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Students and Fellows

The program seeks to prepare students for leadership positions in outcomes research within academia, industry, and government. Students enrolled in the DPOP PhD program have a variety of previous training experiences and backgrounds, including pharmacy, public health, and sociology.

Our students receive full financial support, including a competitive stipend, paid tuition, and health insurance. They complete the PhD program in approximately five years, and our graduates have taken postdoctoral fellowship positions  at prestigious colleges (at Harvard and Duke, to name a few) and have found desirable positions in academia and in the pharmaceutical industry. We meet many of our students for the first time during the School’s Recruitment Weekend each Spring.

  • Ashely Cole, PhD., 2018, whose dissertation was titled “Comparative Safety and Healthcare Resource Utilization Associated with First-Line Treatments for Chronic Myeloid Leukemia” is a research scientist at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
  • Adam Sage, PhD., 2018, whose dissertation was titled “Optimizing Patient Comprehension of Information Visualizations for Medical Adherence and Blood Pressure” is s research scientist at Quantitative Usability Research, Facebook
  • Yi-Ting Chou, PhD., 2018, dissertation was titled  “Accessibility and Affordability of High Priced Drugs in Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer.”
  • Scott Davis, PhD., 2018, whose dissertation was titled “Meducation: A Randomized Controlled Trial of an Online Educational Video Intervention to Improve Glaucoma Eye Drop Technique Adherence” is a NIH postdoctoral fellow in Implementation Science  at the UNC Clinical and Translational Science Institute.
  • Nirosha Mahendraratnam Lederer, Ph.D., 2018, whose dissertation was titled “Optimizing Antiemetic Use in Patients Initiating Highly Emetogenic Intravenous Chemotherapy: Lessons Learned from Big Data and Modeling” is a managing associate at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy.
  • Mrudula Borse Glassberg, PhD., 2017, whose dissertation was titled “Comparative Effectiveness and Safety of Anticoagulants in MOS Patients” is a manager in the Health Economics & Market Access division of Ethicon, Inc.
  • Robert A Overman, Ph.D., 2017, whose dissertation was titled “Prediction and Utility of Predicted Fracture Risk Scores in Administrative Claims Data,” is a data scientist at NoviSci LLC in Durham, NC.
  • Andrew Roberts, Ph.D., 2015, whose dissertation was titled “Optimizing the Public Health Benefit of a Medicaid Controlled Substance Lock-In Program,” is an assistant professor at University of Kansas.
  • Catherine Slota, Ph.D., 2015, whose dissertation was titled “Examining Patient-Physician Communication Regarding Cost in the Glaucoma Patient Population,” is a researcher at RTI International.
  • Melea Ward, Ph.D., 2014, whose dissertation was titled “A comparative effectiveness analysis of patients newly initiating tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy for chronic myeloid leukemia,” is a research manager at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in the US Health Outcomes division.
  • Julie Lauffenburger, Ph.D., 2014, whose dissertation was titled “Dabigatran and Warfarin For Stroke Prevention in Atrial Fibrillation: Use, Switching, and Clinical Effects Following New Market Entry in Real-World Patients,” is an instructor in the division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
  • Anne Beaubrun, Ph.D., 2013, whose dissertation was titled “Intravenous Vitamin D Treatment in Hemodialysis Patients: Patterns of Use and Association with Fracture Risk”, is an Observational Research Manager at Amgen.
  • Rishi Desai, Ph.D., 2013, whose dissertation was titled “TNF-α Inhibitor Treatment and the Risk of Cardiovascular Events in Patients Newly Diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis,” is an instructor in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Harvard Medical School in Boston.