SDSU HealthLINK Center for Transdisciplinary Health Disparities Research
SDSU HealthLINK Center for Transdisciplinary Health Disparities Research
Research Capacity Team
Serves as the hub to advance health in all communities at the Center, including basic biomedical, behavioral, clinical, and population health research. The team oversees five groups that each specialize in an area of research—biomedical methods, measurement methods, health sensor methods, intervention methods, and data analytic methods. Each group is developing resources and services that will facilitate research at SDSU.
Kristen “Kristi” Wells, MPH, MPI, PhD
Co-Director, SDSU HealthLINK Center
Leader, Research Infrastructure Team
Co-Leader, Measurement Methods Group
Dr. Kristen “Kristi” Wells is a Professor of Psychology at SDSU. She is also Director of the Cancer Disparities and Cancer Communication Lab. Her graduate training was in clinical psychology and public health, followed by post-doctoral training in behavioral oncology. Her research focuses on improving the quality of healthcare delivered to various populations, with a specific specialty in patient navigation. Since 2006, Dr. Wells has led or contributed to five studies which have developed and evaluated patient navigation interventions to improve quality of care. She also leads studies developing technological solutions to improve adherence to recommended cancer care and oral medications for cancer.
In addition to her leadership as a Co-Director, Dr. Wells oversees the operations of the SDSU HealthLINK Center’s Research Infrastructure Team including five specialized research groups concentrating on measurement methods, health sensor methods, intervention methods, biomedical methods, and health data analytics.
Wendy Huang, PhD
Center Research Manager
Dr. Huang holds a PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of California San Diego and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in immunology at the New York University Langone Medical Center in 2016. Between 2016 and 2023, Dr. Huang was an assistant professor at the University of California San Diego. Her research team uncovered key roles RNA binding proteins and transcription factors in autoimmune disease, tissue inflammation, and cancer using cutting-edge molecular and genomics techniques.
Dr. Huang is passionate about mentoring research trainees from postdoctoral fellows, graduate, to undergraduate students, especially those from the underrepresented minority (URM) background. In 2023, Dr. Huang joined the SDSU HealthLINK Center. As the Center Research Manager, Dr. Huang leverages her scientific expertise and leads the Center’s Recharge Capacity Core, overseeing cost recovery service development and delivery in support of research projects addressing minority health and health disparities challenges.
Dr. Huang is the senior and communicating author of eight of the 28 peer-reviewed journal articles and served as an Academic Editor for multiple journals, including Scientific Report and PLOS ONE, and as scientific reviewer for numerous other journals.
Visit NCBI Bibliography to view a complete List of Dr. Huang’s publications: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1pWgwasgexg1eh/bibliography/public/
Co-Leaders and Co-Investigators
Elva Arredondo, PhD
Co-Leader, Intervention Methods Group
Dr. Elva Arredondo is a Professor in the School of Public Health at SDSU. She is the Co-Leader of the Intervention Methods Group. Dr. Arredondo’s research is in the area of health disparities. Her research focuses on the development, implementation and evaluation of community-based interventions that improve the health of various communities. She has served as an investigator in studies that promoted healthy eating and physical activity behaviors in youth and in adult populations and in studies that identified effective and sustainable methods to prevent and control cancer in specific populations. She is a Co-Investigator for research projects at the SDSU HealthLINK Center.
Jerel Calzo, PhD, MPH
Co-Investigator, Measurement Methods Group
Dr. Jerel Calzo in an Associate Professor of Health Promotion and Behavioral Science in the School of Public Health at SDSU. He is a developmental psychologist with postdoctoral training in social epidemiology. He is a Co-Investigator at the SDSU HealthLINK Center studying health behaviors through the use of ecological momentary assessment technology and CBPR.
Noe Crespo, MPH, PhD
Co-Investigator, Biomedical Methods Group
Dr. Noe Crespo is an Associate Professor in the Division of Health Promotion and Behavioral Science in the School of Public Health at SDSU. His research focuses on reducing health disparities and prevention of chronic disease through large scale community-based interventions that promote physical fitness, physical activity and healthy eating in schools and recreation centers. He also studies the health consequences of sedentary behaviors and conducts behavioral interventions to increase physical activity in the workplace. He is a Co-Investigator at the SDSU HealthLINK Center.
Hee-Jin Jun, PhD
Co-Investigator, Health Data Analytics Group
Dr. Hee-Jin Jun is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health at SDSU, an affiliated Investigator at the Institute of Behavior and Community Health, and a participating scholar of the SDSU Center for Research on Sexuality and Sexual Health. She is a social and behavioral epidemiologist with expertise in population health, health behavior, including weight-related outcomes, substance use, child and adolescent health. She also has expertise in methods for designing and analyzing large representative health surveys and intervention studies. She provides statistical support to the Research Infrastructure Team investigators at the SDSU HealthLINK Center.
Scott Kelley, PhD
Leader, Biomedical MethodsΩGroup
Dr. Scott Kelley is a Professor in the Department of Biology at SDSU. His research focuses on the study of environmental microbiology. He has extensive experience analyzing microbial and viral diversity, including that of humans as part of the Human Microbiome Project, a research initiative to improve understanding of the microbial flora involved in human health and disease. Among other subjects, Dr. Kelley has investigated the role of the gut microbiome in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), the relationship between heart disease and periodontal disease and whether saliva bacterial profiles may be useful as biomarkers for pancreatic cancer. For the SDSU HealthLINK Center, Dr. Kelley leads biomedical research methods, bioinformatics data analysis, and provides direction to the Center’s biomedical laboratory.
Chii-Dean “Joey” Lin, PhD
Co-Leader, Health Data Analytics Group
Lead Biostatistician
Dr. Chii-Dean “Joey” Lin is the Associate Chair in Statistics in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics at SDSU, an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Language and Communicative Disorders, and the Co-Director of the Statistical Consulting Center. He is the Lead Biostatistician and Co-Leader of the Health Data Analytics Group at the SDSU HealthLINK Center. Dr. Lin provides statistical expertise for health-related research on study design, data management including management of missing data, statistical data analysis, and protocol development for research projects and pilot projects within the SDSU HealthLINK Center. His research areas include statistical computing, longitudinal data analysis, spatial-temporal statistics, mixed modeling, statistical methodologies in clinical trials, and global optimization.
Shih-Fan “Sam” Lin, DrPH
Co-Leader, Measurement Methods Group
Co-Leader, Health Data Analytics Group
Dr. Shih-Fan “Sam” Lin co-leads the Center’s Measurement Methods Group and Health Data Analytics Group at the SDSU HealthLINK Center. He is also a Research Associate Professor in the School of Public Health at SDSU. His research training has focused on social demography with an emphasis on temporal trends of racial health disparities and on various health outcomes. He has ample experience in data analysis, data management, and statistical programming. Dr. Lin works closely with investigators holding research projects and pilot projects within the SDSU HealthLINK Center to ensure methodological and data quality and integrity. Dr. Lin’s research interests include racial health disparities, childhood obesity, older adult disability, and falls prevention
Kee Moon, PhD
Co-Leader, Health Sensor Methods Group
Dr. Kee Moon is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at SDSU. His current research activities include the development of ultrasonic recharging technology for implantable medical devices as well as brain-computer-interface technology. Dr. Moon is a Co-Leader of the Research Infrastructure Team’s Health Sensor Methods Group at the SDSU HealthLINK Center. He guides researchers on the development of portable, wearable health sensor technologies that can provide real-time health monitoring. His primary research interests are in smart sensor and actuator technology.
Atsushi Nara, PhD
Co-Investigator, Health Data Analytics Group
Dr. Atsushi Nara is a Co-Investigator and a member of the Health Data Analytics Group at the SDSU HealthLINK Center. He is an Associate Professor of Geography at SDSU and the Associate Director of the Center for Human Dynamics in the Mobile Age. He has expertise in geographic information systems, data mining, and spatial statistics to research on health in geographic space. He provides guidance and leads efforts on spatiotemporal database management and geospatial data analytics, and geovisualization methods. Dr. Nara also contributes to the development of an open data center and health science knowledge repository for the SDSU HealthLINK Center.
Yusuf Ozturk, PhD
Co-Leader, Health Sensor Methods Group
Dr. Yusuf Ozturk is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at SDSU. His research focus is on wearable and ambient sensors, human centric sensors, medical informatics and mobile computing. He is the founding member of the Smart Health Institute. Dr. Ozturk leads the engineering and development of wireless wearable sensors for research projects and pilot projects within the SDSU HealthLINK Center.
Christopher Paolini, PhD
Co-Investigator, Sensor Methods Group and Health Data Analytics Group
Dr. Christopher Paolini is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at SDSU. Dr. Paolini is the recipient of grants from the Department of Energy and NASA, and five NSF Office of CyberInfrastructure awards, most recently the current NSF CC* Storage Grant 1659169 Implementation of a Distributed, Shareable, and Parallel Storage Resource at SDSU to Facilitate High-Performance Computing for Climate Science. Dr. Paolini’s doctoral and post-doctoral research has been in the areas of combustion engineering, computational thermodynamics, and chemical kinetics. His current research interests include Internet of Things device development, machine learning, embedded systems, cloud computing, big data analytics, deep learning, software engineering, numerical chemical thermodynamics, numerical chemical kinetics, numerical geochemistry, high performance computing, scientific computing and numerical modeling, high speed (100gbps) networking, cyberinfrastructure development, and cybersecurity. The SDSU HealthLINK Center has granted Dr. Paolini a pilot research project award to design and manufacture a prototype of a wireless, wearable, low power, fall prediction and detection device for at-risk older adults. The device uses a small field-programmable gate array that executes a machine learning model to detect when the device wearer has fallen. Dr. Paolini received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science in 1991, an Master of Science in Computer Science in 1998, and his Doctor of Philosophy in Computational Science in 2007, all from SDSU.
Coordinators and Staff
Yaritza Benitez, BA
Data Analytic and Measurement Coordinator, Health Data Analytics Group and the Measurement Methods Group
Ms. Yaritza Benitez coordinates the efforts of the Health Data Analytics Group and the Measurement Methods Group. She has been in her role since 2021 and has supported various researchers and their research teams in different areas such as data management, data analytics as well as support using different Electronic Data Capture (EDC) systems such as REDCap Cloud, REDCap Academics, Qualtrics, and ilumivu mEMA. Her research interests lie in understanding and reducing health disparities among minorities. Ms. Benitez graduated with her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from SDSU in 2016. She has volunteered and worked at the SDSU Research Foundation since 2014 in different projects at the Institute for Behavioral and Community Health and at South Bay Latino Research Center.
Claudia Carrizosa, MD, MPH
Bio-Behavioral and Health Performance Group Coordinator
Dr. Claudia Carrizosa is a Research Associate at the SDSU HealthLINK Center. She has years of experience in research studies among medically underserved and populations affected by chronic disease and cancer. Her foreign degree in medicine and Master of Public Health with a health promotion emphasis has shaped her interest in interventions that offer more than clinical services to prevent and control disease. She </span><span style=”font-weight: 400;”>has a strong background in qualitative data collection and research interventions. Dr. Carrizosa’s research areas of interest focus on topics that include, but are not limited to, cancer disparities, patient navigation, physical activity, bone health, and healthy aging. She is licensed as the Center’s bone densitometry technician. Dr. Carrizosa is part of the Research Infrastructure Team at the SDSU HealthLINK Center.
Gehad “Gigi” Heneish
MBBCH, Master degree in pediatrics, PMI-PMP, ACRP-PM, ACRP-CCRC Clinical Research Specialist
Gehad A. Heneish is a Clinical Research Specialist at the SDSU HealthLINK Center, where she ensures regulatory and ethical compliance in clinical and behavioral research involving human subjects. She provides regulatory consultations, implements quality control measures, and works closely with multidisciplinary teams to maintain high standards in compliance and data integrity. With over a decade of experience in clinical research, Gehad has managed complex trials in diabetes, metabolic diseases, and medical devices. As a Senior Certified Clinical Research Coordinator at Headlands Research AMCR Institute, she led studies on drug development trials, continuous glucose monitoring devices, ensuring adherence to regulatory standards and fostering collaboration across cross-functional teams. Gehad also has international experience from Egypt, where she managed clinical trials in oncology and autoimmune diseases. She holds a Master’s degree in Pediatrics from Alexandria University and has a strong background in microbiology, pharmacology, and epidemiology. She is certified in Project Management (PMI-PMP) and Clinical Research Project Management (ACRP-PM) and is an ACRP-Certified Clinical Research Coordinator. Fluent in English and Arabic, Gehad excels in cross-cultural communication, enhancing regulatory and ethical compliance.
Lance Norita
Server and Database Administrator
Mr. Lance Norita is a Server and Database Administrator at the SDSU HealthLINK Center. He has a Bachelor of Science from San Diego State University. Mr. Norita oversees the Center’s physical and virtual server infrastructure including implementation, security, and management of the Center’s data analytic infrastructure and associated databases for the Center’s programs and affiliated projects.
Shyan Polman, BS
Biomedical Methods Group Coordinator
Shyan currently works as the Biomedical Management Group (BMG) Coordinator, where she oversees the management of biomedical laboratory spaces and conducts biological and biochemical assays. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Biology from San Diego State University (SDSU) in 2021 and is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Bioinformatics at SDSU. Her research focuses on the impact of fruit consumption on the gut microbiome. Shyan has a strong background in the biotechnology industry, having worked as a research associate on the development of point-of-care molecular diagnostic devices. Her technical expertise includes PCR, qPCR, DNA/RNA isolation, RNA-seq analysis, and NGS sequencing.
Michelle Santos Garcia
Administrate Support Assistant
Michelle started as an intern at the SDSU HealthLINK Center in the Spring of 2023 and transitioned to Administrative Support Assistant in 2024. She has a Bachelor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in Psychology, with an emphasis on industrial and organizational psychology. Michelle’s role consists of supporting the overall center, with the primary focus on being the Front Desk Administrative Assistant/Receptionist at the Clinical Research Center. She also supports the Community Engagement Team and the Investigator Development Team.
