Since May, 18 new affiliates, representing 12 different departments, joined the Center’s ranks. CDHA also welcomed a new NIA postdoctoral fellow, Katie Jajtner, who came to Madison after completing her doctoral work at Fordham University.
Naoki Aizawa is an assistant professor of economics specializing in applied microeconomics. His current research focuses on insurance markets and interactions between social insurance and the labor market. Aizawa recent article, “Advertising and Risk Selection in Health Insurance Markets,” appeared in the American Economic Review in March.
Shaneda Warren Andersen is an assistant professor of population health sciences who joined the UW faculty this fall. Her research focuses on how modifiable risk factors and genetic variants influence the molecular aspects of cancer risks.
Hessam Bavafa, assistant professor of operations and information management, joined the Wisconsin School of Business in 2014 after completing his doctoral work at Wharton. Bavafa’s research applies stochastic optimization models and econometric analysis to data from large healthcare systems.
Daniel Bauer joined the Wisconsin School of business faculty in June 2018 as an associate professor in Department of Risk and Insurance department and the Hickman-Larson Chair in Actuarial Science. His research interests are at the interface of actuarial science, quantitative finance, and insurance economics.
Marguerite Burns is a health services researcher whose work concerns the interplay between public health insurance design, healthcare policy, and healthcare outcomes for vulnerable populations. Burns is an assistant professor in the population health sciences department and from 2011 to 2017 she led a K01 project, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, on mental health economics and policy.
Chris Coe is a psychology professor whose research concerns mind/body relationships and nature/nurture issues that affect health and vulnerability to illness. Studies led by Coe take a life-span perspective and range in focus from pregnancy and early infancy to end of life.
Dorothy Edwards is a professor in the School of Education with appointments in medicine and neurology at the School of Medicine and Public Health. Edwards’ research examines the effects of stroke and Alzheimer’s on function, community participation, and quality of life.
Hyunseung Kang is an assistant professor in the statistics department. Kang’s research focuses on developing theory and methods to analyze causal relationships in large observational data by leveraging instrumental variables, econometrics, high dimensional inference, and causal inference. Kang is particularly interested in application to genetics, epidemiology, health policy research, and economics.
Amy Kind is an associate professor at the School of Medicine and Public Health, founding director of the Department of Medicine Health Services and Care Research Program, and associate director, clinical, for the Madison Veterans Affairs Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center. Kind’s work aims to develop novel ways to eliminate health disparities through innovative research in health outcomes, health policy, and clinical programs.
Jooyoung Kong, assistant professor in the School of Social Work, conducts research focused on the effects that adverse childhood experiences have on later-life health and well-being.
Kristin Litzelman is an assistant professor of human development and family studies whose research interests focus on how illness impacts families, primarily through the lens of family caregiving. Her work explores improving quality of life and well-being of caregivers, how caregiver well-being influences the care recipient and others in the family, and the long-term financial and health consequences of caregiving.
Qiongshi Lu’s research focuses on developing statistical and computational methods to functionally annotate the human genome and dissect the genetic architecture of complex human diseases. Lu is an assistant professor in the Department of Biostatistics & Medical Informatics. He received his PhD in biostatistics from Yale in 2017.
Gwyn Pauley is a visiting assistant professor in economics with research interests in health economics and policy, labor economics, and applied microeconomics. From 2016 to 2017, she was the primary investigator on the project “Childhood Circumstances and Life Course Outcomes: Potential Impacts of Closing Gaps in Childhood Conditions” funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA).
Justin Sydnor is the Leslie P. Schultz Professor in Risk Management and Insurance and an associate professor of risk and insurance in the Wisconsin School of Business. His areas of interest include psychology and economics, applied microeconomics, (behavioral) industrial organization, insurance markets, and risk and decision making.
Zhengzheng Tang is an assistant professor in the Department of Biostatistics & Medical Informatics and a Resident Discovery Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. She works to develop statistical methods and computations tools for high-throughput omics data. Her research also investigates complex biological systems, machine learning, the microbiome, and precision medicine.
Geoffrey Wallace, associate professor of public affairs, studies labor economics, the economics of marriage and the family, and policy issues relating to poverty. His current projects examine the effects of changing economic conditions on living arrangements among young people, the effects of competition on educational outcomes, and issues of child support enforcement.
Yang Wang is an assistant professor of public affairs. Her primary research interests are applied microeconomics, health economics, and applied econometrics. Wang’s research has appeared in several high-profile publications, including the American Economics Journal: Applied Economics, the International Economic Review, and Health Economics.
David Weimer is the Edwin W. Witte Professor of Political Economy. His research focuses broadly on policy craft and institutional design, with publications appearing in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Health Economics, and the Journal of Health, Politics, Policy and Law, among others.
Katie Jajtner is the new CDHA postdoctoral fellow supported by the Center’s T32 training grant from the NIA. Jajtner’s research focuses on applied microeconomics, inequality, intergenerational mobility, health and disability, and labor economics. She received her PhD in economics from Fordham University in 2018.