Research Team
Dr. Robyn Gershon
Principal Investigator
Dr. Gershon is an interdisciplinary occupational and environmental health and safety researcher with extensive experience in the areas of disaster preparedness, healthcare safety, and risk assessment and management in high-risk work occupations. She earned her doctorate in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University, School of Public Health, where she was on faculty for several years. Click here to view her website
Dr. Alexis Merdjanoff
Co-investigator
Dr. Alexis Merdjanoff is a Clinical Assistant Professor in Social and Behavioral Sciences at New York University’s School of Global Public Health. Trained as a sociologist, the goal of her research is to understand the factors that shape the preparedness, recovery, and resilience of individuals and communities exposed to acute disasters, including floods, hurricanes, and wildfires, as well as slow-onset climate disasters such as sea-level rise and coastal erosion.
Dr. David Vlahov
Co-Investigator
Dr. Vlahov is a Professor at Yale School of Nursing with a joint appointment in Epidemiology and Public Health. He was the founding President of the International Society for Urban Health. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Medical School in Belo Horizonte, Brazil to develop their programs in urban health, and served as expert consultant to the WHO’s Urban Health Center in Kobe, Japan; the Istituto Superiore d’ Sanita in Rome and the Municipal Health Service in Amsterdam.
Dr. Sangchoon Jeon
Co-Investigator, Statistician
Dr. Sangchoon Jeon is a research scientist at Yale University School of Nursing (YSN), who was trained in statistics and epidemiology. Dr. Jeon’s publications demonstrate diverse statistical approaches to analyze several types of data from different study designs such as the random effect model, mixture model, latent class model, and k-mean cluster.
Project Consultants
Jonathan Rosen
Project Consultant
Jonathan (MS, CIH, FAIHA™) is the Principal Consultant for AJ Rosen & Associates LLC, providing occupational safety and industrial hygiene services to labor unions, government agencies, and organizations throughout the U.S. Jonathan works for the National Clearinghouse for Worker Safety & Health Training, National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences Worker Education and Training Program. In that capacity he has developed worker and leadership training programs on resilience, stress, trauma, opioids and the workplace, and infection prevention and control. Jonathan served as Director of the Occupational Health & Safety Department for NYS Public Employees Federation, AFL-CIO for 22 years. Jonathan has been co-investigator on several federal NIOSH intervention research grants. Jonathan completed a master’s degree in industrial health at the University of Michigan and is a Certified Industrial Hygienist.
Devan Hawkins
Project Consultant
Devan Hawkins provides epidemiological and statistical analysis support for this project. His research interests include the contribution of work to deaths of despair, the changing nature of work, and health disparities. He was previously an epidemiologist for the Occupational Health Surveillance Program at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
Dr. Martin Sherman
Project Consultant
Martin F. Sherman is a Social Psychologist by training who has taught primarily research and statistical courses over the past 45 years. In addition, he served as the director of a master’s research program for 25 years and has published over 140 research articles. He currently is a manuscript reviewer for several research journals. Furthermore, he works with colleagues from Vanderbilt University on a number of research projects.