Dr. Matthay's overall focus is on improving clinical care of patients with acute respiratory failure from the acute respiratory distress syndrome and from sepsis. His research and clinical trials groups are very well funded by grants from the National Institute of Health. He also spends considerable time mentoring physicians and young faculty in career development and academic medicine.
Wendy Max, Ph.D. is Professor of Health Economics and Co-Director of the Institute for Health & Aging at the University of California, San Francisco. She has been on the faculty at UCSF since 1987. Dr. Max holds a PhD in economics from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her recent research has focused on modeling the economic impact of tobacco on healthcare expenditures. She has estimated national costs of smoking; costs to Medicare, Medicaid, and private payers; costs in California; and the impact on communities of color.
I am a health geographer interested in qualitative and mixed methods approaches to understanding relationships between people’s everyday environments and behaviors related to health and wellbeing. During my fellowship at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UCSF, I am researching place-embedded social practices of smoking within marginalized groups, such as young LGBTQI adults, in order to better understand the persistence of smoking within these groups and inform the design and effectiveness of tobacco control efforts.
Dieter Meyerhoff, PhD, is a Professor in Residence in the Department of Radiology at the University of California, San Francisco and at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He is also Co-Director of the Treatment Research Center in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSF. Dr. Meyerhoff completed his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Westphälische Wilhelms Universität in Münster, Germany, and he obtained his PhD in Chemistry at Westphälische Wilhelms Universität, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship from the University of California, Berkeley Department of Chemistry.
Joshua Miller is a political scientist that focuses on the intersection of public health policy and vulnerable populations. Joshua received his Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America in Politics.
Dr. Mock conducts collaborative action research examining how people’s cultural context shapes their patterns of tobacco, nicotine and cannabis use. As a health anthropologist, for over two decades, Dr. Mock has focused on examining how and why people’s lived experience of tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure is deeply rooted in culture. His research explores how cultural and political-economic change can influence tobacco use within a cultural group.
Mehrdad Mohammadi, MD, MPH, MA in Law and Diplomacy received his credentials in medicine, public health, law and development economics from Tehran University, Tufts University and Harvard University. He has been an adjunct professor at the School of Public Health at Tehran University teaching Justice and Public Health Law. Working with the WHO, Dr. Mohammadi has advised the Ministry of Health on International Health Regulations and the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).
Dr. Mohammadi is a physician-scientist and an Early Career Investigator with over 12 years of experience in clinical vascular studies including pre-doctoral work with much of it focused on studying vascular effects of tobacco and marijuana exposure. She has clinical and research background in cardiac arrhythmias, hypertension, and endothelial dysfunction. Dr. Mohammadi is leading the UCSF CANDIDE study, which investigates the effects of chronic cannabis use on vascular function.
Jelena Mustra Rakic, PhD, received her PhD in Biochemical and Molecular Nutrition from Tufts University in Boston. Her dissertation was focused on elucidating the effect and mechanisms of the naturally occurring carotenoid, lycopene, on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung carcinogenesis and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. The important finding from her PhD implicated smoking-related alterations in lipid metabolism as one of main pathways leading to chronic inflammation and lung diseases development.
