Core Team
Based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the SDOH & Place Project team is led by Dr. Marynia Kolak's Healthy Regions & Policies (HeRoP) Lab in the Department of Geography & GIScience, and by Dr. ChengXiang Zhai's team at the Department of Computer Science. The project is also made possible through collaboration with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).
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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Adam Cox
Software Engineer & Co-Investigator
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 & Co-Investigator
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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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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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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Sara Lambert
Sr. Research Software Engineer
Sara graduated from UIUC with a BS in Computer Engineering and works at NCSA as a Senior Research Software Engineer...
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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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Mahjabin Kabir Adrita, MS
Graduate Research Assistant
Adrita’s research focuses on engaging marginalized communities and addressing health challenges through comprehensive fieldwork and mixed-method approaches...
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Camrin G., MA
Graduate Research Assistant
Camrin has a BA and MA in urban planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign...
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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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Past Team Members
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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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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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.
