People
Spatial Health Lab
Spatial Health Lab Leadership
Perry Hystad, PhD
Director, Spatial Health Lab
Professor, College of Health
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My research focuses on environmental exposure science and epidemiology, with applications to air pollution, healthy built environments, and climate change. Through my research, I have developed new methods to assess environmental exposures for large population-based health studies using novel technologies and geospatial data science approaches. I lead several grants that examine air pollution, green space, climate, and built environment exposures; determine associations with diverse health outcomes; and translate this information into effective policy and prevention activities. I have published over 140 articles examining environmental health issues (Citations: 12,793, h-Index: 58, i10-Index: 126); received over $23 million in research funding to support local, national, and international research; and served on multiple grant review panels and scientific advisory boards.
Andrew Larkin, PhD
Co-Director, Spatial Health Lab
Assistant Professor Senior Research, College of Health
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My research is dedicated to advancing environmental exposure assessment through integrating statistical modeling, deep learning, and multiple diverse data sources into epidemiological studies. To develop the necessary background for integrating data and methodologies from multiple disciplines I completed graduate degrees in computer science, toxicology, and public health along with postdoctoral training in environmental epidemiology. Methodologies I’ve used in my publications include game theory, deep learning, land use regression, and Bayesian Belief Networks. The scope of my lead author research projects includes developing new machine learning (including deep learning) and statistical models for gene regulatory networks, climate change communications, global daily NO2 concentrations, influences of social networks on behaviors and perceptions, GPS-based time activity patterns, and large scale image processing to identify associations between perceptions and visible composition of the built environment. With this diverse background in methodology and scope I’ve developed the ability to identify and implement ideal methods for minimizing exposure assessment error and inferring relationships between complex exposure-health relationships in noisy real-world datasets.
Current Students and Postdoctoral Scholars
Madalyn Nones
Madalyn Nones received her MPH in epidemiology from the University of Minnesota in 2022. She then completed a CDC fellowship working on curriculum development for the Epidemic Intelligence Service Program before deciding to continue her education with a Public Health PhD program at Oregon State University. She is also working toward a Graduate GIS certificate. Her field of focus is environmental epidemiology with particular interest in researching green space, the built environment, and climate resiliency.
Kirstin Yeomans
Kirstin’s research focuses on the impacts of climate change on health. Her current projects include researching the effects of acute temperature exposures in low- and middle-income countries and assessing personal temperature exposure linkages to health effects. Kirstin received her Master of Public Health in Epidemiology at Oregon State University in 2022. Before returning to OSU, she completed a one-year fellowship with the California Department of Public Health where she worked with the Climate Change and Health Unit to assess the health effects of wildfire and prescribed fire smoke.
Abdullah Nayeem
Abdullah earned his second Master's in Urban Environmental Management, focusing on air pollutant emission inventories at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands. He also obtained his first Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Environmental Science from Stamford University, Bangladesh. After his studies in Bangladesh, he worked as a lecturer at his alma mater. He served as a Senior Scientific Officer at the Atmospheric Pollution Research (CAPS) and has worked on various air pollution projects in Bangladesh, funded by USAID, the US Forest Service, the Bangladesh government, and other national and international agencies. He has been involved in air quality monitoring in Bangladesh since 2018. His main research focuses on traffic-related air quality monitoring, human health exposure, GIS & Remote Sensing, including spatial health modeling.
Stephanie Foster, PhD
Stephanie is a Postdoctoral Fellow working with the OSU Advancing Science, Practice, Programming and Policy in Research Translation for Children's Environmental Health (ASPIRE) Center. Her research examines environmental exposures and maternal and child. She is currently assessing wildfire smoke and heat exposures for schools in Oregon.
Current Affiliated Faculty
Matthew Bozigar, PhD
Assistant Professor, College of Health
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Matt Bozigar is an environmental epidemiologist with a multidisciplinary background. He studies multiple adverse environmental exposures (e.g., noise, air pollution, aeroallergens, radon) and health outcomes (e.g., asthma, cancer, cardiometabolic risk factors and diseases). Matt views environmental epidemiology through a geographical lens that emphasizes “place” and how it affects the health of populations.
Mary Willis, Phd, MPH
Assistant Professor, Boston University
Courtesy Faculty, College of Health
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Mary D. Willis, PhD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health and courtesy Faculty member at the OSU College of Health. Her expertise lies at the intersection of environmental epidemiology, spatial exposure assessment, and applied data science. Much of her work also leverages econometric-based causal inference methods. She is particularly interested in how epidemiological studies can be best designed to inform health-protective policy decisions. To date, Dr. Willis has primarily focused on how on exposures from the energy sector (e.g., oil and gas development, traffic-related air pollution) and other aspects of the built environment (e.g., green space, neighborhood disadvantage) influence reproductive health outcomes.
Elaine L. Hill, PhD
Professor, University of Rochester
Courtesy Faculty, College of Health
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As an applied microeconomist, Dr. Hill's primary research interests are in health economics and environmental economics. In particular, her research focuses on the intersection between health, health policy, the environment and human capital formation. The unifying theme within these broad areas is the use of quasi-experimental designs to identify modifiable factors that are policy relevant. Her research also primarily studies vulnerable populations (e.g., pregnant women, children, rural populations, and older adults
Rena Jones, PhD, MS
Investigator, National Cancer Institute
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Dr. Jones’s research focuses on the investigation of cancer risk associated with environmental contaminants, especially air and water pollutants. Her work relies on the application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and novel approaches to assess environmental exposures and evaluate how they may cause cancer.
Past Lab Members
Mary Willis
PhD student (2016-2020),
Postdoctoral Scholar (2020-2022)
Mary's research focused on the population health impacts of energy policy decisions using spatial exposure metrics and econometric-based causal inference designs. Her research leverage natural experiments using policies related to shale gas development, traffic-related air pollution, and power plant emissions.
Leanne Cusack
Postdoctoral Scholar (2016-2018)
Leanne’s research examined urban green space exposure assessment methods using different GIS methods for multiple US cities and associations with adverse birth outcomes.
Sigride Jenniska Asseko
PhD student (2019-2024)
Sigride’ s research assessed air pollution environmental health literacy in Gabon, complex air pollution exposure assessment methods, and household air pollution health effects in low and middle income countries.
Kwadwo A. Boakye
PhD student (2017-2022)
Kwadwo examined how the built environment shapes physical activity and chronic disease. He used novel GIS methods applied to GPS mobility information and the PURE global cohort study to examine local to global influences of the built environment and urbanization on physical activity.
Ying Wang
PhD student (2017-2021)
Ying studied air pollution and health in developing countries, both indoor and outdoor. Her research focuses on protecting human beings from negative health impacts from environmental pollutants, including air pollutants such as PM and black carbon.
John-Paul Bigouette
PhD student (2017-2020)
JP used the Google Earth Engine to model climate-related exposures for a large multi-country multi-site epidemiological study and examined the influence of acute and chronic temperature exposures on CVD and mortality.