
Marynia is a health geographer & spatial data scientist integrating a socio-ecological view of health, geographic data science, and a human-centered design approach to investigate regional and ...
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ChengXiang Zhai
Co-Investigator
Dr. ChengXiang Zhai is a Donald Biggar Willett Professor in Engineering of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is also affiliated ...
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José Alavez
Postdoctoral Scholar
José holds a PhD in Geography from Concordia University (Montreal). His research integrates diverse contemporary mapping theories and practices to gain insights into human experiences and narratives ...
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Kamaria Barronville
Instructional Designer
Kamaria is pursuing her doctoral degree in Urban Educational Leadership at Morgan State University. Drawing on her interdisciplinary expertise, Kamaria focuses on bridging the gap ...
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Shubham Kumar
Product Designer
Shubham is a Product Designer at HeRoP with a passion for collaborating with diverse teams to achieve design goals. Prior to his role at the lab, he was improving accessibility in education ...
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Marc Astacio-Palmer
Research Coordinator
Marc received his Master of Science in Experimental Psychology from Nova Southeastern University. His previous work was in the area of cognitive psychology, specifically, on attention and memory ...
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Mandela Gadri
PhD Student
Ph.D. student Mandela Gadri has a BS in urban planning from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, and an MS in community and regional planning from Iowa State University ...
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Catherine Discenza
Graduate Research Assistant
Catherine recently graduated from the University of Florida with a BS in Geography with a specialization in Medical Geography in Global Health. Their research interests lie at the intersection of place, health ...
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Andre Vines
Graphic Designer
Andre is a self employed branding designer and artist from Maryland who had a deep interest in the field as early as middle school. He is passionate about creating designs that are visually appealing yet ...
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Adam Cox
Software Engineer
Adam is a geospatial developer with a background in GIS and archaeology, and a passion for open source software. Originally from southwestern Wisconsin, he lives in New Orleans, Louisiana ...
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Pengyin Shan
Software Engineer
Pengyin is a passionate programmer with multiple years of full-stack expertise, serving large higher-education institutions. Her main focus is to develop accessible web applications to virtualize ...
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Past Team Members
Mukesh Chugani
Software Engineer
Mukesh received his Master of Computer Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and his Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science from Amrita University ...
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Ashwin Patil
Research Assistant
Ashwin is a Computer Science graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduating in Dec’23. He worked as a Graduate Research Assistant advised by Prof. ChengXiang Zhai ...
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Spring 2023 research assistants supporting Place metadata harmonization and other activites included Elaina Katz, Sarthak Joshi, Augustyn Crane, and Jorge Corral.
The SDOH & Place Project's mission is to unravel the application design process essential for developing web applications centered on neighborhood health.
