NIH Matilda White Riley Keynote Speaker

Death by degree: U.S. mortality in the 21st century

Anne Case, Ph.D.
Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs Emeritus, Princeton University

Dr. Anne Case is the Alexander Stewart 1886 professor of economics and public affairs emeritus at Princeton University, where she continues to teach in the School of Public and International Affairs. She has written extensively on health over the life course. Dr. Case is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research; a fellow of the Econometric Society; and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. Her book with Angus Deaton, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller and was shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year. Dr. Case received her Ph.D. from Princeton University.

NIH Matilda White Riley Early Stage Investigator Awardee

Predicting challenging behavior in individuals with autism using wearable biosensors and machine learning classifiers

Matthew S. Goodwin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Northeastern University

Dr. Matthew S. Goodwin is an interdisciplinary associate professor with tenure at Northeastern University, jointly appointed in the Bouvé College of Health Sciences and the Khoury College of Computer Science, where he is a founding member of a new doctoral program in personal health informatics and directs the Computational Behavioral Science Laboratory. Dr. Goodwin has more than 25 years of research and clinical experience working with children and adults on the autism spectrum and developing and evaluating innovative technologies for behavioral assessment and intervention, including video and audio capture, telemetric physiological monitors, accelerometry sensors, and digital video and facial recognition systems. He received his B.A. in psychology from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, and he received his M.A. in experimental psychology and Ph.D. in behavioral science from the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Goodwin completed a postdoctoral fellowship in affective computing in the MIT Media Lab in 2010.

NIH Matilda White Riley Early Stage Investigator Awardee

Neighborhood deprivation and epigenetic aging

Kaitlyn Lawrence, Ph.D.
IRTA Postdoctoral Fellow
Epidemiology Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, NIH

Dr. Kaitlyn Lawrence received her Ph.D. in environmental health sciences from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in 2018. Her dissertation work evaluated the relationship between chemical exposures and respiratory health among oil spill cleanup workers. Dr. Lawrence’s current research is aimed at assessing the interplay among climate, environmental contaminants, social factors, and genomics and how they relate to respiratory and other chronic disease endpoints. Her work has received numerous awards, including a 2020 NIH Fellow Award for Research Excellence. Dr. Lawrence is an Intramural Research Training Award (IRTA) Postdoctoral Fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Dale Sandler in the Chronic Disease Epidemiology Group of the Epidemiology Branch at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Durham, North Carolina.

NIH Matilda White Riley Early Stage Investigator Awardee

Profiles of childhood maltreatment were associated with distinct sexual risk behavior trajectories among racial and ethnic minority girls

Li Niu, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Si

Dr. Li Niu is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She received her Ph.D. in applied developmental psychology from Fordham University in 2020 after she had received a Master’s degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania and another Master’s degree in human development and family studies from Purdue University. Her research focuses on adolescence as a sensitive developmental period in which social and environmental factors play a critical role in shaping life-long health and well-being. Dr. Niu studies the influence of social and environmental contexts on adolescent health trajectories.

NIH Matilda White Riley Early Stage Investigator Awardee

Spousal bereavement after dementia caregiving: A turning point for immune health

Stephanie J. Wilson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor,
Department of Psychology
Southern Methodist University

Dr. Stephanie J. Wilson is an assistant professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. As a developmental health psychologist, Dr. Wilson works at the intersection of aging, psychoneuroimmunology, and relationship science. Combining ecological and laboratory-based methods with the use of large, national data sets, her research aims to understand how close social relationships shape the paths to healthy aging and how these dynamics evolve across adulthood. Dr. Wilson completed her Ph.D. in human development and family studies at The Pennsylvania State University and postdoctoral training in psychoneuroimmunology at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. She received a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and was selected as an NIA Butler-Williams Scholar and RAND Summer Institute Scholar.