People and Collaborators
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University of California, Berkeley
Dr. Robert Spear ([email protected]) is an engineer by training and received the PhD degree in Control Engineering from Cambridge University. He has been a faculty member at the School of Public Health at Berkeley since 1971. His early work concerned the exposure of agricultural workers to pesticides. In more recent years his work has concerned applications of mathematical and statistical techniques in the assessment and control of human exposures to both chemical and biological agents focused principally on determinants of the incidence and control of schistosomiasis in the mountainous regions of Sichuan Province in southwestern China. Dr. Spear was the founding Director of the University’s Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. He was the Chair of the Berkeley Division of the Academic Senate in 1999-2000. He has authored or co-authored over 100 papers in the scientific literature.

Dr. Justin Remais is Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at UC Berkeley. His research combines environmental and theoretical models with field data to study the ecology and epidemiology of infectious diseases. More information about his research is available on his website.

Dr. Tomás León ([email protected]) is a former doctoral student in environmental health sciences at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. His interests lie at the intersection of public health and engineering, which includes sanitation and hydrological risk factors for infectious disease transmission as in the cases of S. japonicum and Opisthorchis viverrini. He previously graduated with a BS in Environmental Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Cheyenne Butcher is a MS student in the Global Health and Environment program at the University of California, Berkeley. She is working on optimizing RT-PCR for use with a field collection method of S. japonicum in Sichuan, China.

Previous UC Berkeley lab members

Sean Wu, MPH student in Epidemiology & Biostatistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a PhD student in Epidemiology and Computational Biology with John Marshall at Berkeley.

Sam Gunther, MPH student in Infectious Diseases, Vaccinology at the University of California, Berkeley, worked on optimizing cercarial recovery in filtration methods in the lab in Sichuan, China.
 
Mai Fung. MPH student at the University of California, Berkeley. Worked on field-appropriate methods for S. japonicum diagnosis in humans.

Jessica Li. MS student in the Global Health and Environment program at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focused on schistosomiasis transmission in minority ethnic groups in Sichuan, China.

Mei Yang. Visiting scholar from the school of Earth and Space Science at University of Science and Technology of China. Her work was to find critical hydrographic pathways of schistosomiasis in low transmission settings and to quantify human exposure to schistosomes using GPS tracking.

Shuo Wang PhD from the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. Interested in mathematical and bio-statistical modeling of infectious diseases.

Jasmine Wang Undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley and a part of the Minority Health and Health Disparities International Training Program (MHIRT). Her research focused on environmental indicators of S. japonicum transmission between mammals and snail hosts in the context of disease reemergence and surveillance.

Jiajing Li MPH student from the Infectious Diseases & Vaccinology Division at the University of California, Berkeley and a MHIRT fellow. Interested in infectious disease prevention in developing countries.

University of Colorado, Denver
Dr. Elizabeth Carlton is an environmental epidemiologist with a doctorate in environmental health sciences from the University of California, Berkeley. She is interested in the environmental determinants of infectious disease transmission. More information about her research can be found on her website.

University of Florida
Dr. Song Liang’s ([email protected]) primary areas of research are risk assessment of waterborne pathogens, the environmental determinants of infectious disease, and environment-orientated interventions. Much of Dr. Liang’s work also focuses on mathematical modeling and the epidemiology of infectious diseases, the public health applications of Geographical Information Systems (GISs) and international environmental health issues. More information about his research can be found at his website.

University of Washington
Dr. Edmund Seto is Associate Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at the University of Washington. His research interests include health mapping, spatial epidemiology, GIS and remote sensing, mathematical modeling of infectious diseases, and health impact assessment.

Sichuan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Institute of Parasitic Diseases
Dr. Dongchuan Qiu ([email protected])  is the director of the Sichuan Institute for Parasitic Diseases. He has been collaborating with the Berkeley Schistosomiasis project for over a decade and has been engaged in research and control of parasitical diseases for more than 30 years. He was a visiting scholar in the laboratory of parasitology in University of Leiden,the Netherlands. He served as an adviser at the WHO Consultation on ultrasonography in Schistosomiasis in 1990, in Egypt. He has an MD from the Huaxi University of Medical Sciences.

Dr. Bo Zhong ([email protected]) is a deputy director of the Sichuan Institute of Parasitic Diseases and an professor of Sichuan Center for Disease Control and Prevention. She have extensive experience conducting field surveys for S. japonicum infection in humans, other mammalian hosts and snails. She is an expert on schistosomiasis control in both endemic and reemerging regions. Her research design and management skills have been enhanced by participation in a visiting scholarship at Peking university studying epidemiology. She graduated with a MD from West China University of Medical Sciences in Chengdu in 1992.

Dr. Ning Xiao ([email protected]) is a professor and a Deputy Director of the National Institute of Parasitic Diseases, Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Shanghai). Before February 3, 2012, He worked in Institute of Parasitic Diseases, Sichuan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Chengdu). He graduated with a MD PhD in parasitology from Asahikawa Medical University, Hokkaido, Japan in 2006. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo where he studied immunology of parasites. His research interests include studies of control strategy of parasitic diseases, the development of molecular tools for monitoring echinococcus and schistosomiasis transmission.

Dr. Lin Chen ([email protected]) is a deputy Chief of the Department of Schistosomiasis Control,  Sichuan Institute of Parasitic Diseases and an associate professor of Sichuan Center for Disease Control and Prevention. She is an expert on schistosomiasis control and health statistics. She graduated with a MD from Chongqing Medical University in 1997, and attained Master of Public Health from West China University of Medical Sciences in Chengdu in 2009.

Yang Liu ([email protected]) works as an Assistant Researcher at the Sichuan Institute of Parasitic Diseases, Sichuan Center of Disease Control and Prevention. Her research focuses on schistosomiasis epidemiology and health promotion. In her previous work, She explored the determinants of re-emerging of schistosomiasis epidemic in the areas where the transmission was once controlled in Sichuan province and provided evidence to control the epidemic. She is a PhD student majoring in Health and Social Behavior Study at West China School of Public Health of Sichuan University. She graduated from West China School of Public Health of Sichuan University with a master’s degree in Epidemiology and Health Statistics.

Ding Lu ([email protected]) works as an Assistant Researcher at the Sichuan Institute of Parasitic Disease, Sichuan Center for Disease Control and Prevention. His research focuses on schistosomiasis epidemiology and health promotion. He graduated from Sichuan University with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering.