Principal Investigator
Eileen McNeely, PhD, MS, RNC
While working as a family nurse practitioner in Appalachia in the early 1980’s, Dr. McNeely became increasingly aware of the central role of work in individual and family life and health. She became the first nurse practitioner hired by the U.S. Postal Service and later led the Occupational Health Nurse Practitioner program at Simmons College. She obtained a doctoral degree in Health Policy from the Brandeis Heller School in MA and was an Assistant Professor at Boston University School of Public Health where she studied the health impacts of organizational downsizing. In Washington DC, she completed an internship at the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) evaluating the impact of hazard communication regulations. Read more>
Research Team
Nidhi Ghildayal, PhD, MPH
Senior Research Associate
Nidhi Ghildayal is a Senior Research Associate. She completed her PhD in Health Services, Research, Policy, and Administration from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and her MPH in Epidemiology from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Prior to her appointment at SHINE, she held a Postdoctoral Research Fellow position at the Department of Population Medicine in Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare Institute. Her research interests include examining flourishing and mental well-being impacts on populations due to the COVID-19 pandemic; health communication; and representation of health and medical issues on digital platforms and in media.
Dorota Węziak-Białowolska, PhD
Dorota Weziak-Bialowolska works with the SHINE team at Harvard T. H. School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health. Her research interests are in methodology including psychometrics, composite scales, and indicators as well as impact assessment and evaluation. Her recent focus is also on applied well-being and health as well as the relationship between the two, especially in the workplace setting. Before joining the SHINE team, she worked for 5 years for the European Commission Joint Research Centre as a post-doctoral researcher and research fellow. She was responsible for constructing and assessing composite indicators in the field of poverty, well-being, quality of life, and cultural and creative industries. Read more>
Staff
Elizabeth Nolan, MS, MPH
Chief Administrator
As Chief Administrator, Liz Nolan oversees the research administration for the Flight Attendant Health Study, working closely with Drs. McNeely and Mordukhovich on project management and research strategy to meet study targets and milestones to ensure projects are delivered on time and within budget. Liz also assists with grant writing and reporting and her training includes occupational health policy and administration, environmental and occupational epidemiology and environmental sciences. She holds master’s degrees in occupational and environmental health and sustainability and environmental management from Harvard University.
Study Collaborators
Brent Andrew Coull, PhD
Professor of Biostatistics
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Dr. Coull’s current research interests fall into the broad areas of categorical data analysis and semiparametric regression modeling. Recent topics in the analysis of categorical data include capture-recapture mixture models, random effect models for multiple discrete binary outcomes, confidence intervals for a binomial proportion, and order-restricted methods for stratified contingency tables. In the area of semiparametric regression modeling, he has focused on the development of such models for complex data structures often encountered in public health settings, such as cross-over and longitudinal settings. Read more>
Mark J. Meyer, PhD
Assistant Professor of Statistics
Georgetown University
Mark J. Meyer, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Statistics in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Georgetown University. He is also affiliate faculty in the Center for Global Health Science and Security and part of the Global Infectious Disease Program, both at Georgetown as well. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Bucknell University where he also taught statistics. He completed his doctorate at Harvard University in the Department of Biostatistics under Dr. Brent A. Coull. Read more>
Zachary Nagel, PhD
Assistant Professor of Radiation Biology Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
My research is focused on the underlying mechanisms by which cells resist killing by DNA damaging agents. This work draws from my graduate training in chemistry under Prof. Judith Klinman, which focused on the structural, chemical and biophysical underpinnings of enzyme catalysis at UC Berkeley. My graduate work resulted in several high-profile publications and two reviews that have been cited > 100 times, and my background in chemistry continues to inform current research into the mechanisms of DNA damage and repair. As a postdoctoral research associate at MIT in the Department of Biological Engineering, I worked with Prof. Leona Samson to study the role of DNA repair capacity in multiple pathways in determining how cells respond to DNA damaging agents. Read more>
Christopher Scheibler, MD, MPH, Major USAF
Chief, Occupational Medicine | Senior Flight Surgeon
United States Air Force
Christopher is Chief, Occupational Medicine and Senior Flight Surgeon for the United States US Air Force at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in Alaska. He recently completed the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Residency (OEMR) program for physicians at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. At Harvard, his research focused on a comprehensive review of current research on the health impacts of commercial flight—such as circadian rhythm disruption, decreased cardiopulmonary function, and flight anxiety—on both aircrew and passengers. In a separate project, he helped evaluate the hazards of cosmic ionizing radiation and its effects on the health of aircrew and passengers, specifically looking at cancer risk and reproductive health outcomes.
Sneh Manishi Toprani, PhD
Research Fellow
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Dr. (Miss) Sneh Manishi Toprani is a post-doctoral fellow at John B Little Center for Radiation Science, Department of Environmental Health at Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health. As a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Toprani is responsible for leading a project that is focused on lung cancer. The major goals of this project are to understand the basis for lung cancer susceptibility and to identify new personalized strategies for radiation therapy in patients with non-small cell lung cancer. She is also a principal investigator for the project “Assessing DNA damage and repair capacity in airline flight crew” supported by Harvard-NIEHS Center for Environmental Health pilot project to test the hypothesis whether compromised genomic integrity due to air travel exposures might play a role in elevated health risk observed in flight crew. Read more>