Core Team
Marynia Kolak, PhD, MFA, MS
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 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 an Associate Editor at Preventing Chronic Disease, Journal of Maps, and Cartography and Geographic Information Science, and Vice Chair of the Health & Medical Specialty Group at the American Association of Geographers. Kolak is also on the communications team of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee at the Society for Epidemiological Research.
Marc A. 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, Ed.D
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.
Adam Cox, MS, MLIS
Sr Research Software Engineer
Adam is a geospatial developer with a background in geographic information systems and archaeology, and a passion for open source software. Originally from southwestern Wisconsin, he lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. Adam leads engineering and infrastructure development at HEROP, supporting projects like the US Covid Atlas, OEPS, ChiVes, and the SDOH Place Project, as well as facilitating open source collaboration with our partners and adjacent community projects like GeoBlacklight. He also manages a crowdsourcing project, OldInsuranceMaps.net, which allows citizens and institutions to georeference historical maps, creating opportunities for historical research as well as community engagement.
Shubham Kumar, MSIM
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.
Sara Lambert
Sr Research Software Engineer @NCSA
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 @NCSA
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.
Scholars
Mallikarjun Bhusnoor, BS
Masters Student, Grad 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, BS
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.
Camrin G., MA
PhD Student, Grad Research Assistant
Camrin has 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.
Mahjabin Kabir Adrita, MS
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, MS
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.
Rachel Loftus
Undergraduate Student, Research Assistant
Rachel is pursuing an undergraduate degree in Geography & GIS with a minor in computer science. Her work with the HeRoP lab 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.
Yilin Lyu, MS
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, BS
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
Undergraduate Student, 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
Undergraduate Student, 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.
Research Collaborations
Paul Joudrey, MD, MPH
Center for Research on Health Care,
University of Pittsburgh
Qinyun Lin, PhD
Institute of Medicine,
University of Gothenburg (Göteborg)
Lawrence Brown, PhD
Center for Urban Health Equity,
Morgan State University
Sam Friedman, PhD
Department of Population Health,
New York University
Leslie Williams, PhD
School of Public Health,
University of Illinois at Chicago
Shelley Hoover, PhD Student
School of Public and International Affairs
Princeton University
Basmatte Boodram, PhD, MPH
School of Public Health,
University of Illinois at Chicago
John Schneider, MD, MPH
Center for HIV Elimination,
The University of Chicago
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, Visiting Scholars & Past Staff
University of Illinois, 2022 – present
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 