United States
I design and execute observational studies that answer causal questions from real-world data: what drives outcomes and costs, for whom, and what would change under intervention. My toolkit is causal inference on large secondary datasets - causal mediation analysis, g-computation, inverse probability weighting, doubly robust estimation, marginal structural models, and causal forests for heterogeneous treatment effects - paired with microsimulation to project disease natural history and policy counterfactuals, primarily in R. I work routinely with US administrative and survey data including the HCUP National Inpatient Sample, NHANES, and the Health and Retirement Study. Recent work includes decomposing socioeconomic disparities in pediatric asthma hospitalization costs (Respiratory Medicine, 2025) and simulating cardiovascular outcomes of Medicaid expansion against a counterfactual non-expansion scenario (The Milbank Quarterly, 2025). Earlier in my career I led the Irish EQ-5D-5L valuation study and built cost-effectiveness models supporting national Health Technology Assessment (HTA) decision-making, so I bring a health economist's value lens to epidemiologic questions for real-world evidence (RWE) generation. I share analysis code publicly alongside my papers to support transparency and reproducibility. I'm a postdoctoral fellow in causal inference and epidemiology at UCLA. I'm interested in roles where rigorous observational research informs real decisions — RWE, observational research, pharmacoepidemiology, and Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR) teams.
- Awarded the competitive NLM T15 Biomedical Data Science Fellowship (Precision Health Equity, T15LM013976) - Designed and led an observational study of socioeconomic disparities in US pediatric asthma hospitalization outcomes and costs (HCUP NIS); used causal mediation analysis to decompose the income–cost relationship and identify intervention targets (Respiratory Medicine, 2025), and causal forests to estimate heterogeneous effects (first-author paper submitted). - Built a state-transition microsimulation of cardiovascular disease under Medicaid expansion vs. a counterfactual non-expansion scenario, integrating g-computation and equity-informative outcomes (The Milbank Quarterly, 2025) and first-author methods tutorial on distributional cost-effectiveness analysis under review at Medical Decision Making. - Co-authored a doubly-robust-adjusted study of comorbid dementia's association with hospital length of stay, cost, and mortality (Archives of Gerontology & Geriatrics, 2024). - Ongoing marginal structural model analyses of adverse childhood experiences and chronic conditions in HRS-linked data (SER 2025). - Share analysis code publicly on GitHub alongside publications for transparency and reproducibility. - Twice shortlisted for the UCLA Chancellor's Award for Postdoctoral Research (2024, 2025); co-supervise two PhD students.
- Led two umbrella reviews of fiscal and pricing policies for food and beverages, applying AMSTAR II and equity-explicit frameworks (Obesity Reviews; Nutrition Reviews); funded by Safefood. - Operationalized large US healthcare datasets to quantify the cost of violence on the US healthcare system (JAMA Network Open). - Designed observational analyses linking allostatic load biomarkers to self-rated health and asthma outcomes, using entropy balancing for confounding adjustment (Social Science & Medicine; Thorax). - Built a microsimulation evaluating stromal-cell therapy in diabetic kidney disease under EU Horizon 2020 funding (PLOS One).
- Project manager and key researcher on a large Health Research Board grant to develop Ireland's HTA infrastructure, yielding eight publications, including in PharmacoEconomics and Value in Health. This included: 1. The Irish EQ-5D-5L valuation study - a national primary-data study of health-state preferences 2. National reference unit costs supporting Irish HTA decision-making. - Directed a postgraduate course in Decision Modelling in HTA; co-organised four Health Economics Masterclasses.
- Applied econometrics, cost-benefit analysis, and economic and spatial modelling — including ecosystem service valuation — to forestry and land-use questions. - Worked with industry, government, and Māori stakeholders to translate analyses into sustainable land-use decisions, national-scale wood-processing investment, and public policy.
- Designed and analysed a contingent valuation (stated-preference) study of willingness to pay for a coastal environmental resource — survey design, data collection, and econometric analysis; an early foundation for my later preference-elicitation work (EQ-5D-5L valuation).