Musaad Lab Members

Primary Investigator

I am currently an associate professor of pediatrics and biostatistics in the Children’s Nutrition Research at Baylor College of Medicine. My research focuses on understanding the environmental, molecular, and behavioral risk factors that influence the development of unhealthy weight gain and chronic disease progression including immune dysfunction and cardiovascular disease risk. I am particularly interested in developing contextual and other data-driven methods to determine how the risk factors differ across racial/ethnically diverse populations and the effect of behavioral interventions on improving outcomes.

I also mentor fellows in the Department of Pediatrics and find my role as a statistical reviewer for the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior a rewarding experience.

Statistician

I am currently a statistician in the Department of Pediatrics-Nutrition in Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine. I received my M.S. in Sustainable Biomaterials and M.S. in Statistics from Virginia Tech. I have worked in the chemical industry as a statistical consultant and an online tutor for graduate students in statistics before joining Dr. Salma Musaad’s group. I am interested in utilizing statistical models and methods to analyze healthcare and industrial data. 

Research Coordinator

Originally from Spring, Texas, I’m currently a senior at the University of Houston majoring in public health with double minors in management information systems and data and society! My expected graduation date will be May 2023. During my time as an undergraduate, I participated in a summer research program where I explored transportation barriers and its impact on the prevalence of heart disease risk factors. Under Dr. Musaad’s lab, I’ll be exploring the impact of racial disparities and analytic gaps on obesity rates. Though I’m still exploring my career interests, I hope to work with data analytics in the future and may even consider a master’s degree. In my free time, I enjoy bullet journaling, writing food reviews, and I’m trying to get back into digital art, photography, and video editing!

Statistician

I earned a Master’s degree in Applied Statistics from the University of Delaware, after completing my Bachelor’s degree in Statistics from the University of Minnesota. I am interested in addressing topics such as data missingness to find the appropriate methodology to reduce biases introduced into the data after performing an imputation, appropriate advanced experimental design techniques in research, and Bayesian approach to research problems. 

During my Master’s degree I completed a research project about the impact of obesity in the US among adolescents and children between the age of 3 and 15 years by using multinomial logistic regression technique. I believe my findings from my thesis, coupled with my interest in solving the many health challenges generated by obesity, especially on children’s health, will be tremendously helpful to my work in the Department of Pediatrics-Nutrition. During my free time I enjoy jogging. 

Student Helper

I am a recent graduate from the University of Texas at Austin, with a B.S. in public health and a minor in the business of healthcare. During my time in undergrad, I gained an interest in nutrition research due to the intersection between public health and scientific disciplines like biochemistry and metabolism. I also gained exposure to biostatistics and basic programming through my coursework and time as a teaching assistant for a biostatistics course. I am excited to apply my skills in these areas during my time as a student helper for the Musaad Lab. In my free time I enjoy reading, listening to music, and doing yoga!