Mentoring Roundtables

2025 MENTORING ROUNDTABLES

Date: September 9, 2025 12:15PM-1:30PM

Mentoring Roundtables will be held at the Conference Hotel. Each table will be hosted by a Mentor with 8-10 registered Mentees to engage in an informal discussion. Lunch is included in the session. Each participant is required to pay a $25 fee to cover the cost of the lunch. Pre-registration is required to participate.

2025 MENTORS

REGISTRATION

Roundtable Topic: Conducting research in an uncertain political landscape (dissemination of results and navigating the environment)

Mark Hayward

Mark D. Hayward is a professor of sociology, a Centennial Commission Professor in the Liberal Arts, and a faculty research associate of the Population Research Center at the University of Texas. Read more

Hayward is a health demographer and population health scientist with a long history of NIA and NICHD research grants supporting his research program. Currently, his work is focusing on two major questions: 1) “upstream institutional levers” of adult mortality trends and disparities, and 2) early life developmental origins of cognitive health and dementia in the older population. Hayward is a recipient of the Matilda White Riley Award from the National Institutes of Health for his contributions to behavioral and social scientific knowledge relevant to mission of NIH. He has served on a number of scientific advisory boards including, for example, the Committee on Population (NASEM), a National Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the NIH Advisory Committee on Research on Women’s Health, and the Board of Scientific Counselors (National Center for Health Statistics). Hayward has held a number of major elected roles in his professional societies (e.g., President of the Southern Demographic Society and chair of the ASA sections on Aging and the Life Course and Sociology of Population). Currently, he is a member of an NASEM Study Committee developing a Decadal Report on the value of social science research for investigating Alzheimer’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease-related dementias. He also is the current editor of his field’s major journal, Demography.

Hayward is a committed teacher and mentor. His teaching interests focus on population health and health disparities and survival models. Hayward has mentored numerous graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who have gone on to distinguished careers both at major universities as well as federal agencies. He also has served as the faculty mentor for junior scientists supported by NIH-career development awards. His faculty mentees have been from several disciplines including human development, psychology and sociology. Hayward recently received the “Outstanding Mentor Award” from the Section on Aging and the Life Course of the American Sociological Association.

Hayward received his PhD in sociology in 1981 from Indiana University and his undergraduate degree in sociology in 1975 from Washington State University.

Roundtable Topic: How to build a funded portfolio: considering the art of grant writing and funding strategies

Alexander Tsai

Alexander Tsai is a board-certified psychiatrist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he teaches psychiatric epidemiology and co-directs the training program on psychiatric epidemiology and biostatistics. Read more

Roundtable Topic: Navigating Community-Engaged Research with your Institution

Bettina Beech

Bettina M. Beech, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., is a clinical professor of population health in the Department of Health Systems and Population Health Sciences at the Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine. She is also the chief population health officer at the University of Houston. In this role, Beech oversees the integration of population health education and research across the University involving all disciplines from medicine to engineering to social science and education. Read more

Roundtable Topic: Shifting Focus Towards Community-Engaged Research

Kia Davis

Trained as a social epidemiologist, Professor Davis’s research explores how race, socioeconomic position and associated stress intersect to produce health disparities in chronic disease risk factors like obesity and sleep. For more than 10 years, she has been committed to health disparities research, which evolved from health communication research to a focus on social determinants, specifically structural drivers, of observed inequalities to inform social change. She also studies how debt might add to our understanding of racial and socioeconomic disparities.

Roundtable Topic: Navigating Your PhD Program

Ryan Suk

Dr. Ryan Suk (pronunciation: Rye-un Sook; pronouns: she/they) is an Assistant Professor at Emory University, jointly appointed at Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing and the Department of Health Policy and Management of Rollins School of Public Health. Read more

Kaitlyn Berry

As a social epidemiologist and population health scientist, my research employs advanced quantitative methods, novel combinations of cohort and policy data, and interdisciplinary perspectives to investigate how place-based factors shape health and health inequities. Read more

Roundtable Topic: Making your Research Make a Difference: Driving Impact with Credibility and Trustworthiness

Richard Carpiano

Richard M. Carpiano is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside and Faculty Director of the UCR Science to Policy (S2P) Program. A public and population health scientist and medical sociologist by training, Dr. Carpiano studies how social factors contribute to the health of adults and children, including health inequities. Read more

Roundtable Topic: Navigating the Academic Job Market

Audrey Dorelien

I am currently an Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Washington (UW). I am also the Training Core PI at the Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology (CSDE) at UW. Previously, I spent ten years at the University of Minnesota where I was first an assistant then associate professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Read more

Roundtable Topic: Considering Non-Academic Careers

Philip Alberti

As the Founding Director of the AAMC Center for Health Justice and Senior Director, Health Equity Research & Policy at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), Philip sparks, supports, and contributes to community-driven, multi-sector efforts that build evidence for programs, policies, practices, and partnerships that eliminate health inequities. Read more

Roundtable Topic: Strategies to bridge and build interdisciplinary research

Roland J. Thorpe, Jr., PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society (HBS), Founding Director of the Program on Research for Men’s Health in the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions (HCHDS), Deputy Director of the HCHDS, and Director of the Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center for Minority Aging. Read more