Graduate Research Assistant Openings

The following is a sampling of research faculty within the Department of Allied Health Sciences who are actively recruiting graduate research assistants for Fall 2024 admission.


Dr. Caitlin Caspi

e-mail:caitlin.caspi@uconn.edu

Program (MS/PhD):MS, PhD

Number of openings:1

Specific certifications/skills required:Degree in health-related field (Bachelor’s for MS or MS/MPH for PhD); Strong scientific writing skills; Experience with research project management, data management and/or statistical analyses.


Dr. Kristen Cooksey StowersKristen Cooksey Stowers

e-mail: kristen.cooksey@uconn.edu

Program (MS/PhD): MS, PhD

Number of openings: 1

Specific certifications/skills required: Have taken a biostatistics course. Some experience working with communities. Familiarity with social determinants of health and/or health disparities literature.


Michael CopenhaverMichael Copenhaver, PhD

Email: Michael.Copenhaver@UConn.edu 

Program (MS/PhD): MS, PhD 

Number of openings: 1-2 

Specific certifications/skills required: Degree in health-related field (Bachelor’s for MS or MS/MPH for PhD); Strong scientific writing skills; Experience with research presentations/publications, data management and/or statistical analyses, and experience working in community-based addiction treatment/HIV prevention settings. 


Dr. Sherry Pagoto

e-mail: sherry.pagoto@uconn.edu

Program (MS/PhD): MS, PhD

Number of openings: 1

Specific certifications/skills required: PhD – previous experience in digital health research for disease prevention (e.g., obesity, diabetes, CVD, cancer). MS – desire to prepare for PhD programs in clinical health psychology, public health, health communication, or similar.


Roman Shrestha portraitDr. Roman Shrestha

e-mail: roman.shrestha@uconn.edu

Research area keywords: mHealth, HIV, substance use, global health

Program (MS/PhD): PhD

Number of openings: 1

Brief description of research: We have multiple ongoing projects, both in domestic and international settings, that focus on HIV and substance use prevention using mHealth technologies as an innovative platform to scale-up prevention efforts in key populations (e.g., PWID, MSM, TGW). Graduate students are involved in all phases of research, including grant writing, data collection tool/survey development, recruitment, retention, data management and analyses, and manuscript writing.

Specific certifications/skills required: Bachelor’s degree in health-related field and familiarity with statistical software such as R, SAS, or SPSS (MS); Master’s degree in health-related and familiarity with statistical software such as R, SAS, or SPSS (PhD)


Dr. Ran Xu

e-mail: ran.2.xu@uconn.edu

Research area keywords: biostatistics, systems science, data analytics, public health, health promotion

Program (MS/PhD): MS/PhD

Number of openings: 1

Brief description of research: Students will have opportunities to learn about data science and systems science approaches, and apply them to study empirical problems across various health domains, such as utilizing the state-of-the-art technology (e.g., food image recognition, human mobility tracking) to study the community food environment, applying social network analysis to understand and facilitate the design of online health interventions, modeling human behaviors during epidemics, and evaluating the impacts of various food-related policies and community interventions on public health.

Specific certifications/skills required: Have experiences and skills in statistics/biostatistics. Familiarity with statistical software such as R or STATA. Interest in public health problems.


Dr. Pablo Valente

e-mail: pablo.valente@uconn.edu

Research area keywords: HIV, PrEP, minority stress, resilience, mixed-methods research

Program (MS/PhD): MS/PhD

Number of openings: 1

Specific certifications/skills required: Bachelor’s degree in health-related field. Experience or interest in manuscript writing and project management skills (scheduling participants, submitting IRB applications) preferred. Familiarity with software for statistical (Stata, SPSS, SAS, R, Mplus) or qualitative data analysis (NVivo, ATLAS.ti or Dedoose) preferred.