New Map of Life Fellows – 2019 Cohort

EARLY CHILDHOOD INFLUENCES

Dr. Jonas Miller
Jonas Miller received his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of California, Davis in 2017. He is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Jonas is broadly interested in how adverse versus supportive environments impact neurobiological, cognitive, and social-emotional development. In his postdoctoral work at Stanford, Jonas is expanding his work to study the prenatal origins of brain and emotional functioning in preschool-age children. The ultimate goal of this research is to identify biomarkers of risk for childhood difficulties at the earliest developmental time point.

Advisors: Dr. Ian Gotlib (Psychology); Dr. Paul Wise (Medicine and Health Policy)

 

EDUCATION

Dr. Ilana Horwitz

Dr. Ilana Horwitz holds a doctorate in Sociology of Education from the Stanford Graduate School of Education. In her research, Ilana asks: how do young people’s social identities—primarily religion, social class, gender and race—shape their educational journeys. She examines this question by analyzing various nationally representative, longitudinal survey and interview datasets. Prior to Stanford, Ilana worked as a management consultant and program evaluator. She also earned a master’s in Sociology from Stanford, a master’s in International Education Development from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a bachelor’s in Business Administration from Emory University.

Advisor: Dr. Ari Kelman

 

BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Diego Sierra Huertas (Built Environment Fellow)
Diego Sierra Huertas is a designer, researcher and entrepreneur. Currently, he is a fellow at the Stanford Center of Longevity, redesigning more equitable and fulfilling futures for century-long lives. After leading industry strategy at Microsoft for several years, he received an Isaac and Madeline Stein Fellowship and Fulbright Scholarship in the U.S. to examine the implications of technology for equity in learning opportunities. He has advanced key technology inclusion programs in Latin America, including the novel affordable connectivity technology of TV Whitespace for rural areas. He has also worked in early-stage startups that improve learning environments through virtual reality and data science. Currently, he is interested in the design of technologies that improve learning for aging adults. He holds a M.A. in Learning, Design a Technology from Stanford University.

Advisor: Dr. Rob Jackson

ENVIRONMENT – CLIMATE

Dr. Chenghao Wang (Environmental Fellow)
Chenghao Wang, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Earth System Science at Stanford University. He is currently studying the relationship between multi-scale energy consumption and human well-being metrics to reduce the need for global energy infrastructure and increase global equality. Chenghao received his Ph.D. in Civil, Environmental, and Sustainable Engineering from Arizona State University in 2019, where he studied the sustainable development of cities with a focus on how green infrastructure (especially urban trees) can affect urban meteorology and climatology based on numerical simulations and remote sensing techniques.

Advisor: Dr. Rob Jackson

FINANCIAL SECURITY

Dr. Jialu Streeter

Jialu L. Streeter, Ph.D., is a research scholar and economist in Stanford University. She is a New Map of Life Financial Security Fellow at Stanford Center on Longevity. Streeter’s research primarily focuses on older adults’ financial and emotional well-being, including financial security in retirement, labor supply and retirement decisions, and social connectedness.

Advisor: Dr. Gopi Shah Goda

 

LIFESTYLE & FITNESS

Dr. Megan Roche

Megan Roche received her medical degree from Stanford University in 2018. She is completing a Ph.D. in Epidemiology with a clinical research focus on bone health in athletes and genetic predictors of sports injury. In addition, Megan is helping launch a lifestyle medicine initiative at Stanford and is the Head of Endurance Sports for AxGen, a genetics company that informs athletes about personal injury risk and physiology.

Megan is a five-time national trail running champion, a North American mountain running champion, and a six-time member of Team USA. She is a co-author of the book “The Happy Runner” and a co-founder of Some Work All Play, a coaching group centered around finding long-term fulfillment in the process of running. Megan completed her undergraduate degree in neuroscience at Duke University and competed in field hockey and track and field.

Advisor: Dr. Michael Fredericson

 

INTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS

Sasha Shen Johfre

Sasha is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Stanford University. Her primary research focuses on the social construction of age as a system of social difference. She is broadly interested in processes of social order and social inequality, including: the production of systems of social difference (such as gender, race, and age); quantitative and computational methods (including natural language processing); and cultural sociology (including the societal focus on things that are “natural”).

Advisor: Dr. Jeremy Freese

 

WORK

Dr. Alice Milivinti

Alice Milivinti is a postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford Center for Population Health Sciences. She obtained a Ph.D. in Demography from the University of Geneva (Switzerland). During her Ph.D. program, she spent a year at the University of Michigan for one year under the supervision of Prof. HwaJung Choi and Prof. Robert Shoeni, where she joined a project on the health implications of distance between adult children and their parents. Her research lies at the intersection of demography and population economics, focusing in particular on the methodological and statistical challenges related to casual inference. She specializes in using Bayesian methods and spatial statistics to study the spillover effects of public policies.

Advisor: Dr. David Rehkopf

 

HEALTHCARE & TECHNOLOGY

Dr. Andrea Jonas

Dr. Andrea Jonas is a current fellow in the Pulmonary and Critical Care Department at Stanford University. She completed her undergraduate studies at Harvard University where she studied chemistry and physics. She went on to join Dr. Michael Greenberg’s neurobiology lab at Harvard Medical School as a basic science research assistant. She received her MD from Johns Hopkins University, where she stayed on to complete residency training in internal medicine on the Osler Medical Service. She is currently completing a fellowship in health care innovation and systems design as part of the Clinical Excellence Research Center at Stanford University. Her research interests include improving delivery of palliative care for patients with advanced lung diseases, particularly interstitial lung disease.

Advisor: Dr. Nirav Shah