Daniel Soto, Ed.D. MPH

Project Director

danielws@usc.edu

Daniel W. Soto, Ed.D, MPH, is an assistant professor at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine. He directs the Center for Population Health (CPH). He has over 20 years of population-based health behavior research experience and seven years of curriculum design and teaching experience with graduate and undergraduate programs in public health. Dr. Soto has led research and evaluation efforts on several longitudinal and cross-sectional studies of acculturation, mental health, diabetes prevention, substance use, addressing health disparities, preventing the spread of infectious disease, and tobacco control. Most recently, Dr. Soto led a team of 20+ graduate students to work on preventing the spread of COVID-19 in K-12 schools in Los Angeles County. He has established effective community engagement, recruitment, and retention methods for populations across the United States. Additionally, Dr. Soto has published over 100 manuscripts on acculturation, cultural stress, nicotine addiction, and substance use prevention in adolescents and young adults.

Jennifer Unger, Ph.D.

Faculty Principal Investigator

unger@usc.edu

Jennifer B. Unger, Ph.D. is a Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. Her research focuses on the psychological, social, and cultural influences on health-risk and health-protective behaviors among diverse populations. She and her colleagues have conducted several longitudinal studies of acculturation, cultural stress, and substance use among Hispanic adolescents, highlighting the role of discrimination in health-risk behaviors. Her research also has examined cultural influences on tobacco use among American Indian adolescents, Chinese adolescents, and African American adults. She is currently conducting a study of the association between proximity to cannabis retailers and cannabis use among adolescents. She has collaborated on the design and evaluation of fotonovelas and telenovelas about secondhand smoke exposure in multiunit housing; diabetes; asthma; immunization; and kidney transplantation. She is a co-investigator in the USC Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS), where she studies diffusion of messages about emerging tobacco products to vulnerable populations through social media and leads the Population Core, which conducts annual surveys of three longitudinal cohorts of adolescents and young adults. She holds multiple leadership positions at USC including Co-Director of the Cancer Control program and Associate Training Director at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, Associate Director of the Coronavirus Pandemic Research Center, and Director of the Ph.D. program in Preventive Medicine / Health Behavior Research. She teaches predoctoral courses in research methods and grantwriting.

Rob McConnell, M.D.

Faculty Principal Investigator

rmcconne@usc.edu

Dr. Rob McConnell is a physician and environmental epidemiologist, and Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences. He directs the NIH/Environmental Protection Agency-supported Southern California Children's Environmental Health Center. He has studied the effects of air pollution on children's health, including the development of asthma and lung function deficits, and early markers for cardiovascular disease. Dr. McConnell has investigated susceptibility to the effects of environmental exposures conferred by psychosocial stress and social factors, exercise, genetics and co-exposures associated with housing conditions. He has interest, in addition, in the development of methods for estimating the burden of disease associated with near-roadway air pollution and for assessing exposure in environmental epidemiology. Currently funded research is focused on environmental determinants of autism and of obesity and its metabolic consequences in children; on respiratory hazards of e-cigarette use; and on the determinants of tobacco product use as a project director in the USC Tobacco Center for Regulatory Science. He co-directs the NIEHS T32 training program in environmental genomics and the Career Development Program of the NIEHS-supported Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center. Prior to coming to USC, he directed a World Health Organization regional environmental health center for Latin America and the Caribbean. Dr. McConnell is a member of EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) Particulate Matter Panel. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Jessica Barrington-Trimis, Ph.D.

Faculty Principal Investigator

jtrimis@usc.edu

Dr. Barrington-Trimis is an epidemiologist and Assistant Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California, and faculty member in the USC Health, Emotion, and Addiction Laboratory, the USC Institute for Addiction Science, the USC Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research, and the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. After receiving her BA in Philosophy and English (creative writing) from Bucknell University (2007), Dr. Barrington-Trimis joined Teach for America, earning an MA in Education (2009), while teaching high school chemistry in Los Angeles. Dr. Barrington-Trimis left her teaching position to earn an MS in Global Medicine (2010), and her PhD in Epidemiology (2014). From 2014-2016, Dr. Barrington-Trimis completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the FDA and NIH-supported USC Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS), and in January 2017 accepted a faculty position at USC.

Dr. Barrington-Trimis’ research focuses on investigation of the rapidly changing tobacco, alternative tobacco, and cannabis landscape. Her work aims to identify intra-individual psychological, behavioral, and social processes associated with nicotine and cannabis product use in adolescence and early adulthood, and to elucidate the behavioral consequences (e.g., transition to more harmful patterns of substance use) and physiological consequences (e.g., adverse respiratory health effects of e-cigarette use) of varying patterns of cannabis and nicotine product use in adolescence.

Ryan Lee

Project Manager

rlee6472@usc.edu

Ryan Lee graduated from Occidental College with a B.A. in Biology with an emphasis in Cell and Molecular Biology and minors in Public Health and East Asian Studies. As an undergraduate, he worked on research projects ranging from infectious disease pathology to evaluation of public health regulations in Hong Kong. At the Center for Population Health, he oversees data collection efforts for multiple studies in health behavior and substance use prevention research. In his free time, Ryan enjoys cooking, cycling, and playing tennis.

Lauren Howard, MS

Data Management Coordinator

howardla@usc.edu

Lauren Howard graduated from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with a B.S. in Psychology and a B.A. in Asian Studies with a Japanese concentration. After earning her undergraduate degree, she taught English in high schools in Ibaraki, Japan for 2 years and fostered an interest in cross-cultural psychology research. She later went on to earn a M.S. in Experimental Psychology from the College of William & Mary and gained pivotal experience working in social and clinical psychology laboratories. After her Masters, she decided to use her stats and data wrangling experience in applied research, which led her to the USC TCORS Population Core. Her ultimate goal is to attend medical school and work with underserved and ethnic minority populations. Lauren primarily helps with project development, data cleaning and formatting, data access, and data analysis to support research projects and grants. In her spare time, Lauren enjoys baking, gardening, playing video games, and practicing Japanese archery.

Monica Pattarroyo

Project Specialist

pattarro@usc.edu

Monica Pattarroyo graduated from California State University, Los Angeles in 2007 with her B.A. in Sociology. That same year, she joined the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at the University of Southern California as a Project Assistant. She offered support in coordinating and administering data collection in a classroom setting for various federal and state funded research projects addressing drug and tobacco use amongst at risk youth from various continuation schools in Southern California. Currently as a Project Specialist, Monica continues to provide research and additional administrative support on multiple concurrent grant funded investigations in health promotion and substance prevention research. During her free time, Monica enjoys traveling, photography and live music.

Carla Arredondo, MS

Project Assistant

carlaarr@usc.edu

Carla earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of California Riverside and a Master of Science in Human Development and Family Studies from Colorado State University. As a graduate student, Carla studied cultural differences in psychosocial processes, specifically examining how variations in stress responses may account for the observed health disparities between European Americans and different racial/ethnic minorities. She also worked as a Graduate Research Assistant where she functioned as a project coordinator for both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. During her free time, she enjoys playing video games, going to concerts, hiking, and exploring new places.

Viviana Rodriguez

Project Assistant

vr07137@usc.edu

Viviana graduated from the University of California, Irvine in 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and minor in Sociology. As an undergraduate, she worked on several research projects focusing on the biopsychosocial benefits of mindfulness and a longitudinal study focusing on parent-child attachment theory. After graduating, she worked as a community organizer advocating alongside community members for educational, health, and housing equity. During her free time, she enjoys wheel throwing and going to the beach with her small pet dog, Mango.

(Shirin) Emma Herzig

Project Assistant

sherzig@usc.edu

Emma graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.A. in psychology and a B.A. in narrative studies. As an undergraduate, she worked on several biopsychosocial research studies in developmental and family psychology labs at CHLA and USC. After graduating, Emma worked in research and evaluation to support four SAMHSA programs that provided mental health and substance use care services to vulnerable populations in Southern California. At the Center for Population Research, Emma supports data collection efforts for multiple studies in health behavior and substance use prevention research. In her spare time, Emma enjoys reading and being in nature.

Kimberly Gonzalez

Graduate Research Assistant

kng52991@usc.edu

Kimberly Gonzalez graduated from the University of California Merced with a B.S. in Biological Sciences with an emphasis in Microbiology and Immunology. She is currently a Master of Public Health Candidate in the Global Health Concentration. As an undergraduate, she volunteered throughout the San Joaquin Valley with UCSF Mobile HeaL clinic and a local non-profit organization, Project Grow, to combat health disparities. Her passion for global health stemmed from her time as a Children Family Health International Medicine Intensive Volunteer in the Philippines. She is currently employed at a biotechnology company in Santa Monica, focusing on pioneering a new kind of preventive medicine that combines genomics and AI technology to create a personal health protection system. During her free-time she enjoys running on the beach, hiking the Los Angeles mountains, and socializing with friends.

Alberto Carvajal Jr.

Graduate Research Assistant

acarvaja@usc.edu

Alberto Carvajal Jr graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.S. in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Studies and a minor in Psychology. He is currently a Master of Public Health Candidate in the Biostatistics/Epidemiology Concentration. As an undergraduate, he assisted Dr. Myles Cockburn and Dr. Kimberly Miller with the SunSmart Initiative, which is a sun-safety program teaching 4th and 5th graders in Los Angeles County how to spend time in the sun safely through hands-on health and science experiments. He was part of the USC Marching Band during his undergraduate studies. He currently is the assistant director for IDEAS at USC, which is a student-led organization that aims to provide support to undocumented students. He volunteers at UMMA Community Clinic, where he administers diabetic retinal exams to patients.

Benjamin Sun

Student Research Assistant

benjamis@usc.edu

Benjamin is currently a senior undergraduate student at the University of Southern California pursuing a B.S. in Human Biology and a minor in business finance. He has worked on research projects assessing genetic risk factors for type 2 diabetes. After graduating, he hopes to attend medical school and pursue a career practicing medicine. During his free time, he enjoys pitching, learning about investing, and spending time with friends.