Principal Faculty Research
Our principal faculty are formally appointed both within Rutgers Global Health Institute and at a Rutgers school. They are innovators who lead research involving aerial drones to detect breeding mosquitoes that threaten to spread disease and who engineer blood tests and evaluate breath tests to decode the inner workings of human body systems. They are confronting diverse global health challenges – the critical issues that affect everyone, and the complex problems that are especially detrimental to the most vulnerable among us.
Ubydul Haque
Ubydul Haque is a geospatial epidemiologist who designs data- and technology-driven solutions for confronting global public health problems. Using data from his original research and existing large datasets that are available via public and private sector sources, Haque creates mathematical algorithms and forecasting models. His research has focused on infectious diseases, climate change, conflict and war, and natural disasters. He has led multiple studies on the health impacts of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Umer Hassan
Umer Hassan is an expert in nanotechnology and biological measurement. His laboratory is focused on developing biosensing technologies for infectious disease diagnostics and therapeutics applications for global health care settings, aiming to contribute fundamental knowledge and develop breakthrough engineering tools and methods for personalized and predictive health care.
Bobby Brooke Herrera
Bobby Brooke Herrera is a research scientist who studies epidemic viruses and infectious diseases, with a focus on developing diagnostic and therapeutic tools to improve disease outbreak preparedness and response. He incorporates approaches in epidemiology, immunology, molecular biology, and virology. He has investigated various dynamics of asymptomatic human infections by mosquito-borne viruses and has developed diagnostic testing related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and COVID-19 disease, the Zika virus, and Ebola.
Gwenyth Lee
Gwenyth Lee is a public health researcher with expertise in global disease epidemiology. She has spent years investigating the interrelated roles of various biological, environmental, and social factors on child growth in Latin America. She is particularly interested in exposures that children encounter early in their lives (e.g., undernutrition, poor sanitation, infectious pathogens) and the compounding effects of such exposures on their long-term development. Much of her current research involves longitudinal birth cohort studies in northern coastal Ecuador.
Tara M. Friebel
Tara M. Friebel is a cancer epidemiologist with expertise in global oncology and implementation science. Her research focuses on the prevention, early detection, and treatment of breast and cervical cancer in sub-Saharan Africa and the disparities in cancer care that exist in low-resource settings. She is an active member of the Botswana-Rutgers Partnership for Health.
Her research in Africa has investigated geographic, clinical, and sociodemographic factors among cervical cancer patients in Botswana and the use of implementation science methods to reduce the breast cancer burden in Tanzania. She also has conducted research on guidelines for cervical cancer screening in HIV-endemic countries and disparities in risk factors for the breast cancer triple negative subtype among Black women undergoing screening mammography at the University of Pennsylvania Health System.