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I completed my postdoctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Institute through the Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program working with Dr. Rena Jones and Dr. Mary Ward in the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch in the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics in Rockville, Maryland.

I co-authored an article in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention entitled “Geographic Patterns in U.S. Lung Cancer Mortality and Cigarette Smoking” led by Alaina Shreves and Dr. Rena Jones. We applied geospatial statistical methods to describe patterns in lung cancer mortality rates (2005-2018) in relation to patterns in cigarette smoking prevalences (1997-2003) by sex at the US county level.

Migrating my professional updates from Twitter to Mastodon. Find me there!

My fourth R package is published in the Comprehensive R Archive Network named ndi. It computes various geospatial neighborhood deprivation indices (NDI) and other metrics of social vulnerability in the United States.

I co-authored an article in Environmental Research entitled “Urinary nitrate and sodium in a high-risk area for upper gastrointestinal cancers: Golestan Cohort Study” led by Dr. Arash Etemadi. We found urinary nitrate was associated with living at a higher elevation and using groundwater for drinking and a positive correlation between median urinary nitrate and sodium and esophageal cancer incidence rates in a rural population in northeastern Iran.

Here is an example of plotting a neighborhoods network with ggplot2 using the sf and sfdep packages for counties in a U.S. state. We can display the “weights” feature of the neighborhoods network as the size of the line segments by scaling the size aesthetic with + scale_size_identity().

My first manuscript that was featured as the cover article of a scientific journal was published today in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention Volume 31, Issue 5. I co-firsted authored the article entitled “A National Map of NCI-Designated Cancer Center Catchment Areas on the 50th Anniversary of the Cancer Centers Program” with Dr.

I received a 2021 National Cancer Institute (NCI) Director’s Award for Emerging Leader along with the other members of the Fellows Advisory Board of the Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program (CPFP) in recognition of spearheading innovative opportunities for fellows to develop skills and community during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I gave an invited talk at the Center for Science and Technology in the Radiation Protection Division of the Office of Air and Radiation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency entitled “Putting cancer and environmental exposures in (geo)spatial perspective.

Catchment Areas of NCI-Designated Cancer Centers is a web-based application that serves as a visualization tool for the geographically defined catchment areas of NCI-Designated Cancer Centers, providing a geographic scope for: