Current Master's Students

Tracie Banks

Degrees: B.A. Mass Communications, UC Berkeley (2002)

Professional Interests: Radiology Informatics

Background/Interests: Tracie's background is primarily in radiology applications and enterprise imaging support. She is interested in acquiring additional knowledge and skills she can utilize to streamline integration between ancillary service lines to preserve continuity of care.  In her spare time, she enjoys traveling with her family.

Farva Batool

Degrees: B.S. Global Disease Biology, minor Public Health Sciences, UC Davis (2019)

Professional Interests: Farva is interested in Healthcare Data Analytics, mobile health, and preventative medicine. She wants to connect her Public Health background with the utilization of mobile health services in underserved communities.

Background/Interests: As an undergraduate student, Farva helped with the research paper on promoting mobile health mental services among the refugee communities in war torn countries. Her experience with literature review and mobile health services helped her develop interest towards health informatics. With her health informatics master’s degree in the future, Farva hope to improve healthcare records for the underserved communities at both local and international level.

John Kintner

Degrees: B.S. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, UC Davis (2017)

Professional Interests: Diagnostic Best Practices and Preventative Medicine in the Primary Care Setting; Medical Documentation Standards and Informatics

Background/Interests: As an undergraduate at UC Davis, John developed an interest in medical research while volunteering with the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Before joining the graduate program in Health Informatics, John spent three years working as a medical scribe and documentation specialist with UC San Francisco in family medicine, urgent care, and emergency medicine. During this time, he supported clinical studies validating a radiological decision rule at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland and a primary physician training tool at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. Fascinated by the research potential of the electronic health record, John wants to better understand how physicians interface with the EHR and how health system data can be used to improve best practice guidelines in the primary care setting. When he is not working with medical documentation, John enjoys volunteering in his community, cooking exotic recipes, and making electronic music.

Nebay Russom

Degrees: B.S. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, UC Davis (2013); Master of Public Health, UC Davis (2019)

Professional Interests: Public Health Informatics, Healthcare Data Analytics, EMR Analyst

Background/Interests: Nebay’s initial exposure into health informatics was through his involvement in the performance of clinical research and witnessing various emergency department operations as a Clinical Data Research Associate (RA) at UC Davis Medical Center and Sutter Medical Center, and as an MPH student. As an RA, he has collected and transcribed clinical data and information of patients from EPIC for enrollment in innovative clinical studies. There, he has come to see patients as people that face many upstream determinants that can prevent them from having to get quality of care in the first place. Hence, he saw health informatics playing a vital role in stratifying patients by risk level to determine the level of attention from care provider, and use structured data, custom reporting and analytics tools to enhance people’s health across the full continuum of care. Experiencing firsthand the healthcare disparities and uneven distribution of basic health care services in less affluent communities, both abroad and domestically, Nebay strives for healthcare equality and equity especially in areas diverse in both cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Neha Singh

Degrees: Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicine and Surgery, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, India (2011)

Professional Interests: Healthcare Data Analytics, Clinical Informatics, Public Health Informatics.

Background/Interests: In India, Neha used to practice Homeopathy and work for the US based insurance organizations. Her experience helped her to develop interest in Health Informatics. She is interested in expanding her knowledge and skills to improve the access to health care, particularly in remote underserved area. Neha also enjoys spending her time hiking, travelling, and playing badminton.

Ramya Sri Baluguri 

Degrees: Doctor of Pharmacy/Pharm.D., Andhra University, India (2021)

Professional Interests: Predictive analytics in healthcare, simulation and modelling, EHR. 

Background/Interests: During her Pharm.D., it was challenging for her to rectify errors in prescriptions manually. Then she learned about the massive role of artificial intelligence in the healthcare industry. She contributed to bringing the knowledge and benefits of AI to the hospital, which followed the traditional method of keeping patient records. She found the importance of electronic health records in reducing manual errors in the healthcare sector and decided to dive deeper into the intricacies of this domain.

Steven Zeck

Degrees: B.S., Information Technology, Arizona State University (2021)

Professional Interests: Machine Learning, Data Visualization, Epidemiology

Background/Interests: Steven has worked several roles within healthcare IT, from Sysadmin to EMR developer.  Along the way, he's seen glimpses of how technology can catch epidemics early, improve accuracy of diagnosis and highlight promising avenues for research.  He hopes to learn how to build better tools to tap the vast amounts of data and computing power that are now available.  At the moment, most of his free time is spent with family.

Rachel Rivas

Degrees: B.A. Biology and Chemistry, University of Colorado (2012)

Professional Interests: Public Health Informatics, Research Infrastructure, Epidemiology, Cancer Control Continuum

Background/Interests: Rachel has a background in veterinary diagnostics and cancer research administration; previously, she has contributed to national antimicrobial resistance monitoring projects and currently supports the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center's Research Programs. Rachel is interested in how technology can be used to improve disease surveillance, risk factor monitoring, and screening, enhance and explore biorepositories and registries, better support researchers, and how current approaches can be assessed and communicated. She is especially interested in strategies to improve representation for marginalized groups and the intersection of health informatics and health disparities.

Letsy Cahue-Flores

Degrees: B.S. Informatics, minor Health Informatics, UC Irvine (2023)

Professional Interests: Consumer health informatics, clinical informatics, health data analytics

Background/Interests: Letsy's passion for health informatics ignited while advocating for her family’s health, where she witnessed how language barriers limited her parents' access to vital health information and benefits. As an undergraduate research assistant at UC Irvine, she helped address the unmet needs of childhood cancer survivors by designing sociotechnical solutions. These experiences deepened her commitment to addressing the system's equity gap, propelling Letsy's aspiration to attain a master’s in Health Informatics and continue serving underrepresented and underserved communities — particularly those with chronic illnesses, advanced age, limited socioeconomic means, and non-English speaking backgrounds. Her goal: improve healthcare outcomes for all.

Namrata Bhat

Degrees: Bachelor of Physiotherapy B.P.T., KLE Academy of Higher Education and Research (2018), MSc in Health Economics, University of Galway, Ireland (2020)

Interests: Use of Electronic Health records in disease modelling and medical workforce planning, Clinical Informatics, Use of predictive analysis and AI in Health care.

Background/ Interests: Having completed her Bachelor’s in Physiotherapy, Namrata is interested to explore avenues to use health informatics in physiotherapy. As a health economist, she is also keen to strengthen her existing skill set in simulation modelling in the context of EHR and real-world evidence to determine cost effectiveness of pharmaceutical and therapeutic interventions. Based on her previous experience as a research officer with the Health Services Executive in the Republic of Ireland, Namrata would like to explore the usefulness of electronic records for medical workforce planning in the context of the consultant/specialist workforce in the United States of America. In her free time, she enjoys travelling and hiking with her husband.

Sabrina Lord

Degrees: B.A. Legal Studies, UC Santa Cruz (2022) 

Professional interests: Healthcare Data Analytics, Clinical Informatics, Data Visualization, EHR

Background/Interests: Sabrina's interest in health informatics stems from her experience in Clinical Research at UC San Francisco. During her time at UCSF, she has been able to focus her time on several data-driven studies, including clinical research informatics on drug and substance use. She is interested in expanding her knowledge and skills by utilizing data analytics to address the U.S. substance abuse crisis and improve addiction treatment. In her free time, she likes spending time with friends, running, biking, traveling, printmaking, and learning harp.