California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine Next-Gen Representative Research Program

Bio: Deborah Adeyemi is a PhD candidate in Epidemiology & Translational Science with a Designated Emphasis in Computational Precision Health. Her research interests include reproductive and perinatal epidemiology, health disparities and equity, health services research, delivery science, and machine learning. She is committed to translating quantitative findings into insights that can inform health care delivery and implementation in real-world settings, with a focus on reducing persistent racial disparities in women’s health outcomes. Using large administrative, disease surveillance, and electronic health records data, she examines how risk and outcomes vary within populations that are often studied as homogeneous groups.
Project Description: Characterizing Variation in Postpartum Readmission Risk Among Black Women Using Intersectional and Bayesian Approaches In California, postpartum readmission rates have increased by 45% between 1997 and 2018, with the greatest risk among Black women, often driven by multiple social, structural, and clinical factors. Deborah Adeyemi aims to develop machine learning models to identify which Black women in California are at greatest risk for postpartum readmissions and examine how various factors intersect to shape risk across subgroups.

Bio: Isaac grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Psychological and Brain Sciences from UC Santa Barbara and received a Master of Arts in Clinical Psychology from CSU Northridge. He is currently a doctoral student in Public Health with a concentration in health services research and implementation science. His research interests lie at the intersection of whole-person digital health tools, implementation science, and human-computer interaction. Aside from research, Isaac loves to rock climb, hike, and watch movies.
Project Description:Addressing Chronic Disease Disparities through Representative Generative Artificial Intelligence and Culturally Responsive, Whole-Person Precision Medicine Tools.
Cardiovascular disease disproportionately affects minority and low-socioeconomic status groups. Digital health tools have recently incorporated behavioral health measures, though most tools lack the collection of cultural and contextual factors. Isaac Bouchard aims to design a culturally- and contextually-aware, AI-enabled “behavior change and mental health support tool” and create a model of care specifically for underrepresented groups with, or at risk for, cardiovascular disease.

Bio: Fan-Ying Chan is a PhD student, whose research focuses on applying artificial intelligence to real-world clinical practice. Trained as a pharmacist, she earned both her bachelor's and master's degrees in pharmacy from Taipei Medical University in Taiwan. Her research utilizes machine learning, electronic health record data, and patient-reported outcomes to improve clinical decision-making, symptom management, and quality of life for cancer survivors. As a CIAPM fellow, she aims to leverage these precision medicine approaches to advance more actionable, patient-centered cancer care in the United States.
Project Description: Patient-Reported Outcomes and Artificial Intelligence-Informed Proactive Screening to Reduce Disparities Among Majority-Minority Cancer Population in Southern CA.
Disparities in anticancer treatment and outcomes experienced by minority racial and ethnic groups may be driven by communication barriers such as language barriers, implicit bias, and time constraints and contribute to increased acute care use. Fan-Ying Chan aims to compare symptom burden in patient-reported outcomes to clinical notes to inform the development of an AI tool to predict acute care use in underrepresented groups.

Bio: Tracy Chidyausiku earned her MS in Epidemiology and Clinical Research and her BA in Science, Technology, and Society from Stanford University. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a product manager developing data structures and mobile tools to advance Type 2 diabetes management. As a PhD candidate, she is investigating how poverty and the built environment impact diabetes prevention using mixed methods, geospatial analysis, and mobile data. Specifically, she is integrating multimodal patient-generated lived-experience data with electronic health record data to advance place-based precision diabetes prevention for low-income older adults at high risk for diabetes progression. Her long-term goal is to inform policymakers and create cost-effective, sustainable interventions to prevent diabetes.
Project Description: Integrating Citizen-Generated Lived-Experience Data with Electronic Health Records to Advance Representative Precision Diabetes Prevention in Low-Income Older Adults in CA.
Type 2 diabetes and prediabetes are prevalent in California and lower socioeconomic communities bear higher disease burden and structural barriers to lifestyle modification as treatment. Tracy Chidyausiku aims to identify barriers and facilitators to outdoor walking for low-income older adults at high risk for poor diabetes outcomes in the Bay Area using mobile app and large health system data comparing neighborhood lived experiences with individual diabetes trajectories.

Bio: Amber Keith is a PhD trainee in macrophage biology. Her research project focuses on precision medicine in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), investigating genetic and immune biomarkers to target tumor-macrophage interactions. Her goal is to improve outcomes for disproportionately affected groups, particularly within the African American community, and advocate for strategies to eliminate health disparities in cancer. Amber’s foundational training includes stem cell and neurodegenerative disease research at CSU Fullerton and UC Irvine. Deeply inspired by her father’s battle with PDAC, she is fiercely committed to translating bench science into clinical applications to develop novel curative treatments.
Project Description: A Data-Driven Approach to Identify Immune Biomarkers to Diagnose and Prevent Pancreatic Cancer in African Americans.
Pancreatic cancer is the third-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S. and disproportionately affects African Americans, who in California have a 24% higher diagnosis rate compared to all ethnicities combined, suggesting that environmental rather than genetic factors may play a major role. Amber Keith aims to create an interface that characterizes patients’ cancer diagnoses and social factors to identify vulnerable groups, build an AI model to predict tumor aggressiveness, and investigate the relationship between specific tumor markers in African American patients.

Bio: Nikita Mohapatra is an MD/PhD student in Biomedical Engineering at UC Davis. Her research explores extracellular vesicles as biomarkers of health and disease, with a focus on understanding how biological, social, and environmental factors contribute to differences in patient outcomes. She is interested in developing diagnostic tools that support more equitable and personalized healthcare, particularly in acute care settings where time and resources are limited. Outside of lab, Nikita enjoys cooking, crocheting, and hiking.
Project Description: How Cumulative Social and Environmental Stress Shapes Recovery after Traumatic Brain Injury.
Individuals with acute traumatic brain injury experience variability in recovery outcomes, affected by both clinical factors and by social and environmental stressors. Nikita Mohapatra aims to investigate whether biomarkers in patient serum show biological evidence of stress and whether that can explain differences in experienced traumatic brain injury recovery.

Bio: Joe Morrison is an MD/PhD student with a research focus on orthopedics and clinical diagnostics. His doctoral work in engineering examines whether routine X-rays and clinical information can predict bone healing complications earlier after surgery, with the goal of improving care for rural and underserved Californians. He has published work on emergency medicine, musculoskeletal health, and health disparities, and has been a policy advocate regarding homelessness and structural determinants of health in Northern California. He plans to pursue a career as a physician scientist focused on musculoskeletal care and research.
Project Description: After the Break: Using X-rays and Machine Learning to Catch Bone Healing Problems Sooner.
Tibial bone fractures of the lower leg are one of the most common surgical long-bone repairs, but they frequently experience incomplete healing, disproportionately affecting patients with limited access to care. Joseph Morrison aims to identify medical imaging features that can predict incorrect bone healing and inform AI-powered early identification of incomplete healing following surgery, particularly in rural and low healthcare access settings.

Bio: Sima Naderi, MPH, MSc is a PhD candidate in Global Health Sciences and a researcher from Afghanistan. Since 2021, she has collaborated with UCSF through the International Traineeships in AIDS Prevention Studies (ITAPS) program and contributed to research with the University of British Columbia and CanHealth International. At UCSF, she has served as a Rosenberg-Hill Graduate Research Fellow with the Graduate Division and Co-Chair of the BAGHA Student Advisory Board. Her research uses mixed methods, including discrete choice experiments, to study refugee and women`s health and social determinants of health, with a focus on cervical cancer prevention through HPV vaccination and screening.
Project Description:Improving Cervical Cancer Prevention and Screening through Precision Medicine for Afghan Adolescent Girls and Women in California.
HPV-related cervical cancer is largely preventable through vaccination and screening, though vaccination and early identification are not readily accessible to all communities, especially immigrants, such as those from Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries. Sima Naderi aims to characterize HPV vaccination and cervical cancer screening among Afghan women and girls in the Bay Area and explore barriers to care.

Bio: Sujin Park is a Cognitive Science PhD student in the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Lab. After completing her undergraduate degree with a double major in Political Science & Diplomatics and Psychology, she earned her master's degree from the Human Affective Neuroscience Lab at Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea. Her research integrates neuroimaging, physiological, and behavioral data to explain and predict symptoms of neurodevelopmental disorders, with the goal of facilitating early intervention and effective treatment. Her Representative Precision Medicine Research Program focuses on identifying precision fMRI-guided biomarkers of Tourette Syndrome in youth and studying how lived experience shapes their clinical and neurobiological profiles.
Project Description:Precision-fMRI Guided Biomarkers of Tourette Syndrome in Youth.
Tics, or involuntary movements experienced by individuals with Tourette Syndrome, can have significant impacts on youth well-being and mental health. Using advanced brain imaging techniques, Sujin Park aims to identify neural markers associated with Tourette Syndrome and explore how environmental factors contribute to its diagnosis and symptoms during childhood and adolescence.

Bio: Nanase Toda is a PhD Candidate in the Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacogenomics program. She earned her BS in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Arizona. Her dissertation work investigates factors contributing to the increased risk of drug-induced angioedema in Black patient groups by leveraging electronic health record-linked biobanks. Preliminary work on this project landed her the 2026 Jason Morrow Award from the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics. Following her PhD, Nanase plans to pursue a career in a pharmaceutical industry setting with an emphasis on advancing precision medicine health equity.
Project Description: Uncovering Additional Contributors to Drug-Induced Angioedema Using Genomics, Transcriptomics, and Contemporary Social Determinants.
Renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system inhibitors are first-line lifesaving medications for many conditions, including hypertension and heart failure. However, Black patients are disproportionately affected by its life-threatening side effect, angioedema, which is sudden swelling in the deep layers of the skin. Nanase Toda aims to leverage large-scale medical records to identify contributors to angioedema and assess whether both genetic and socioeconomic factors increase the risk of angioedema.

Bio: Julia Trudeau is a third-year PhD candidate in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences with a range of research experience encompassing cancer survivorship and supportive care, clinical trials, patient-reported outcomes, bioinformatics, and biomarker discovery. Her research aims to advance biomarker-driven precision medicine to mitigate cancer-related cognitive impairment (CRCI), a distressing, long-term condition with a disproportionate impact on racial and ethnic minorities in California. Her overarching aim is to contribute to patient-centered, equity-informed research that furthers precision medicine approaches to improve overall quality of life for cancer survivors.
Project Description: Precision Biomarkers of Cancer-Related Cognitive Impairment in Racially and Ethnically Diverse Breast Cancer Patients.
Issues with cognition, memory, and concentration following cancer treatment can impact quality of life, remains largely underdiagnosed, difficult to treat, and disproportionately impact racial and ethnic minority groups. Julia Trudeau aims to investigate markers in the blood that are associated with cancer-related cognitive impairment and explore their relationship with race and ethnicity to help understand who is most at risk and identify future targets for treatments.

Bio: Naying Zhou is a PhD candidate in Epidemiology with a focus on genetic epidemiology and childhood cancer. Her research investigates the germline genetic underpinnings of pediatric brain tumors, particularly childhood glioma. Using a multi-ethnic California cohort, Naying studies how common and rare mutations contribute to glioma risk across diverse ancestries, advancing early risk stratification and precision prevention strategies for all children. She earned a medical degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and an MPH in Biostatistics from UC Los Angeles. She is committed to translating genetic discovery into earlier, more equitable care for children with cancer.
Project Description: Germline Copy Number Variants and Pediatric Glioma in a Multi-Ethnic CA Cohort.
Brain and central nervous system cancers are among the most common cancers affecting children and young adults, especially aggressive gliomas that result in significant years lost. Naying Zhou’s research aims to identify genetic markers that may increase the risk of gliomas in children and young people, and to better understand which genes are linked to the most dangerous forms of the disease.