Research

What I study

I use the tools of epidemiology, study design, molecular data, spatial and statistical analysis, to understand how infectious and chronic diseases move through communities, and how prevention can meet people where they are.

HIV & infectious disease

The through-line of my work is HIV. At Mexico's Center for Research in Infectious Diseases (CIENI/INER) I helped build and analyze the molecular transmission network of HIV in Mexico City, using genetic sequence data to understand how the epidemic grows and where newly diagnosed cases fit into it. The question is deceptively simple: who is driving onward transmission, and when? The answer comes from combining phylogenetics, surveillance, and pretreatment drug-resistance monitoring. I have also studied the role of people who inject drugs in HIV transmission, drug resistance in circulating HCV, and the immunology of HIV epitopes restricted by Amerindian HLA subtypes. Today, as a Graduate Student Researcher at UC San Diego's Antiviral Research Center, I continue this line of work in a new setting.

Molecular & network epidemiology

Transmission networks are how I think about epidemics: not as counts, but as structures. Reconstructing them from genetic data, and reasoning carefully about the thresholds and assumptions that shape what a network means, has been a central methodological interest, including collaborative work on tools for inferring HIV transmission clusters.

Pandemic response & respiratory disease

During COVID-19 I served as a public-health advisor at Mexico's Dirección General de Epidemiología, analyzing national data for decision makers, and I provided clinical care to hospitalized patients at the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases. I led seroepidemiology studies of SARS-CoV-2 among healthcare workers and people living with HIV at Mexico City's largest tertiary COVID-19 referral hospitals.

Cancer prevention & Latino health

My current work reaches into chronic-disease prevention and the health of Hispanic and Latino communities, including the interpersonal factors that shape breast cancer screening among U.S. Hispanic and Latina women, drawing on the Hispanic Community Health Study / Study of Latinos. Preventive medicine, vaccines, and community-based participatory research run through all of it.

Methodology & evidence synthesis

I teach and practice rigorous research methodology: protocol design, study design, and systematic review and meta-analysis. I have written on interpreting meta-analytic results and on information metrics for evidence synthesis. Good methods are how public health earns its conclusions.