Current Students
Melissa Bell
I was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico and am currently living in Dallas. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Medical Laboratory Sciences from the University of New Mexico. I’ve worked as a Medical Technologist, Biosafety Officer, and currently a Safety Specialist at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
I’m interested in Health Informatics as a new career field because it allows me to blend the diversity of my background and my public health interest into one field. I have a particular interest in Patient Safety, Project Management and Clinical Decision Making.
I’m honored to be accepted into the program and look forward to being a part of Johns Hopkins.
Tarsha Darden
Dr. Darden received her medical degree from University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She performed post-graduate work at Eastern Virginia Medical School. She has worked as a primary care physician and medical director for the electronic health system, ConnectCare, for Bon Secours Hampton Roads. She has interests in lifestyle medicine, public health informatics, telemedicine, and voice recognition software.
Adetola Olateju
Medical doctor with over two years’ experience in preventative medicine, health services policy and administration. Specific focus on grants management in resource poor countries and alleviation of preventable diseases. Proven ability to lead and build teams, also utilizing personal capacity and high energy to achieve results.
I am convinced that through a degree in the Medical Informatics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, I would be fortified with the tools essential to confront the various challenges facing our health care information management systems, thus further endowing me with the resources to practice medicine with a vision and providing solutions to medical data processing, storage and retrieval.
Dragos Stefan-Dogar
Theodore Toth
Theodore Toth received his B.S. in Biology from Georgetown University in May 2012. His prior research experience at the Lombardi Cancer Center involved the investigation of the role of EGFRvIII and CXCR4 in human cancers, as well as the elucidation of the mechanisms involved in tumor progression, metastasis and drug resistance. He also has experience working at Georgetown's Protein Information Resource.
Theodore will be pursuing his M.S. in Applied Health Science Informatics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He hopes to apply this to improve clinical research and patient care through the adoption and utilization of clinical information systems. After completing his studies at Hopkins, he plans to attend medical school and become a physician.
Laura Vail
Joseph Warren
My background is completely healthcare. I started at the lowest level cleaning utility rooms and taking bodies to the morgue. And somehow ended up in the arena of systems and information technology, where I installed and managed applications. I have worked for healthcare providers, software & hardware vendors, and consulting firms focused on defining systems needs and implementing information solutions in healthcare environments. These solutions ranged from the general accounting areas to hospital information systems to ancillary systems such PACs, pharmacy, and laboratory. I have seen systems evolve from just feeding the billing system to today’s valuable decision support systems and evolving medical records for clinicians.
My work in the healthcare field has also given me the great opportunity to work in the U.S., Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, where I have had the chance to learn about numerous healthcare systems and see many providers at work in various environments.
Recently, I have had the opportunity to see the policy side of the U.S. healthcare system by first working in a non-governmental organization focused on prevention through evidence-based medicine and now working at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the Special Assistant to the Deputy Director in the Center for Global Health, who is teaming with USAID and the State Department on the Global Health Initiative (http://www.ghi.gov). I believe these recent experiences have broadened my perspective on the impact of government programs to improve the health of all populations, but now it is time for me to return to my roots - the informatics side of health systems – and to get the formal education that the Applied Health Sciences Informatics program offers. Hopefully, the program will give me the knowledge, both technical and managerial, to step into my next successful career move. A step into some position which will allow me to develop innovative ways for practical application of sharing information -- with the ultimate goal of improving direct care, managing diseases, and helping increase the focus on prevention.
Koko Takatori
Brett Cropp
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Health Policy and Management
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Kyle Dunn is establishing a career at the intersection of science, technology and health policy. While supporting contracts for the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Dunn studied modern biosurveillance systems, incident response communication tools, and GIS-based infectious disease mapping and modeling programs. In 2008, he joined the Institute for Ethics at the American Medical Association in Chicago, IL, where he investigated physician attitudes towards personal health records and the potential pitfalls for PHR-centered public health reporting. The focus of Mr. Dunn’s doctoral research is environmental health policy—notably the advancement of risk assessment strategies through public health informatics. He is honored to participate in the National Library of Medicine training program, and recognizes NLM’s contributions to environmental health science. (NLM’s 1967 Toxicology Information Program pre-dated even the Environmental Protection Agency!) Mr. Dunn received a B.S. in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology from Yale College and an M.H.S. in Health Policy from Johns Hopkins University.
Jordan Duval-Arnould, MPH, NLM Fellow
DrPH Candidate, Department of Health Policy and Management
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Jordan Duval-Arnould holds an MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHBSPH) where he concentrated his studies in Epidemiology/Biostatistics and Health Finance and Management. Jordan’s academic interests include- resuscitation science, use of medical simulation technologies, patient safety and quality, and health IT. These interests have been formalized during his time at Johns Hopkins through mentorship and several research projects carried out at the Johns Hopkins Medical Simulation Center. After completion of his MPH he worked with the Quality and Safety Research Group involved with the implementation of a large national collaborative effort to eliminate central-line associated bloodstream infections as well several data processing, analysis and display research efforts. He is currently a NLM fellow pursuing a DrPh in Leadership and Management within the Department of Health Policy and Management at the JHBSPH. Prior to coming to Johns Hopkins, Mr. Duval-Arnould worked designing and developing performance measurement and accounting software, as well as working and being involved with research activities at a major academic medical center in Chicago.
Danning He
Danning received her B.Sc. from Fudan University in China majoring in biotechnology. Her research work in the Chinese Academy of Sciences concentrated on network analysis of human diseases through integrating gene expression and biomolecule interaction data. However, she hopes to expand her work to broader issues of data integration as applied to biomedical and clinical research. She has particular interest in electronic medical records and social networks.
Ilene Hollin
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Health Policy and Management
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Ilene Hollin is a doctoral candidate in Health Economics and Policy at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. She received her BA in American studies and international and global studies from Brandeis University in 2005 and her MPH in Effectiveness and Outcomes Research from Columbia University in 2009. Prior to arriving at Hopkins, Ilene worked as research manager for the Healthcare Innovation and Technology Lab in New York City. Ilene’s research interests include the impact of health economics and policy on clinical decision-making as it affects rare diseases and the development of orphan drugs, as well as on informatics and decision analytic tools. She will be working with Drs. John Bridges and Harold Lehmann. Ilene's other research interests include bioethics, international comparisons, and patient-centered research methods.
Olga Joos, NLM Fellow
DrPH Candidate, Department of International Health
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Olga is a third year DrPH student in the Department of International Health and National Library of Medicine pre-doctoral fellow in the Department of Health Science Informatics. She received her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University in Psychology before serving as a health education volunteer for the Peace Corps in Mali, West Africa. She returned to Georgetown to pursue an accelerated degree in Nursing and Certificate in International Health. She worked as a pediatric critical care nurse in the United States and returned to West Africa to work as a clinical technical consultant in Togo with Peace Corps Response. At Johns Hopkins, Olga hopes to purse research in health information system development and strengthening in low and middle-income countries.
Xiaoli Wu
Xiaoli received his B.Sc. in Biological Sciences from Fudan University in China. His prior research work at Center for Evolutionary Biology at Fudan University was developing an inverse docking system for drug targets identification and analyzing animal evolutionary issues. He is
experienced in Perl, Java, HTML/CSS and MySQL.
Xiaoli is going to pursue his M.Sc. in Health Science Informatics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. His research interests lie on health system development and management, with the goal of improving the utility rate of healthcare data in China. He plans to become a technician or consultant in health system management. In his spare time, he is a big fan of basketball.
