Posts classified under: Advising Faculty

• Our lab is interested in Boolean modeling to gaining insight into cellular processes at a systems level.  Our work includes analysis of Boolean circuit models using methods based on logic and automata theory, applied to understanding of the cell cycle, signal transduction networks, etc., and Boolean analysis of relationships in multiple large data sets, to understand regulation and global differences in gene expression among cell types.

I have two main research interests: large-scale statistical data-mining, and applications of information technology in healthcare. In particular, I use tools from graph theory, machine learning, probability, and statistical physics in data-driven healthcare (predictive models, optimization, and decisions), high dimensional statistics, and networks.

I have published empirical economics and health services research on the elderly, adolescents, HIV/AIDS and managed care. Most recently, I have been working on the labor market consequences of the obesity epidemic. I have researched the regulation of the viatical-settlements market (a secondary life-insurance market that often targets HIV patients) and summer/winter differences in nutritional outcomes for low-income American families. I am working on a project examining the labor-market conditions that help determine why some U.S. employers do not provide health insurance.

I am an infectious diseases physician and an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and a Stanford Health Policy affiliate.  My research interests involve understanding the relationship between policies and health outcomes in developing countries. I explore how decisions about foreign assistance for health are made, and how those decisions affect the health of those whom assistance aims to serve.  I am also a disease modeler, and use that skill to explore issues of resource allocation in low and middle-income countries with cost-effectiveness analyses.