Grad Student - BCSM

Sheyda Aboii

Medical Anthropology, UC Berkeley/UC San Francisco

Alexander Adia

Health Policy and Management, UC Berkeley School of Public Health

Alexander Adia is a doctoral student in Health Policy (Population and Data Science Track). Alexander's research works towards the achievement of health equity and the addressing of health disparities, with a focus on identifying how market and policy changes can (intentionally or unintentionally) influence such outcomes. His existing projects include analyses on medical debt, provider market consolidation and its impacts on patients, and quality of care for Medicaid patients. His work prior to his doctoral program included research on data disaggregation for Asian Americans, Filipinx...

Jane Angar

Political Science, UC Berkeley

Jane (Mango) Angar is pursuing her Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests lie in the intersection of political violence and disability politics, focusing on how disability influences state consolidation, citizenship, and economic marginalization in former British colonies. Her dissertation project aims to delve into the history and institutionalization of disability rights movements within these regions, particularly in Africa. The project is based on interviews with disability rights activists and archival research in Zambia, Kenya,...

Zia Bajwa

Zia Bajwa is a PhD student in Clinical Science within the Department of Psychology at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on mental health inequities and the scalable implementation of evidence-based interventions to reduce health disparities. She is particularly interested in disproportionate exposure to early life adversity and community violence, community-engaged approaches to the cultural adaptation and implementation of mental health interventions globally, and the intersection of healthcare and humanitarian response. Broadly, she aims to harness transdiagnostic mechanisms and...

Larissa Benjamin

Public Health, UC Berkeley

Larissa Benjamin is a Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) candidate at UC Berkeley in the School of Public Health. Her research examines the structural and historical factors that contribute to cardiovascular disease risk in Southeastern rural communities, employing rigorous quantitative and qualitative research methods. Using geospatial and statistical methods, she maps patterns of neighborhood-level disinvestment and segregation by rurality across 14 states in the Southeastern US and investigates associations between disinvestment and cardiovascular disease risk factors and...

Lindsay Berkowitz

Sociology, UC Berkeley

Brittany Campbell

Public Health, UC Berkeley

Brittany Campbell is a strengths-based public health scholar and St. Louis native whose work seeks to understand what is working in order to improve what is not. Grounded in the values of community, hope, and joy, her research focuses on identifying and amplifying individual and collective strengths that support health and well-being. Her dissertation centers the lived experiences of African American women managing chronic health conditions, with the goal of improving healthcare navigation and creating more responsive, equitable healthcare systems. Through community-engaged and human-...

Joanna Cardenas

African American and African Diaspora Studies Department, UC Berkeley

Joanna Cardenas is a doctoral candidate in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley. Her research explores the nexus of critical carceral studies, disability studies, and Black feminist thought, with an emphasis on the intersection of race, class, gender, and space. Through a close spatial analysis of California prisons, her work traces how the state’s histories of human experimentation, sexual violence, and other forms of disabling violence inform the racialized and gendered organization of confinement. She also studies how the carceral state of South...

Juan Carlos Bordes

School of Public Health, UC Berkeley

Born in Ecuador, Juan Carlos Bordes has had a lengthy journey to become a doctoral candidate in Public Health at UC Berkeley. At age 16, he and his family immigrated from Ecuador to the US to start anew. This change included a new culture, language, and more. Although challenging, these experiences began a process of building resiliency in him.

Juan Carlos used resiliency to become the first in his family to obtain undergraduate and graduate education. Additionally, working in healthcare for the past ten years ignited his passion for creating inclusive workplace environments...

Kathleen Corpuz

School of Public Health, UC Berkeley

Kathleen Corpuz is a DrPH student at the School of Public Health and a Filipina settler in Hawai'i, deeply committed to fostering interethnic collaboration to improve public health systems for Filipinos, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. With a background in strengthening research capacity and community services through university partnerships, she supports grassroots movements that prioritize collective solidarity. Kathleen actively engages in community-led research practices, advocating for food sovereignty by restoring lo'i kalo and promoting wrap-around services for justice-...