Colten J. Strickland is the COVID-19 Epidemiology and Surveillance Manager for the San Francisco Department of Public Health.  He received his BS in Philosophy with a minor in Peace and Justice Studies from Utah Valley University in 2013, his MPH in Disaster Management from Tulane University in 2015, and his PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Delaware in 2022.  Colten was the founding doctoral student of the Epidemiology program at the University of Delaware and first epidemiology student of the DRC.  During his program, Colten responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in his role as the lead COVID-19 Epidemiologist for the Delaware Division of Public Health from 2021-2022 and as a COVID-19 Epidemiologist for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health from 2020-2021.  Prior to the start of his program, Colten was a Public Health Associate (Class of 2016) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He was assigned to the Multnomah County Health Department in Portland, Oregon where he worked on childhood immunizations.  Colten has several years of experience working in governmental public health.  His research largely focuses on applied epidemiology, disaster epidemiology, and environmental health.  His dissertation is titled “A Review of COVID-19-Associated Mortality in the City of Philadelphia Over the First Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic.”  Colten is an active and supportive member of the LGBTQ+ community.

Yajaira is a Ph.D. student in the Disaster Science and Management program. She earned her Master’s degree in Disaster Studies from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley where she also worked as a Research Assistant. During this time she worked at the Department of Health and Biomedical Sciences researching mechanisms to address health and social disparities in vulnerable populations of the US-Mexico border. Yajaira’s educational and research backgrounds have provided her with a rich understanding of the social conditions that exacerbate vulnerability in times of disasters. As she continues her education, her interests still lie in social inequality, vulnerability, and resilience.

Christopher is a doctoral candidate in the department of political science and international relations. In his dissertation, he asks: “What might sovereignty mean in a place without formal state sovereignty or national self-determination?” He attempts to locate sovereignty in its diversity of articulations by examining the specific postcolonial context of Puerto Rico, theorizing sovereignty as a political-economic process rather than mere status. Hurricane Maria exposed poverty, environmental injustice, and differential vulnerability; but since the Verano Boricua mass unrest in 2019, a debate has opened for the need for a left-wing, anti-austerity transformation of the island based on a new politics—the people mobilized against the establishment. Christopher has presented his research on emergency politics and disaster neoliberalism at domestic and international conferences. He is affiliated with the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware because of his interdisciplinary focus on disaster governance. Christopher has studied emergency management through Delaware Emergency Management Agency. He is presently serving as Treasurer for the University of Delaware Chapter of the International Association of Emergency Managers.

Zackery White recently received his Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the University of Delaware, where he worked to complete his project “Common biases in studying the long-term health effects of disasters: challenges & potential solutions.” While there, Zack was awarded the University of Delaware’s Doctoral Fellowship for Excellence in Teaching. Currently, he works at a health technology company, Unite Us, designing research studies examining the efficacy of their work in local communities.

I’m a recent hire in the EDHS department at UMBC.