About

Amanda Ajrouche is the Study Coordinator, supporting Dr. Margaret Hicken’s Vigilance and Sleep Study. Amanda holds a MSW from the University of Michigan School of Social Work, and was previously a Program Coordinator at ACCESS- the largest Arab American nonprofit in the United States. At ACCESS, she worked on shifting social and cultural norms, as well as fighting to reduce the prevalence of domestic violence and sexual assault through community collaborations. She hopes to pursue a PhD in psychology, where she can develop research practices that can support Arab American communities. In her free time, Amanda enjoys pretending to be a foodie, reading, and consuming large amounts of coffee.

Ben Culp is a research assistant for Dr. Margaret Hicken’s WorkLife Study. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience from the University of Michigan in 2023. Ben is particularly interested in understanding health outcomes.

Karis Hawkins is a first year graduate student in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health MPH program on the General Epidemiology track. She earned her B.S. in May 2024 from the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Public Health Sciences. She is interested in social epidemiology, examining the effects of social factors on health and research related to the intersection of social contexts and health. In her spare time, she enjoys cooking and trying out new recipes. Her specialty is baking.

Through her entire research program, Margaret Hicken is committed to clarifying the social causes and biological mechanisms underlying population patterns in health. The major hallmark of her research is the integration of scientific knowledge from across disciplines, as this transdisciplinary approach allows for creative and innovative insights into the root drivers of these patterns. She has built, from the ground up, a research program around her conceptual framework that integrates humanist and social science scholarship on US society to the biological literature on stress biology, molecular mechanisms, and health. For example, her research suggests that social exposures amplify the health impact of environmental exposures, providing important evidence that multiple features of American society operate together to drive population health patterns.

Xinyu Lin is currently pursuing her graduate studies at MPSDS. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Hohai University and has a keen interest in data science. In her free time, she enjoys engaging in volunteer activities related to environmental protection and caring for small animals.

Rachel Oeffner is a Research Administrator Lead in the Landscapes of Population Health. In her role she assists with managing all pre-award research activities, financials, HR transactions, restricted project data contracts, IRB’s, and other program needs. She received her BS from Bowling Green State University and MBA from Spring Arbor University.

Konstantinos Papaefthymiou joined Social Environment and Health as a data project manager, having worked as a data curator at ICPSR and a research affiliate at USC CREATE prior. He holds a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Southern California and has contributed to research on topics including disaster resilience and environmental economics.

Dominique Sylvers is a doctoral student in the department of Health Behavior and Health Education (HBHE) at the School of Public Health. She received her Master’s of Public Health from HBHE in 2017, after which, she was involved with various aspects of chronic disease intervention research. As a pre-doctoral trainee at ISR, in both Social Environment and Health (SEH) and the Population Studies Center (PSC), her research centers around examining social factors for their role in health and aging differences. More specifically, she’s studied the influence of the social environment via specific neighborhood and regional contexts and their relationship to differential outcomes in cognitive aging and dementia care-giving. Dominique’s dissertation work involves clarifying the role of educational context as contributing to differences in biological aging using DNA Methylation.

Abigail Weigel is a Wisconsin native who has joined the LPH program as an Administrative Assistant Senior, where she assists the program with broad based administrative duties in support of the overall research portfolio. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point with a BS in Wildlife Ecology in 2014. Before joining the University, she gained administrative experiences in the wildlife, equine and veterinary medicine fields. In her spare time she enjoys adventuring with her horse Kozy and her Labrador Retriever Nash.

Victoria is an epidemiologist and project manager with Dr. Nadia Abuelezam’s PROWESS research group at Boston College. She received her MPH from the University of Michigan, working with Drs. Bakulski and Hicken to investigate residential context and epigenetic aging.

Jiaqi Gao is a  Ph.D. student in the department of epidemiology. She received her MPH in epidemiology degree at the University of Michigan, School of Public Health. Her primary research interests lie in exploring the risk factor of environmental air pollution on various outcomes.

Feiran Ge is a first-year student in the Michigan Program of Survey and Data Science. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Industrial & Organizational Psychology from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. Her research interests focus on work-related stress and how organizational management practices influence employee behavior in the workplace.

Dr. Courtney L. McCluney (she/her) is an award winning educator, researcher, consultant, and advisor reimagining ways to foster wellness in the workplace. Trained as a social scientist, her work is featured in several peer reviewed academic publications and she is a contributing writer to Forbes and the Harvard Business Review. Dr. McCluney is an assistant professor in the ILR School at Cornell University. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, earned her PhD in Psychology at the University of Michigan and BA in Psychology and Interpersonal/Organizational Communications at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a former Research Fellow at Catalyst, Inc. and previously served as an AmeriCorps Social Impact Fellow. Dr. McCluney aims to disrupt organizational processes and norms in society. Learn more about her work at her website.

Neil J. Nakkash is a research assistant on Dr. Margaret Hicken’s WorkLife Study. A graduate of the University of Michigan Ford School of Public Policy, Neil is interested in how national and global policies impact population health. His long-term goals include pursuing a career that engages his interests in medicine and public health. In his free time, Neil enjoys hiking and writing book reviews on Goodreads.

Frida Salgado was a research assistant on Dr. Margaret Hicken’s WorkLife Study. She earned her B.A. in Economics and Latino/a Studies from the University of Michigan. Frida’s research interests include the effects of social factors on health, as well as immigration and Chicano/a/x studies.