Program Faculty
Program Faculty
Ahmed Arif, Ph.D., MBBS, is a Professor of Epidemiology and director of the Ph.D. programs in Epidemiology and Public Health Sciences in the Department of Public Health Sciences. Ahmed’s research area of expertise is occupational and environmental epidemiology. His current research interests include studying occupational risk factors of mental illnesses, occupational and even occupational lung diseases, rare and orphan diseases, and spatial epidemiology. aarif@uncc.edu
Shi Chen, Ph.D., Associate Professor. Research interests: Infectious disease modeling. rcramer4@uncc.edu
Robert Cramer, Ph.D., is the Irwin Belk Endowed Professor of Health Research in the Department of Public Health Sciences. His PhD in Clinical Psychology includes advanced psych-law and quantitative methods training. Dr. Cramer conducts research in suicide prevention, hate crimes, LGBTQ+ health, military mental health, collegiate mental health, measure development, victimology, training interventions, and the intersection of social science, law & policy. He serves as a mentor for undergraduate, masters, and PhD students, as well as postdoctoral fellows. His mentees have assumed careers in academia, industry research, non-profits, government research, healthcare leadership and practice, and private consultancy. rcramer4@uncc.edu
Melinda (Lyndie) Forthofer, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences. Research interests: Social epidemiology, social networks, community-based prevention research, diffusion of innovation/translational science, chronic disease-related health behaviors, especially physical activity. forthofer@uncc.edu
Laura Gunn, Ph.D., Associate Professor; Director of Health Analytics; Director of Health Analytics and Outcomes Research Academy (HAnORA), Department of Public Health Sciences. Research interests: Applied, interdisciplinary, and collaborative biostatistics, health outcomes research, analysis of big data randomized trials, program evaluation, community-based participatory research with local partnerships, health disparities. laura.gunn@uncc.edu
Rajib Paul, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences. Research interests: Bayesian statistics and spatial and spatio-temporal statistics with applications in epidemiology, health policy, and environment; Bayesian nonparametric and robust nonparametric methods for large datasets and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) based research. rpaul9@uncc.edu
Rafael Felipe Da Costa Vieira, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of One Health in the Department of Public Health Sciences and CIPHER at UNCC. Dr. Vieira is the PI of several research projects, and he is engaged in research and teaching focuses on the ecoepidemiology of ticks and tick-borne diseases (TBD), genetic diversity of TBD pathogens, tick microbiome, pathogen discovery, and One Health. Over the last 12 years, his research has focused on zoonotic diseases, with an emphasis on the epidemiology of vector-borne and transboundary infectious diseases, genetic diversity of TBD pathogens, pathogen discovery, One Health, molecular detection and characterization of novel hemotropic Mycoplasma and Anaplasmataceae species and evaluation and validation of diagnostic tests for zoonotic infectious diseases. His research summary includes more than 110 peer-reviewed publications on Medline and Scopus databases. His professional goal is to apply his background to approach global health issues at the human-animal-environment interface from a One Health perspective, with a special focus on vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. rvieira@charlotte.edu
Affiliate Faculty
Vishnu Prabhu, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His primary research interest is data-driven decision-making in healthcare, where he combines human factors and mathematical modeling to improve patient, physician, and system outcomes. He is also passionate about utilizing IoT devices (AR, VR, etc.), wearables, digital health tools, and non-pharmacological techniques to address pain, anxiety, and mental health issues and has conducted multiple clinical trials. Before joining UNC Charlotte, he was a research intern at Stanford Health Care and PRISMA Health, where he was involved in academic and applied research. Beyond academic research, he is also the co-founder of IntelligHealth and Immersive Reality Group, which focuses on Human-AI collaboration in healthcare and has received funding from government agencies and private companies.
vgirisha@charlotte.edu
Keywords: Mathematical Modeling, Computer Simulations, Human-Behavioral Modeling, Human-AI Collaboration