My research activities fall into four domains: (1) quantitative data analysis methods and survey scale development; (2) directorship of the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) Methods Core and Center for Aging in Diverse Communities Analysis Core; (3) fostering and conducting behavioral HIV/AIDS-prevention research in racial and ethnic minoritized populations and communities by increasing research capacity among early-career faculty of color conducting social and behavioral HIV/AIDS-prevention research; and (4) advanced quantitative methodological, statistical, and data analytic support for biomedical and behavioral HIV prevention and aging health disparities research studies.

I am a Professor at the UCSF Division of Prevention Science in the Department of Medicine at UCSF. Originally trained as a social and quantitative psychologist, I spent eight years as a statistical consultant at the University of Texas academic computing center before coming to UCSF in 2001. Since arriving at UCSF, I have participated as statistical co-investigator or consultant on over 90 NIH, CDC, and state projects in the areas of HIV prevention, reproductive health, aging research, and tobacco use prevention. My methodological areas of interest are multivariate statistical models with a special interest in latent variable models for survey scale development and validation as well as mixed effects (i.e., multilevel; HLM) models for clustered and longitudinal data, including dyadic data. My substantive interests include training the next generation of prevention researchers working in U.S. minoritized/marginalized communities. I am currently PI of two NIH-sponsored R25 research education grants to foster grant-writing and related research capacity-building for early-career faculty working in U.S. minority communities to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and STIs and to improve the lives of those living with HIV/AIDS. I also actively collaborate as a senior statistician and quantitative methods co-investigator on multiple prevention research projects. I am a co-author of Primer of Applied Regression & Analysis of Variance with Drs. Stanton Glantz and Bryan Slinker (McGraw-Hill, 2016).