ThinkResearch Podcast

Meg Simione, PhD, is a clinician-scientist who focuses on infant and child feeding by implementing innovations to improve care delivery. She is a research scientist in the Division of General Academic Pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital, a speech-language pathologist, and assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Her research has examined the determinants and impacts of pediatric feeding disorders and childhood obesity, as well as improving access to care through implementation science, telehealth approaches, and family-centered outcomes. As a clinician, she cares for children with pediatric feeding disorders and has developed clinical programs and quality improvement initiatives to improve care for these children. Simione’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and foundations. She has authored numerous publications and has presented nationally and internationally.

Mayank Chugh, PhD, (he/him) is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Systems Biology with Sean Megason, PhD, at Harvard Medical School. He is an early-career advisor at eLife Sciences Publications and an incoming member of the board of directors at the Journal of Emerging Investigators (JEI). He is also the former chair of the Harvard Medical Postdoc Association. Chugh is fascinated about how organisms are designed and constructed from a single cell and approaches this in the context of inner ear formation in zebrafish. During his biology postdoc, he pivoted his research direction to empirically investigate how social inequity dimensions (race, gender, citizenship, and socioeconomic status) shape STEM higher education workforce and innovation. His published research and policy recommendations on cost-of-living adjusted postdoc compensation gathered national attention. He is currently leading research on citizenship privilege and visas to facilitate global knowledge equity. Chugh aims to create unchartered bridges between social sciences and STEM disciplines to inform equitable policies and practices in academic institutions.

Jason Vassy, MD, MPH, MS, is an associate ​​professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, a clinician-investigator at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Boston Healthcare System and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a founding member of Precision Population Health at Ariadne Labs. He is a practicing primary care internist and researcher whose work is focused on the implementation and evaluation of genomic medicine interventions. Vassy earned his MD degree from Washington University School of Medicine before completing an internal medicine residency at the University of Pennsylvania and a Harvard General Internal Medicine Research Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Kris King (they/he) is a nonbinary, transmasc, autistic, multiply-disabled activist and student at Harvard College who is studying history of science and women and gender studies. King is a member of the Inclusion & Belonging Student Leadership Council, Student Accessibility Advisory Committee, and Council of Autistic Advisors for the Autism Society. He serves as policy chair of Harvard Athlete Ally and is on the U.S.A. Curling Divisional Board. King is passionate about intersectional and margin-to-center equity approaches to policy and reform, particularly for autistic and neurodivergent individuals, trans+ individuals, athletes, and broader disability communities. He was the lead facilitator of the 2022 and 2023 Harvard Trans+ Community event, the largest student-run trans event in history to their knowledge. King also served as executive director of the 2021 conference “Autism: Education & Equity – A Public Health Discussion” and is founder of a neurodivergency-focused nonprofit Pandemic Learning Tutors. He is former director of community engagement for the Trans Community of New England and former president of the nationally competitive Harvard Curling Team.

Isabel Castanho, PhD, is a neurobiologist and postdoctoral research fellow working with Winston Hide, PhD, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Fascinated by the brain, particularly when it responds to threats and disease, she recently left the experimental laboratory to use bioinformatics and computational methods to continue studying the most complex organ of our bodies. Her research interests include investigating Alzheimer’s progression and identifying protective mechanisms for this devastating disease through the study of genes and their regulation, with the ultimate goal of contributing to the design of therapeutical strategies to treat Alzheimer’s disease effectively. In parallel to her research, Castanho is interested in mental health and illness, and neurodiversity. As a core member of The MIND Project at Harvard University, she oversees science communication and outreach efforts to advocate for mental health and neurodiversity. She is one of the co-founders of Neurodiversity at The MIND Project, which focuses on acceptance, inclusion, belonging, education, awareness, understanding, and celebration of the variations of the human mind.

Carolyn (Carrie) Fisher (She/her/hers), PhD, is a research and evaluation scientist at the Institute for Community Health (ICH). At ICH, she leads evaluation and applied research projects with a focus on health-related advocacy and policy, trauma and trauma-informed approaches to evaluation, qualitative methods, and equitable evaluation. She has lectured and led workshops and webinars on community engagement, trauma-informed approaches, and qualitative methods. Fisher earned her PhD in cultural anthropology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). Her dissertation, “From Incentives to Ayudas,” was based on fieldwork in rural Nicaragua and described the history and dynamics of interactions between a community of impoverished, small-scale coffee farmers and the various development agencies that have worked in the area between 1979 and 2006.

Sofía Alejandra Ladner (She/her/ella), MPH, is a research and evaluation project manager at the Institute for Community Health (ICH). At ICH, she is involved in evaluation projects on healthcare disparities among minority groups, substance use disorder prevention and treatment, and community organizing impact in health policy. She also supports Dr. Jessica Santos and the Leah Zallman Center for Immigrant Health Research as the community and staff engagement manager. Prior to her work with ICH, Ladner was a fellow at the Health Policy Commission, where her research and work focused on patient protection policies and carrier claims processing for Massachusetts. She received a BS in international health from Georgetown University and completed her MPH with a focus on community health at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

Mark Kennedy, MBA, is a senior program manager in the Chronic Disease Prevention and Control Division at the Boston Public Health Commission. In this role, Kennedy is leading the creation and implementation of the cancer early detection plan for the City of Boston. He is also faculty for “Shared Decision-Making: Essential Skills for Prostate, Lung and Breast Cancer Screening,” an online continuing medical education course at the Massachusetts Medical Society, and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses at Regis College and Emerson College.

Additionally, he is the Boston Region Leader for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Cancer Coalition (MCCC) for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and is co-chair for the Boston Medical Center Oncology Accelerator Advisory Council. Previously, Kennedy spent 13 years at Dana-Farber. He received his executive MBA from Northeastern University.

Rosa Alemán, BA, is a digital communications and content strategist at American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts. She helps engage upwards of 70,000 ACLUM community members across social media platforms, with timely, relevant, and valuable content designed to educate and inspire meaningful action.

In 2015, Alemán designed a higher learning project titled #MyDiyMFA: A three-year self-directed education experience consisting of a year of reading, a year of writing, and a year of making.  The DIY MFA project aims to empower people to learn powerful communication technology skills that amplify voice and perspective while encouraging the exploration of pathways and practices for proactively confronting systemic oppression, white supremacy, colonialist ideologies and institutional racism across societal sectors.