Dhand Lab
People
Fun fact:
Amar is an urban biking enthusiast.
Amar Dhand
Principal Investigator
Dr. Amar Dhand is a neurologist and network scientist. He received his MD from Harvard Medical School and his DPhil from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. His graduate work with Professor Geoffrey Walford focused on peer learning among heroin users in New Delhi. He completed a medical internship, neurology residency and fellowship at UCSF. He is currently Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School with a joint appointment at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University.
Dr. Dhand is passionate about the impact of social networks on human disease. He combines expertise in clinical neurology and social sciences for this pursuit. His goal is to understand patients as individuals embedded in rich social webs, and to transform this understanding into interventions to improve lives.
Ian Corbin
Research Scientist
Ian Marcus Corbin is a scholar, writer, and entrepreneur from the North Shore of Boston. He has studied politics, religion and philosophy at Gordon College, Oxford University, Yale University and Boston College, with an eye to the ways that deep human values affect the formation and evaluation of human communities. He has taught at a number of colleges in the Boston area, published widely in venues such as the Wall Street Journal, The Spectator and Weekly Standard, and founded and run a contemporary art gallery. He is deeply concerned about the atrophy of community in modern America, and delighted to be working against it as part of the Human Network Initiative.
Fun fact:
Ian spent his adolescence playing guitar in a ska-punk band.
Zachary Wehrwein
Data Scientist
Zachary Robert Wehrwein is a sociologist. He will receive his PhD from Harvard University. He holds degrees from the London School of Economics and the University of Chicago. His coursework (and later teaching) focused on applied econometrics, machine learning, social theory, and the philosophy of the social sciences.He has worked with network data derived from the decrees made by 4th century tribunes, transactions among 17th century merchants, communications within 21st century police departments, exchanges on darknet markets, and participation in neo-fascist internet forums. He is excited to join the data-driven interdisciplinary intellectual community of HNI social network analysis.
Fun fact:
Zach was very briefly the under-12 chess champion of Southwest Minneapolis in the late 1990s. Zach eloped with his wife, not a chess champion but a nationally celebrated literary critic, after dating her for about 6 weeks.
Vrushali Dhongade
Project Manager
Vrushali is a General Physician and received her Medical degree from Bharati Vidyapeeth Medical College, Pune, India in 2015. She completed her Master of Science in Clinical Research from Boston University in 2021 and her Master in Bioethics from Harvard Medical School in 2022. She worked on a Digital Phenotyping Study involving Alzheimer’s Disease patients and a COVID-19 coagulation study at Boston University and Boston Medical Center, respectively, and completed a Capstone Project at Harvard Medical School that explored the risk-benefit assessment strategies of the Mass General Brigham Institutional Review Board. Vrushali is interested in neuropsychiatric clinical research as well as digital health and is deeply interested in global health inequities, clinical ethics, and research ethics. She is delighted to be a part of the prestigious Dhand lab and looks forward to dive deeper into the multi-faceted research involving stroke recovery and its relationship to interpersonal interactions and social networks.
Fun fact:
Vrushali was trained in Muay Thai kickboxing for 2 years.
Kelly White
Research Assistant
Kelly is a recent graduate from the University of Notre Dame where she majored in neuroscience and minored in anthropology. As an undergraduate, she worked as a research assistant in a psychology laboratory with a focus on visual attention and memory. Most recently, she studied the impact of social determinants of health on the outcomes of minority patients hospitalized due to COVID-19 in the Hartford Healthcare system in Connecticut. Kelly is thrilled to join the Dhand Lab and to study the influence of social networks on stroke patient recovery through the interface of science and technology.
Fun fact:
Kelly enjoys golfing and has gotten a hole-in-one.
Gianna Scoleri
Research Assistant
Gianna is an aspiring medical student pursuing a bachelor's degree in health sciences at Northeastern University. Gianna has enjoyed clinical work in respiratory care and orthopedic surgery in Boston. She plans to emphasize public health principles in her clinical career. Gianna often volunteers at women's shelters and organizes school supply drives and tutoring programs. Gianna is passionate about using evidence-based science to improve population health. Therefore, Gianna is ecstatic to explore the synergistic relationship between social networks and stroke recovery.
Fun fact:
In her free time, Gianna loves gardening.
Archana Podury
Research Assistant
Archana is a medical student at Harvard Medical School in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences & Technology program. She studied Neuroscience at Cornell University and worked on brain-machine interfaces at a neurotechnology startup before transitioning to medicine. She believes in developing sociology responsible technology that draws on human experiences just as much as it does from technical advances. Archana is excited to help build the Human Network Initiative to address questions at the intersection of loneliness, network science, and neural recovery.
Fun fact:
Archana went to Japan for like six weeks and did art and stuff.
Riya Dahima
Research Student
Riya is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Northeastern University majoring in Behavioral Neuroscience. She hopes to attend medical school after completing her bachelor’s degree. Her main interests include psychopharmacology, neurology, and psychiatry. Riya previously worked at Tufts Medical Center as a patient care assistant. While at Tufts, she regularly interacted with recovered stroke patients. She is excited to work on the SocialBit study and learn about stroke recovery from a research-based perspective.
Fun fact:
Riya won her high school’s annual donut eating competition four years in a row.
Melinda Luo
Research Student
Melinda is a third-year undergraduate student at Northeastern University majoring in Biology with a minor in Behavioral Neuroscience. She is interested in public health, neurology, and health literacy/education. She previously worked at Mass Eye and Ear as a medical assistant in the otolaryngology department and hopes to attend medical school after graduation. She is excited to work on the SocialBit study and learn more about clinical research, HealthTech, and stroke physiology.
Fun fact:
In her free time, Melinda enjoys hiking.
Carissa Mastrangelo
Research Student
Carissa is in her fourth year at Northeastern University studying psychology and computer science. Her previous co-op at Boston
University involved qualitative research on family and cultural aspects of disability and chronic illness. More recently, Carissa worked as a clinical research intern at Boston Children's Hospital where she studied biomarkers of ADHD in children. Carissa plans to pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology. She is very interested in biopsychosocial aspects of health and is excited to contribute to exciting research on social networks and neurological disorders.
Fun fact:
Carissa is excellent at word-search games. Her favorite one is Boggle.
Katie Crum
Research Assistant
Katie recently graduated from Amherst College where she majored in Mathematics and Psychology. At Amherst, she worked as a research assistant studying child learning and development for the psychology department. She currently works with the Center for Healthcare Delivery Sciences within the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology, working to improve healthcare through engaging patients and providers in care delivery solutions. She is excited to have the opportunity to work with the Dhand lab, employing social networks during stroke recovery.
Fun fact:
In her free time, Katie enjoys reading and doing jigsaw puzzles
Theresa Oduol
Research Assistant
Theresa Oduol is a recent graduate of Cornell University where she studied infectious disease biology and development economics. As a research assistant in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Theresa works on a variety of projects in implementation science, comparative effectiveness research, machine learning, and drug regulatory pathways. Theresa intends to dedicate her career to advancing the field of pharmacovigilance in Sub-Saharan Africa and she is excited to better understand the relationship between social networks and health outcomes in the context of human development.
Fun fact:
Theresa has a passion for fashion and an endless collection of scarves.
Lab Alumni
Olivia Zhang
Research Student
Olivia is a senior at Harvard College pursuing interdisciplinary studies in Applied Mathematics, Psychology, and History of Science. She is passionate about understanding human nature and improving the experience of humanity in today’s age of accelerating technologies. With her ongoing investigation of modern loneliness, Olivia is thrilled to join the Human Network Initiative to work with and help people at real-world crossroads of technology, philosophy, data, and empathic innovation.
2022 Update:
Senior at Harvard College
Karen Li
Research Student
Karen is a junior at Tufts University studying Biochemistry and Cognitive & Brain Sciences. After completing a research internship at Boston University where she worked on a project examining the effects of social support and socioeconomics on maternal adjustment, she became interested in further studying the role of social networks in health outcomes. Karen looks forward to working with the Dhand Lab to investigate social sensors as a method to measure interpersonal interactions during stroke recovery.
2022 Update:
Senior at Tufts University
Lilin Tong
Medical Student Researcher
Lilin Tong is a first year medical student at Boston University School of Medicine. Prior to transitioning to medical school, Lilin conducted research in translational neuroscience labs at Harvard and MIT and consulted for biotech/pharma companies. Having worked at the forefront of discovery for transformative therapies, Lilin witnessed the disparities that often exist in healthcare innovations and access to care. Passionate about bridging the gap in health inequity, Lilin is using network science to understand how different brain tumor patient journeys impact the treatment brain tumor patients receive and their outcome. She is thrilled be working with the Dhand lab to address questions that can ultimately improve the lives and access to healthcare for all brain tumor patients.
2022 Update:
MS2 at Boston University School of Medicine
Chimaa Boutarf
Research Student
Chimaa is an undergraduate student at the University of Massachusetts Lowell studying biomedical engineering, and concentrating on medical devices. Her passion for using science to make people’s lives easier is what inspired her to pursue her major. With being a part of this lab, she wants to contribute to a better understanding of how the patients’ network can affect their recovery. She is excited that this research merges many areas of study which allows her to expand her current knowledge.
2022 Update:
Senior at UMass Lowell
Jennifer Lowell
Research Student
Jennifer is a recent master’s graduate interested in shaping medicine to better care for to patients’ social realities. As an undergraduate at Harvard, Jennifer studied Philosophy and Classics and worked as an Emergency Medical Technician. Jennifer is especially interested in improving healthcare in rural and underserved communities and believes that understanding patients’ social networks and lived experiences is essential to providing effective and meaningful healthcare. Jennifer is excited to join the Dhand Lab’s research on the relationship between stroke recovery and patients’ social networks.
2022 Update:
PhD Student at Vanderbilt University
Liam McCafferty
Research Assistant
Liam recently graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from Wheaton College, MA. During his undergraduate career he studied under Dr. Jennifer Lanni, leveraging RNA-sequencing to map mutant Zebrafish genome’s onto gene-ontology networks. He is a believer in the positive power of science and its ability to make people’s lives healthier and happier. Liam is excited to be a member of the Dhand Lab and to be utilizing the power of social networks to help improve the lives and health outcomes of stroke victims and their families.
Fun fact:
Liam spends his free time playing the cello, doing improv comedy, and playing DnD with his friends.
Ahab Chopra
Research Student
Ahab is a current senior at Harvard University studying both Chemistry and Neuroscience with a minor in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. During college, Ahab was heavily involved in research at Dr. Catherine Dulac’s lab where he completed his honors thesis on the methodology for producing dual-fluorescent nanobodies. In the future, Ahab will be pursuing an MD/PhD as he hopes to translate research from bench to bedside. Given his clinical interests in the effects of social isolation, Ahab is extremely excited to be a member of the Dhand Lab and help launch the SocialBit project.
2021 Update:
University of Michigan Medical Student
Samir Tapiawala
Visiting Fellow
Samir is healthcare professional from India, currently pursuing Master’s in Health Informatics and Graduate Certificate in Data Analytics from Northeastern University. He believes that social determinants including human relationship play major role in the causation and maintenance of the disease in an individual. With his clinical experience of dealing with psycho-somatic disorders, Samir is looking forward to contribute towards building conducive network around the person for the better outcome of the disease. Samir is interested in leveraging healthcare data for better outcome of the disease, promote healthy lifestyle and reduce overall healthcare cost.
2021 Update:
Project Manager at Prapela, a pediatric biotechnology start-up company
Amber Nieves
Research Assistant
Amber graduated in May 2019 with a Bachelor’s degree in Physics and a minor in Computer Science from Bridgewater State University. She is passionate about combining science and helping others. What inspired her was learning about how crucial physics is when it comes to improving medicine and treatments. Amber is excited to apply her skills and creativity to help advance Dr. Dhand’s lab with their goals of improving the lives of stroke patients by investigating the impact of social networks.
2020 Update:
Research Assistant at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Karen Li
Research Assistant
Karen is a recent graduate from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. As an undergrad, Karen traveled to Haiti three times for volunteer work, which inspired her to think about how healthcare can be improved logistically in under-resourced communities. This led her to complete her thesis in investigating patient supply chains in competing hospital networks under the advisory of Dr. Anna Nagurney. She is very excited to be working with the Dhand Lab and strengthening the intersection between operations science and stroke interventions.
Check out news about her project and paper!
2020 Update:
Georgetown University Medical Student
Rachel Greben
Research Trainee
Rachel is a medical student in her second year of studies at the University of Toronto. During her first year of medical school, Rachel became interested in gaining a better understanding of the social and environmental factors that contribute to a person’s health. She hopes to learn how these issues can be better addressed on both a systems level and with each patient in front of her. She is also interested in the areas of quality improvement and high value care, and is currently a Choosing Wisely STARS representative at her medical school. Rachel is very excited to have the opportunity to work in the Dhand Lab and to learn how network science can be applied to study these issues.
2022 Update:
Resident in Psychiatry at University of Toronto
Abby Halm
Research Assistant
Abby completed her undergraduate degree in mathematical economic analysis at Rice University, where she also competed on the NCAA D1 Cross-Country and Track & Field teams. While working as a research intern for Dr. Blumenthal-Barby in the Baylor College of Medicine Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Abby became fascinated with the role of behavioral economics in medical decision making, and, more generally, with research focused on the intersection of the social sciences and medicine. Abby is thrilled to investigate the relationships between stroke patients’ social networks and their recovery as a member of Dr. Dhand’s team.
2019 Update:
UVA Medical Student
Nuzulul Kurniansyah
Research Trainee
Nuzulul will be graduating in September 2018 with a Masters of Science in Bioinformatics from Boston University. Nuzulul graduated from a 2 year accelerated high school program in Jakarta, Indonesia before completing his undergraduate degree at Binus University in Jakarta. In 2014, he moved to Boston to begin a Masters in Computer Science. During an algorithm in bioinformatics class, he realized his passion for the subject and made the decision to switch to study bioinformatics.
2019 Update:
Analyst at
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Angela Kim
Research Coordinator
An aspiring physician, Angela is interested in the intersection of biological, psychological and social aspects of patient care. She is excited to contribute to a better understanding of how patients' network can affect their recovery as part of Social Networks team.
Angela studied neurobiology at Harvard and investigated error-driven learning behavior of mice and genetic factors responsible for C. elegans' neuronal development. She is excited to bring her previous experience and work with the members of Dr. Dhand's team.
2018 Update:
SUNY Downstate Medical Student
Simone Renault
Research Coordinator
Simone Renault is a staunch advocate for global health equity and is committed to pursuits that allow her to better understand and contribute to evidence-based practice for disease prevention and treatment, especially in low-resource settings. Simone graduated with degrees in neurobiology and international studies from the University of Iowa and is therefore thrilled to be part of an innovative lab studying health and health care as part of a biosocial system.
2017 Update:
UCLA Medical Student
Ozichi Osuoha
Research Assistant
Ozichi is a sophomore studying Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology at Harvard College with a secondary in Global Health and Health Policy. An aspiring medical student, Ozichi is looking to gain exposure to clinical research through patient interactions and quantitative analysis of the social aspects that affect health. She believes that social awareness is an essential component to educating a well-rounded health care professional. Ozichi is also looking forward to learning more about the events that precede and follow a stroke and how these events affect not only the patient, but the patient's family, friends, and future relationships.
2017 Update:
Harvard Undergraduate
Michael Tsiaklides
Research Coordinator
Michael Tsiaklides has experience conducting research in the social sciences. He is a dedicated lab assistant and also known as the data czar. He is critical for the research project's daily functioning and is now becoming involved in writing up some of the first findings from the research.
2017 Update:
Clinical Research Coordinator
John Wang
Research Assistant
John is a December graduate from Washington University in St. Louis who is joining the lab during his semester before medical school. He studied neuroscience and anthropology as an undergrad and is excited about doing research that intersects both of his majors nicely. As an avid user of his iPhone, he is happy to be getting involved with the development of the mobile networks pilot project.
2017 Update:
NYU Medical Student
Lindsay Obermeyer
Artist
Lindsay Obermeyer is a local textile artist who is also a stroke survivor. She has always included teaching as part of her art practice. Inspired by the visual social networks that have come out of the lab, she has created beautiful crocheted networks.
2017 Update:
Entrepreneur and Textile Artist
Selena Lee
Intern
Selena Lee is a high school junior attending John Burroughs School. She is interested in biomedical sciences and is intrigued by the impact of social interaction on outcomes following disease. She is very excited to be working with Dr. Dhand and his group to study the social networks of stroke patients—how they evolve after stroke and influence recovery.
2018 Update:
Yale Undergraduate
Ali Dalton
Research Assistant
Ali Dalton is a biology and computer science major at Dartmouth College. Her research interests have been primarily on data science and computational biology projects with an emphasis on clustering algorithms and network analysis. She is passionate about utilizing technology and computational methods in health related research, making her particularly excited to be a part of this team. As a St. Louis native, she is also excited to be back home, rooting for the Cardinals!
2017 Update:
Software Engineer at Perchwell
Beniva Ganther
Intern
Beniva Ganther is a biochemistry and anthropology double major at Washington University in St. Louis. She is strongly interested in doing research that utilizes more than just one area of study. She hopes to be able to apply her backgrounds in hard science and social science in the medical field, so that in the future there’s a more effective and efficient way of finding patterns in research and in diagnosing and helping patients. Beniva is also incredibly excited to see the potential of social network research in applied to patients all over the world!
2017 Update:
WUSTL Undergraduate
