Dear Members of the PHDS Community,

Happy Summer! In this issue of the PHDS Newsletter, we provide a recap of our spring semester events, spotlight a PHDS faculty affiliate, and highlight several publications from our PHDS community. We hope you’re enjoying the summer, and we look forward to seeing you in the fall!

Debbie Cheng
Professor of Biostatistics
Director, Population Health Data Science Program

Spring 2024 Highlights

In this edition of the Population Health Data Science Newsletter, we take a look back at the Spring 2024 semester.

Faculty Spotlight: Marcia Pescador Jimenez, PhD, MS, MS

In this issue, we spotlight Dr. Marcia Pescador Jimenez, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health. 

Featured Publications

• Yu K, Sun L, Chen J, Reynolds M, Chaudhary T, Batmanghelich K. DrasCLR: a self-supervised framework of learning disease-related and anatomy-specific representation for 3D lung CT images. Med Image Anal. 2024 Feb;92:103062. PMCID: PMC10872608.
• Przytycki PF. Uncovering the genetic circuits that drive diseases. Nat Comput Sci. 2023 Jul;3(7):584-585. PMID: 38177750.
• Toraif N, Gondal N, Paudel P, Frisellaa A. From colorblind to systemic racism: emergence of a rhetorical shift in higher education discourse in response to the murder of George Floyd. PLoS One. 2023 Aug 3;18(8):e0289545. PMCID: PMC10399877.
• Huggins JH, Miller JW. Reproducible model selection using bagged posteriors. Bayesian Anal. 2023 Mar;18(1):79-104. PMCID: PMC9838736.
• Khan MM, Frustino J, Villa A, Nguyen BC, Woo SB, Johnson WE, Varelas X, Kukuruzinska M, Monti S. Total RNA sequencing reveals gene expression and microbial alterations shared by oral pre-malignant lesions and cancer. Hum Genomics. 2023 Aug 4;17(1):72. PMCID: PMC10403884.
• Lopez VK, Cramer EY, Pagano R, Drake JM, O’Dea EB, Adee M, Ayer T, Chhatwal J, Dalgic OO, Ladd MA, Linas BP, Mueller PP, Xiao J, Bracher J, Castro Rivadeneira AJ, Gerding A, Gneiting T, Huang Y, Jayawardena D, Kanji AH, Le K, Mühlemann A, Niemi J, Ray EL, Stark A, Wang Y, Wattanachit N, Zorn MW, Pei S, Shaman J, Yamana TK, Tarasewicz SR, Wilson DJ, Baccam S, Gurung H, Stage S, Suchoski B, Gao L, Gu Z, Kim M, Li X, Wang G, Wang L, Wang Y, Yu S, Gardner L, Jindal S, Marshall M, Nixon K, Dent J, Hill AL, Kaminsky J, Lee EC, Lemaitre JC, Lessler J, Smith CP, Truelove S, Kinsey M, Mullany LC, Rainwater-Lovett K, Shin L, Tallaksen K, Wilson S, Karlen D, Castro L, Fairchild G, Michaud I, Osthus D, Bian J, Cao W, Gao Z, Lavista Ferres J, Li C, Liu TY, Xie X, Zhang S, Zheng S, Chinazzi M, Davis JT, Mu K, Pastore Y Piontti A, Vespignani A, Xiong X, Walraven R, Chen J, Gu Q, Wang L, Xu P, Zhang W, Zou D, Gibson GC, Sheldon D, Srivastava A, Adiga A, Hurt B, Kaur G, Lewis B, Marathe M, Peddireddy AS, Porebski P, Venkatramanan S, Wang L, Prasad PV, Walker JW, Webber AE, Slayton RB, Biggerstaff M, Reich NG, Johansson MA. Challenges of COVID-19 case forecasting in the US, 2020-2021. PLoS Comput Biol. 2024 May 6;20(5):e1011200. PMCID: PMC11098513.
• Zheng Y, Conrad RD, Green EJ, Burks EJ, Betke M, Beane JE, Kolachalama VB. Graph attention-based fusion of pathology images and gene expression for prediction of cancer survival. IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2024 Apr 8;PP. PMID: 38587959.
• Christine PJ, Lodi S, Hsu HE, Bovell-Ammon B, Yan S, Bernson D, Novo P, Lee JD, Rotrosen J, Liebschutz J, Walley AY, Larochelle MR. Target trial emulation for comparative effectiveness research with observational data: promise and challenges for studying medications for opioid use disorder. Addiction. 2024 Jul;119(7):1313-1321. PMCID: PMC11156545.
• Yamkovoy K, Patil P, Dunn D, Erdman E, Bernson D, Swathi PA, Nall SK, Zhang Y, Wang J, Brinkley-Rubinstein L, LeMasters KH, White LF, Barocas JA. Using decision tree models and comprehensive statewide data to predict opioid overdoses following prison release. Ann Epidemiol. 2024 Jun;94:81-90. PMCID: PMC11117432.
• Mohammed S, Kurtek S, Bharath K, Rao A, Baladandayuthapani V. Tumor radiogenomics in gliomas with Bayesian layered variable selection. Med Image Anal. 2023 Dec;90:102964. PMCID: PMC10653647.
• He Y, Martinez L, Ge Y, Feng Y, Chen Y, Tan J, Westbrook A, Li C, Cheng W, Ling F, Cheng H, Wu S, Zhong W, Handel A, Huang H, Sun J, Shen Y. Social mixing and network characteristics of COVID-19 patients before and after widespread interventions: a population-based study. Epidemiol Infect. 2023 Aug 14;151:1-38. PMCID: PMC10540215.
• Poulson M, Jay J, Kenzik K, Torres C, Sanchez SE, Saillant N, Holena D, Galea S, Scantling D. Death by the minute: inequities in trauma care for victims of firearm violence. J Trauma Acute Care Surg. 2024 Apr 1;96(4):589-595. PMCID: PMC10978261.
• Babbs G, Weber SE, Abdalla SM, Cesare N, Nsoesie EO. Use of machine learning methods to understand discussions of female genital mutilation/cutting on social media. PLOS Glob Public Health. 2023 Jul 25;3(7):e0000878. PMCID: PMC10368253.
• Shioda K, Brouwer AF, Lamar F, Mucache HN, Levy K, Freeman MC. Opportunities to interrupt transmission of enteropathogens of poultry origin in Maputo, Mozambique: a transmission model analysis. Environ Health Perspect. 2023 Nov;131(11):117004. PMCID: PMC10619637.
• Mandal S, Rajiva A, Kloog I, Menon JS, Lane KJ, Amini H, Walia GK, Dixit S, Nori-Sarma A, Dutta A, Sharma P, Jaganathan S, Madhipatla KK, Wellenius GA, de Bont J, Venkataraman C, Prabhakaran D, Prabhakaran P, Ljungman P, Schwartz J. Nationwide estimation of daily ambient PM2.5 from 2008 to 2020 at 1 km2 in India using an ensemble approach. PNAS Nexus. 2024 Feb 27;3(3):pgae088. PMCID: PMC10919890.

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