Seven SDSU School of Public Health (SPH) Students received the SDSU Master’s Research Scholarship, a prestigious $10,000 institutional award provided over two semesters to support excellent master’s students engaged in advancing the university’s goal in research. These students are nominated by their graduate advisors with a statement of their accomplishments and potential for research. Two of these students are Leili Sahrai, who is majoring in Epidemiology, and Brittney Seidemann, who is majoring in Health Management and Policy.
Leili Sahrai received her Bachelor of Science in Chemistry at SDSU and decided to pursue a Master of Public Health (MPH) with an emphasis in Epidemiology. Leili was nominated by the Interim Director of the SDSU SPH through a recommendation from an epidemiology faculty member while applying for a data management position in the Communities Fighting COVID project, a contact tracing project funded by the County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency. Leili’s research interests include the molecular epidemiology of breast cancer risk. She has been working with Dr. Humberto Parada, Associate Professor and Head of the Epidemiology division at the SDSU SPH, to explore the associations between environmental chemical exposures such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals and breast cancer risk via epigenetic processes such as DNA methylation. Leili utilizes SPSS statistics to conduct linear and ordinal regression models using data from the Long Island Breast Cancer Study Project. Leili’s background in chemistry and experience in the UCSD and SDSU Partnership Scholars Program, a program to advance cancer equity through research, taught her to combine her devotion for science and desire to learn more about human health in application to the field of public health.
Brittney Seidemann received her Bachelor of Science in Public Health from California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) and is now a second-year MPH, Health Management and Policy student at SDSU. Brittney is a Graduate Student Assistant for the California Department of Public Health, Injury and Violence Prevention Branch, and is also working as a Student Research Assistant for Dr. Brandy Lipton, an SDSU SPH faculty member who nominated Brittney for the Master’s Research Scholarship. Brittney has been working with Dr. Lipton since September 2020, when she was hired to assist on an NIH-funded grant titled “Impact of dental care access on children’s oral health and academic outcomes.” Not only does she help with advancing the grant’s main aims, but she also assists Dr. Lipton on various other research projects such as eye care visits among children, ACA expansion, Medicaid payment rates to Dentists, and school-based health screenings. Brittney has used large-scale data collection and applied statistical analysis and programming skills to code, analyze, and refine quantitative information into summary tables and figures for publication. She has become acquainted with several nationally represented surveys including the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), American Community Survey (ACS), National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH), and National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Dr. Lipton and Brittney are currently working on two papers for publication. Along with her work in research at the graduate level, Brittney also conducted research during her undergraduate studies where she was a research assistant for CSUF’s Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain Center on campus. She was a part of a longitudinal study titled “Physical and cognitive status of people aged 50+ with and without Fibromyalgia: A longitudinal study from 2008 to present.”