Veronica Miller, PhD, Director Veronica Miller, PhD, is an Adjunct Professor at Berkeley Public Health and Director of the Forum for Collaborative Research, a collaboration between industry, regulatory agencies, patients, and public health/clinical researchers to advance regulatory science and accelerate drug development in areas of unmet medical need. The Forum applies innovative translational medicine approaches to specific disease areas, such as viral infections, chronic diseases (steatotic and cholestatic disease of the liver) and ocular diseases requiring multi-modal approaches to generate solutions to high-prevalence complex, as well as rare, diseases. The approach involves multidisciplinary teams of experts in Public Health, Medicine, Biology, Statistics, Computer Science, Data Science and Regulatory Science to effect the last but crucial step in translational medicine to improve access to therapeutics and diagnostics worldwide. The Forum’s Data and Analysis Center is a cross-industry collaborative data-sharing platform to maximize the usefulness of clinical trial-generated data, including tissue/organ imaging, histopathology, radiology, and biomarkers spanning diverse contexts of use. The Forum DAC is made possible by Berkeley’s commitment to supporting infrastructure for sensitive patient-level data, and a forward-looking Office of Industry Alliance. The Forum offers unique educational opportunities for students and fellows interested in biotechnology. Veronica Miller is committed to educating the next generation of scientists through hands-on learning complemented by online and on-campus courses. She has over 145 peer reviewed publications. |
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Chris comes to the Forum from Research IT at UC Berkeley, where he served as Associate Director, leading a set of research computing services and projects designed to facilitate research across the Berkeley campus. Most recently, these efforts have focused on the complex challenges related to research involving highly sensitive data. Chris was program director for the campus-wide Research Data Management Program, a partnership with the university library that helps researchers with their data management challenges across the research lifecycle. Chris also led the Informatics Services Program which develops and manages software for campus museums and research projects. Earlier, he served as Director of Information Systems in Berkeley’s Graduate Division, overseeing a complex portfolio of graduate student information systems. Chris continues to lead work around visualization environments and services for UC Berkeley. Chris received a PhD in Anthropology at UC Berkeley performing archaeological research on the social and technical dimensions of metallurgy in prehistoric Spain.
Margot Yann, Ph.D. is Senior Computational and Data Science Research Specialist at the Forum. Margot did her initial training in Beijing China in Computer Science & Engineering, and completed her doctorate and post-doctorate in Toronto Canada, specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Margot has extensive experience in research and applications using Deep Neural Networks, Bayesian Networks, Multiagent Learning, and Game Theory—among other areas and processes at the forefront of artificial intelligence. She has worked with Academic and Federal institutions in the UK, Canada and US acting as Principal investigator (PI) & Co-PI on projects focused on healthcare. Over the last ten years, Margot has worked with top tier healthcare providers with extensive industry experience in the US. She served as a director of Data Science in a Fortune 500 company and health-tech start-up. Margot has hands-on big-data experience in Natural Language Processing (NLP), Computer Vision, and Electronic Health Records (EHR) both in industry and in academia. She had also taught Computer Science courses at the University of Toronto. She has been a member of Women in Engineering in IEEE, and professional committees of distinguished computer conferences such as IJCAI and AAAI. Margot brings a wide background and expertise in AI & ML in healthcare and is striving to help our community reach its goals of better health outcomes.
Mengxi is the Research Data Analyst at the Forum for Collaborative Research. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor and a master's degree in statistics from Case Western Reserve University. Prior to her master’s degree, Mengxi worked with Real Data Med CRO, a medical research company, in Ningbo, China, where she developed SAS programs to analyze medical data in clinical trials. Also, she conducted research about the causal relationship between COVID-19 and Lung Cancer using Mendelian Randomization at Case Western Reserve University. She mainly has knowledge in R, SAS and Python and is experienced with longitudinal data analysis, survival analysis, linear regressions, propensity score matching and statistical inference.
Alicia Jellinek is the Program Financial Analyst at the Forum for Collaborative Research. Alicia served as purchasing coordinator for six yearsfor the ERSO Department, a central administrative hub for the College of Engineering, College of Environmental Design, Computing, Data Science and Society, and various other large research Institutes and Centers at UC Berkeley. She also worked at UC Berkeley Student Affairs as a Buyer 2 for three years. In this role, Alicia provided full scope of procurement. Alicia has also worked for Chevron as an Administrative Assistant working in ITC procurement, ITNW, procurement operations and as part of the contracting team. Alicia has extensive experience in training, instructing and advising clients on University, Federal and State policies and procedures.
Christopher Berry is the Senior Events and Operations Manager at the Forum for Collaborative Research. Christopher has worked in the events industry for almost 11 years and specifically in the public health arena for the last three years, working for the National Institutes of Health, Center for Scientific Review, and the National Alliance of State and Territorial Aids Directors he has found his niche in the events world. Christopher studied Business Administration at Capella University and is now looking to complete his Certified Meeting Professional Program while diversifying his event knowledge to a global view. Christopher brings a wide array of expertise to this position, from working in the social market to corporate and working in some of the most notable venues in the DC market he is known to streamline the meeting planning process to make it more palatable for colleagues, vendors, and attendees; all while wearing a smile. He looks forward to the future of the Forum for Collaborative Research events program and his future with the University of Berkeley School of Public Health.
Donnice is the Senior Administrative Assistant at the Forum for Collaborative Research. She brings a comprehensive background in higher education operations, business administration, and global program management. Donnice spent several years overseeing faculty operations for Howard University School of Law, where she supported the law faculty, led exam administration, and oversaw the study abroad program to Cape Town, South Africa. During this time, she introduced many innovative solutions to improve day to day operations and grew recruitment efforts for the study abroad program. Seeing the impact international education had on students, Donnice developed an interest in creating learning opportunities abroad and pursued a Master of International Business from Florida International University where she studied global operations and foreign stakeholder relations. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Trinity University (DC).
Mitchell is a Research Associate at the Forum for Collaborative Research, where he manages the HBV Forum and Policy Series project on the role of adult vaccination in U.S. hepatitis B elimination. He is a double UC Berkeley School of Public Health alum, earning his BA in Public Health and MPH in Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology through the accelerated 4+1 BA/MPH program. He was a Graduate Student Instructor for the Forum's regulatory science and drug development course, in addition to teaching courses in biostatistics, health policy, and introductory neuroscience. He has experience in the community health of infectious diseases, having interned at the Asian Liver Center, Stanford University conducting hepatitis B health education among the Asian American community and previously worked as a PrEP Navigator at a community health center in San Francisco. Since joining the team, he has embraced the HBV Forum's mission of facilitating collaborative research to support development of curative hepatitis B therapies to benefit patients, families, and communities worldwide.
Zach is a Research Associate at the Forum. He has a bachelor's degree in physiology from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a master's degree in computer science from Northeastern University. He has gained knowledge of several programming languages, computer systems, and computer networking building a diverse portfolio with data structures, algorithms, and computer systems examples. He brings experience in Java, Python, C, Swift, and MIPS as well. Zach interned with Pancreum, a biomedical device start up, where he developed a front-end app for iOS and Android in order to demonstrate how a new type of insulin pump would work. For several years he also served as a physical therapy aid. While at Northeastern he was lead TA creating lesson plans and overseeing both student and grade management. Zach enjoys helping people whether it is helping a coworker or working on global health issues that will improve the quality of life for someone.
Logan is a Research Associate with the HIV Forum. He completed his Master of Public Health in Epidemiology at Ohio State’s College of Public Health in 2022 and his B.S. in Public Health Sociology there in 2020. As an undergraduate Logan volunteered as an Ohio State wellness ambassador, working with students to find resources related to tobacco and other drug addiction/reliance. In graduate school, Logan interned for Jackson County Health Department in Jackson, Ohio, working on COVID-19 data visualization and mosquito surveillance. Logan is interested in a career in disease modeling and has previously studied PrEP related risk compensation among men who have sex with men.
Sehyr is a Research Associate with the Liver Forum, PSC Forum, and Ocular Diseases Forum. She has a bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience from Wellesley College. During her undergraduate career, she interned for the Gabrieli Lab at MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research where she worked projects centered on learning in students who experience trouble reading. She then interned for the Center for Addiction Medicine at Massachussetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, where she worked on social determinants of substance use. She conducted statistical analyses of population patterns linking adolescent risk-taking and substance use in RStudio, which inspired her to pursue public health. Sehyr is interested in a career in clinical research, biostatistics, and healthcare consulting. She is driven by collaborating with motivated, intelligent, and passionate people. 
Shilpa is a Research Associate with the COVID-19 Project and TAVI Forum. She has a Bachelor of Science in Marine Biology from Rutgers University—New Brunswick and a Master of Public Health degree from the George Washington University. During her graduate education, she interned at the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, where she developed an outreach plan to support the Myeloma Link program in providing financial assistance and healthcare information to the underserved, underinsured Black/African American population in DC with myeloma. She also provided recreational therapy assistance to children with special needs and long-term illnesses at the Children’s Specialized Hospital. Her graduate thesis detailed a health promotion program plan, aiming to increase vaccination rates to combat childhood pneumonia among the rural population of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Shilpa is interested in a career in infectious disease epidemiology, global health, and program development. 
Ekene Osakwe is a Research Associate at the Forum for Collaborative Research. Ekene has experience in program implementation and research, working on several areas of global health including sexual and reproductive health, gender-based violence, HIV prevention, and food security. Ekene worked with CARE International and helped develop monitoring systems for the evaluation of family planning services and other sexual and reproductive health programs provided to internally displaced populations in Northeast Nigeria. She also worked with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), in Abuja, Nigeria and helped design peace-building and youth empowerment programs. Ekene received her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Biology from the University of Bucharest, Romania. For her doctoral research, she assessed the T-cell human immune response to HIV-1 by evaluating specific cytokines in HIV-positive adolescents in Romania. Ekene also completed a Master’s in Science (MSc) in Global Health from Duke University. During her MSc at Duke, Ekene interned with the Global Vaccination Unit of International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Geneva, Switzerland. For her Master’s thesis, she evaluated the impact of gender inequality on access to routine immunization for migrant populations. Ekene is committed to addressing health inequity and is interested in applying her experience toward drug development and access, especially in resource-limited areas.
Edyth is a Research Associate working to support the Liver Forum. She has experience with project management in chronic disease programs, health policy and research projects. Prior to the Forum, Edyth worked in Rhode Island with a nonprofit that supports primary care centers, and healthcare stakeholder engagement. Edyth completed her graduate education at Brown University, earning a master's degree in public health, and a master's degree in public affairs. Her studies focused on global health, disparities in access to care, and health infrastructure policies. Her research topics included infectious diseases, smoking cessation policies, and substance use disorder patient experiences. She completed a bachelor's degree in psychology from Framingham State University.
Edyth is passionate about leveraging research and policies to increase access to healthcare, focusing on improving patient outcomes.
The Forum for Collaborative Research
1608 Rhode Island Avenue NW, Suite 212
Washington, DC 20036
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202.974.6313 | Fax: 202.872.4316
Email: info@forumresearch.org
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