Marynia Kolak, PHD, MFA
Academic Director, Principal Investigator
Marynia is a health geographer and spatial epidemiologist integrating a socio-ecological view of health, spatial data science, and a human-centered design approach to investigate regional and neighborhood health equity. Kolak, founder of the HEROP Lab, is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography & GIScience, and serves as PI on the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) and Place project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and MPI on the Localize Opioid Use Disorder (LOUD) study by NIDA/NIH. They are incoming Chair of the Health & Medical Specialty Group at the American Association of Geographers.
Shubham Kumar, MSIS
Sr Product Designer
Shubham is a Product Designer at HEROP with a passion for collaborating with diverse teams to achieve design goals. Prior to his role at the lab, Shubham was improving accessibility in education with the Board of Trustees at the University of Illinois. He has a master’s degree in Information Management from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a bachelor’s degree in Information Science from PES University. In his leisure time, Shubham volunteers as a Product Lead at Greenstand, a non-profit addressing poverty and climate change through technology. He also loves going out for bike rides, recognizing the benefits it brings to both his well-being and the Earth.
Marc Astacio-Palmer, MS
Research Coordinator
Marc received his Master of Science in Experimental Psychology from Nova Southeastern University. His previous work was in the area of cognitive psychology, specifically, on attention and memory. He is interested in open science, and how our environment shapes our cognition. Astacio leads day-to-day operations of multiple projects at HEROP, guides communications & community engagement, and collaborates on how affect may influence user-experience and decision-making.
Kamaria Barronville, EdD
Research Specialist
Kamaria is a recent graduate with her doctorate in Urban Educational Leadership. Her research interests are trauma-informed practices and equity in public health and education.
Camrin Garrett, MS
Project Coordinator
Camrin builds on his PhD studies in Geography and a BA and MA in urban planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is interested in GIS, spatial analysis, public libraries, public transportation, and education. He wants to analyze the ways in which inequality shows itself in everyday life and what can be done to limit the impact.
Rachel Loftus, BS
Communications Specialist
Rachel earned her BS in Geography & GIS with a minor in computer science. Her work involves project dissemination, organization of lab events and symposia, and preservation of lab materials. Her academic research interests cover a range of topics, including nuclear weapons political history, the public library/community health nexus, and applied GIS. She serves as the undergraduate appointee on the Health & Medical Specialty Group Executive Board at the American Association of Geographers and as the YouthMappers President at the University of Illinois chapter of Gamma Theta Upsilon.
Engineering Core
in partnership with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at Illinois
Sara Lambert
Sr Research Software Engineer
Sara graduated from UIUC with a BS in Computer Engineering, and works at NCSA as a Senior Research Software Engineer. Over the past decade, she has contributed to dozens of research projects across many different programming languages. She assists with HEROP on various frontend development efforts, including the ChiVes project.
Pengyin Shan, MBA
Research Software Engineer
Pengyin is a passionate programmer with multiple years of full-stack expertise, serving large higher-education institutions. Her main focus is to develop accessible web applications to virtualize and utilize unstructured, complex, and multilingual datasets. She has a B.S. in Computer Science Engineering and an M.B.A. degree.
Yong Wook Kim
Sr Research Software Engineer
Backend engineer specializing in system orchestration, automation, and GIS solutions. I enjoy building scalable platforms that connect complex data systems with real-world spatial insight.
HEROP Scholars
Research Affiliates, Student Researchers, & Postdoctoral Associates
Danielle Boothe, PhD, MPH
Research Affiliate
Danielle is an epidemiologist and Affiliated Researcher with HeRoP. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and focuses on infectious disease epidemiology, health equity, and justice-involved populations, with particular emphasis on HIV, STIs, and tuberculosis. She has experience conducting applied research and program evaluation across local, state, and federal public health settings.
Mallikarjun Bhusnoor
Information Science Masters Student, Research Assistant
Mallikarjun’s work bridges geospatial analytics, machine learning, and quantitative data engineering. He has experience designing end-to-end ETL pipelines for large, multidimensional datasets and developing predictive models to analyze spatial, financial, and infrastructure systems. With a background in quantitative research and applied analytics, he focuses on building scalable workflows that integrate spatial modeling, statistical inference, and automation to generate actionable insights.
Catherine Discenza
GGIS PhD Student, Grad Research Assistant
Catherine recently graduated from the University of Florida with a BS in Geography with a specialization in Medical Geography in Global Health. Their research interests lie at the intersection of place, health, and identity, with particular interest in how urban development patterns interact with health and identity factors.
Mahjabin Kabir Adrita
GGIS PhD Student, Grad Research Assistant
Adrita’s research focuses on engaging marginalized communities and addressing health challenges through comprehensive fieldwork and mixed-method approaches. She is passionate about leveraging her expertise in community-based research, data analysis, and interdisciplinary collaboration to make a meaningful impact.
Mandela Kwame Gadri
GGIS PhD Student, Grad Research Assistant
Ph.D. student Mandela Gadri has a BS in urban planning from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, and an MS in community and regional planning from Iowa State University. He also has a certificate in GIS and worked as a planner with the city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa prior to joining UIUC. Mandela is interested in GIS and transport poverty.
Yilin Lyu
GGIS PhD Student, Grad Research Assistant
Yilin is interested in interdisciplinary research on integrating geospatial science, urban health, and network analysis to identify vulnerable groups and optimize health resource distribution in the cities. She is focused on identifying how spatial, social, and structural determinants impact community health. Also, she’s interested in exploring the relationships between people’s mobility within cities, including healthcare-seeking behaviors, and resource accessibility.
Saket Pochiraju
GGIS Masters Student, Grad Research Assistant
Saket has a BS in Computer Science + Geography/GIS and Economics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is passionate about applying sensing and computational GIS methods at the intersections of climate science, public health, and economics to understand and better approach complex problems in our human-environment systems. In general, though, all parts of geography are incredibly interesting to him and he’s always looking to connect with new people and learn as much as possible!
Nianen Si
GGIS Undergraduate, Research Assistant
Nianen Si is a junior majoring in Geography and Geographic Information Science (GIS concentration) with a passion for geospatial data science. Her quantitative skills are strengthened by minors in Econometrics and Informatics, and complemented by technical experience with Python, RStudio, and ArcGIS Pro.
Sam Wang
Math Undergraduate, Research Assistant
Sam Wang is a UIUC Mathematics undergraduate who builds models at the intersection of math, computing, and social systems. Using modeling tools from mathematics and computer science, combined with the understanding of social sciences regarding human behavior and institutional adoption, he try to explore how “good systems” and “good technologies” can truly enter real life and solve the issues of trust and implementation in public services and social systems.
Lab Alumni
Past Postdocs
(& Where They are Now)
José Alavez, PhD (Assistant Professor, University of Washington, Seattle)
Wataru Morioka, PhD (Assistant Professor, Salisbury University, Maryland)
Qinyun Lin, PhD (Senior Lecturer, Institute of Medicine, University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
Research Assistants, Scholars & Past Staff
University of Illinois, 2022 – present
Adam Cox (OldInsuranceMaps.net), Finja Hinrichs, (University of Bonn), Xenia Milkin (Vienna University of Economics and Business), Diego Lopez, Laila Ismail, Jack Lia, Wataru Morioka, Ashwin Patel, Mukesh Chugani, Elaina Katz, Aisha Syed, Sparsh Singh, Sarvagnya Vijay, Jorge Corral, Stefan Ilic, Augustyn Crane, Emily Glenn, Sarthak Joshi
Unviersity of Chicago, 2016 – 2022
Susan Paykin, Dylan Halpern, Stuart Lynn, Desiree Becerra, Shelley Hoover, James Keane, Marc Loeb, Liana Lan, Vidal Anguino, Jr., Margot Bolanos Gomez, Ziqian (Alexa) Jin, Isaac Kamber, Kenna Camper, Laura Chen, Andres Crucetta, Stephanie Yang, Ryan Wang, Lorenz Menendez, Gabe Morrison, Yoon Hong Park, Richard Lu, Erin Abbott, Bibind Vasu, Yao Xen Tan, Cyrus Caughey, Tiye Stephens, Irena Gao, Grant Morrison, Angela Li, Moksha Menghaney, Fanmei Xia, Sam Joyce, Helena Abney-McPeek, Emily Selch, Olina Liang, Jizhou Wang, Yuming Liu, Breanna Yang, Arpan Laha, Erin Ochoa, Andrew Morse, Ally Muszynski, Andrew Warfield, Jinfei Zhu, Sinduri Soundarajan, Chandler Hall, Javier Andres Rojas Aguilera, Christian Villanueva, Isaac Rand
Healthy Regions & Policies Lab 