Michigan Public Health recruits 19 new tenure-track faculty

November 2, 2023

The University of Michigan School of Public Health has recruited 19 new tenure-track faculty in the last 12-month recruitment cycle, one of the largest cohorts in the school’s history. Five of the school’s six academic departments brought on new faculty, which includes researchers with a diverse range of expertise.

“We are thrilled to welcome this stellar cohort of high-caliber faculty to our Michigan Public Health community,” said Dean F. DuBois Bowman. “These scholars bring new expertise and perspectives and position the school to continue pursuing lasting solutions to the world’s increasingly complex public health challenges while providing a world-class education to the next generation of public health leaders.”

Learn more about some of the new tenure-track faculty who started this fall:

Andrew Brouwer

Assistant Professor of Epidemiology

Informed by his interdisciplinary background in mathematics and statistics, environmental science and engineering, and epidemiology, Brouwer’s research spans a growing constellation of application areas, including infectious disease, cancer, and tobacco control. Brouwer was previously an assistant research scientist at Michigan Public Health.

Irina Gaynanova

Associate Professor of Biostatistics

Gaynanova’s research focuses on the development of statistical methods for analysis of modern high-dimensional biomedical data. Her methodological interests are in data integration, machine learning and high-dimensional statistics, motivated by challenges arising in analyses of multi-omics data (e.g., RNASeq, metabolomics, microbiome) and data from wearable devices (continuous glucose monitors, ambulatory blood pressure monitors, activity trackers).

Jennifer Head

Assistant Professor of Epidemiology

Head is an infectious disease epidemiologist who applies mathematical and statistical models to understand the impact of climate, environmental disturbance, and zoonotic hosts on infectious disease dynamics. Much of her research examines these factors as they relate to the emergence of environmentally-acquired fungal infections, such as Valley fever. 

Erica Jansen

Assistant Professor of Nutritional Sciences

Jansen is a nutritional epidemiologist who focuses on diet and sleep in relation to health along the lifespan, with particular interest in these relationships during adolescence. Jansen was previously a research assistant professor at Michigan Public Health.

Spruha Joshi

Assistant Professor of Epidemiology

Joshi is a social epidemiologist whose research focuses on the ongoing overdose crisis and rapidly shifting cannabis legalization landscape, with a particular focus on reducing health disparities as they relate to drug policy.

Kate Manz

Assistant Professor of Environmental Health Sciences

Manz’s research and teaching interests are in environmental chemistry, including understanding natural chemical transformation in the environment, developing remediation technologies to minimize pollutant exposure, and discovering previously unidentified environmental exposures in humans using non-targeted analysis.

Thuy Nguyen

Assistant Professor of Health Management and Policy

Nguyen is a health services researcher and health economist with interests related to the US opioid epidemic and health policy. Her research has focused on treatment access for opioid use disorder, prescribing behavior, incentive issues of medical providers, and using novel data to address pressing knowledge gaps. Nguyen was previously a research assistant professor at Michigan Public Health.

Michele Peruzzi

Assistant Professor of Biostatistics 

Peruzzi is interested in the development of Bayesian methods for multivariate correlated data, with a specific focus on geostatistics for environmental health applications as well as on imaging and high resolution sensor data.

Abram Wagner

Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Global Public Health

Wagner’s research encompasses analyses of the impact of vaccine hesitancy, vaccine effectiveness studies, and seroepidemiology surveys. A large focus of his work is on developing messaging to introduce a population to new vaccines while minimizing the development of vaccine hesitancy. Wagner was previously a research assistant professor at Michigan Public Health.

Deborah Watkins

Associate Professor of Environmental Health Sciences

Watkins investigates how environmental exposures during critical life stages—including pregnancy, early development, puberty, and menopause—can impact long-term maternal and child health. Her work includes both  the identification of important sources of exposure to phthalates, phenols, flame retardants, pesticides, and other contaminants, and  the determination of subsequent exposure-related health effects within vulnerable populations. Watkins was previously a research associate professor at Michigan Public Health.

Donglin Zeng

Professor of Biostatistics

Zeng’s research interests include precision medicine, dynamic treatment regimes, machine learning, high-dimensional inference, semiparametric models, survival analysis, electronic health records and clinical trials. Zeng is also interested in the development of statistical methods/tools to solve emerging problems related to infectious diseases, cancer, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and psychiatric disorders.

Michigan Public health will welcome 8 more faculty during the Winter 2024 and Fall 2024 semesters. Watch our website for more information on those faculty members at that time.

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