Fellows

The Center has an active research training program for postdoctoral fellows. Click here for information on the program and to view/complete the application. This page lists current fellows and describes their work. Click on any fellow's name to view their complete profile and contact information.

  • Cati Brown obtained her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Georgia and received her BA from Agnes Scott College. Her graduate research focused on
    computational approaches to detecting deception using tobacco industry documents. With UCSF, Brown is looking forward to continuing research on the language of deception and corporate malfeasance. Other research interests include: lung cancer stigma, diffusion of smoking/anti-smoking marketing messages, low income women as a tobacco industry target, and the marginalization of smokers.

  • Amanda Fallin, a first year fellow, received her BSN, MSN and PhD in Nursing from the University of Kentucky. She is interested in the adoption and implementation of smoke and tobacco-free policies. During her doctoral program, Amanda was a project associate on an NHLBI-funded project to investigate factors associated with smoke-free policy adoption.

  • Mariaelena Gonzalez, is a third year fellow at the CTCRE.  Her interests include comparative racial/ethnic studies, public policy, health disparities, globalization, inequality, and religion and health.  Dr. Gonzalez received her Ph.D.

  • Rachel Grana is a second-year fellow. She earned her Masters of Public Health and PhD in Health Behavior Research at the University of Southern California.  Her research at the Center focuses on smoking cessation interventions and the use of other tobacco products and electronic cigarettes. Her dissertation research investigated sociocultural stress and coping styles in the etiology of cigarette smoking and other substance use among Hispanic/Latino adolescents. Prior to her graduate work, she worked as a government-contracted analyst to the Tobacco Control Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in Community Health Education, with a minor in Spanish, from the University of Arizona in her hometown of Tucson, AZ.

  • Nan Jiang is a third-year postdoctoral fellow who received her PhD in Health Behavior from Indiana University, and BSN from Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, China.  Her research focuses on the co-use of tobacco and alcohol; the impact of smokefree policies on tobacco and alcohol use; and tobacco marketing strategies linked with alcohol.

  • Ganna (Anna) Kostygina is a first-year fellow. She received her M.A. and her Ph.D. degrees in Communication from the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication.

  • Youn Ok Lee completed a PhD and MA in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received a BA from Emory University. Trained as a sociologist, she is interested in applying her background in culture, life course, social psychology, and social inequality to researching health behavior. Youn Ok's current projects focus on social smoking among young adults. Her research interests include: health behavior, adolescence and the transition to young adulthood, health policy, social marketing, and mixed-method research design.

  • Sungkyu, a first year fellow, received his Ph.D. in Public Health Policy at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, and completed M.P.H. in International Health from Graduate School of Public Health at Yonsei University in South Korea.  Sungkyu’s research interests include transnational tobacco companies’(TTCs) strategies to gain access into emerging markets and their marketing activities to influence tobacco use of youths and young adults.  He is also interested in enhancing supply-side measures in the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.  Recently, he has become interested in use of electronic-cigarette among South Korean youths.   

  • Arnab Mukherjea, a first-year postdoctoral fellow, received his Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) degree from the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley.  One of his dissertation studies focused on creating a culturally-appropriate South Asian tobacco module to assess total tobacco prevelance and investigate the relationship between use of non-traditional products and tobacco-related disease in this population.  Arnab's research interests include investigation of preventable health disparities among racial and ethnic populations, with an emphasis on understanding the nexus between culture, behavior, and outcomes (such as cultural contexts of tobacco use) in small and understudied populations.

  • Sam's doctoral work (PhD in epidemiology, UCLA) focused on the molecular and genetic epidemiology of smoking-related cancers, particularly in the investigation of immune-related hypotheses. He also has a Master of Public Health degree from San Diego State University (health promotion) and a Bachelor of Science in animal physiology and neuroscience from UCSD. Sam’s research interests include health disparities, gene-environment interactions, cancer, and heart disease.