Current Trainees
Postdoctoral Fellows
Deaweh Benson, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr. Benson’s research examines how intergenerational relationships shape youth firearm injury risk within the broader context of social and environmental influences. Her work centers youth development within extended family systems and aims to illuminate pathways to healing in communities disproportionately affected by firearm violence. She earned her PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Michigan (U-M). As a predoctoral trainee on the NIH T32 Developmental Training Grant, she investigated how systemic adversity influenced psychological and biological functioning—focusing primarily on Black adolescents and young adults, while including White youth to contextualize disparities. As a postdoctoral fellow at the U-M Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, Dr. Benson will work under the mentorship of Drs. Katie Edwards, Daniel Lee, and Marc Zimmerman.
Shaun Bhatia, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr. Bhatia’s research has focused in the areas of program and policy evaluation, community violence prevention, and spatial econometrics. He earned his MS in Epidemiology from the University of Illinois and received his doctorate and MA in Community Psychology from DePaul University. Dr. Bhatia will be working closely with the CDC-funded Michigan Youth Violence Prevention Center based at U-M’s School of Public Health. The center partners with universities, economic development organizations, health departments, hospitals, police departments and community-based organizations to implement and evaluate strategies to prevent youth violence. Starting in September 2023, he will be working closely under the direction of Drs. Marc Zimmerman and Patrick Carter as faculty mentors.
Chiara Cooper, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr. Cooper earned her PhD from the University of Edinburgh (UK) and her Master of Science from the London School of Economics. Her work is qualitative in nature and spans the disciplines of criminology, sociology and gender studies. Her past research has focused on intimate relationships, sexual consent, domestic violence, and coercive control. As a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, Dr. Cooper will be studying the implementation and outcomes of domestic violence restraining order firearm restrictions.
Mike Henson-Garcia, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methods, Dr. Henson-Garcia’s research examines how identity and culturally grounded interventions can promote firearm safety behaviors among diverse firearm-owning populations. His dissertation research employed a parent-centered lens to understand and influence secure storage behaviors among firearm-owning caregivers in Texas.
He recently completed his PhD in Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences with a secondary emphasis in Epidemiology at the UTHealth School of Public Health. In August 2025, he will join IFIP under the mentorship of Drs. Cynthia Ewell-Foster, Hsing-Fang Hsieh, and Alison Miller where he will continue his work on family-centered strategies to support firearm safety and reduce injury risk among children and adolescents.
Stephen Oliphant, PhD, MPP
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr. Oliphant’s research is focused on understanding the impacts of firearm laws and social policies on self-harm and interpersonal firearm injury. The overarching goal of his work is to inform interventions and policies that are equitable and effective. Prior to joining the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, he earned a master’s in public policy and certificate in injury science from the University of Michigan and received his doctorate from the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. As a graduate student, he was a research assistant with the Firearm Safety Among Children and Teens Consortium where he contributed to research projects on youth firearm carrying and extreme risk protection orders. Starting in September 2023, Dr. Oliphant will be working closely under the direction of Drs. Justin Heinze and Patrick Carter as mentoring faculty during his fellowship.
Briana Scott, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr. Scott’s research is on comprehensive school safety, youth violence, and firearm injury prevention with a focus on equity and social justice in K-12 education. She earned her PhD in Education and Psychology and her Master of Science in Psychology from the University of Michigan. Dr. Scott has been working in partnership with the Prevention Research Collaborative, National Center for School Safety, and Sandy Hook Promise Foundation since 2019. Starting July 2024, Dr. Scott will be working under the direction of Drs. Justin Heinze and Hsing-Fang Hsieh as faculty mentors.
Dorothy Stearns, MD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr. Stearns research has focused in areas of injury prevention, exposure control, health disparities. and epidemiology. She earned her MD from the University of Colorado School of Medicine and her Masters in Public Health from Emory University. Dr. Stearns completed two years of general surgery residency at Ohio State University prior to joining the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention. Starting July 2024, Dr. Stearns will be working under the direction of Drs. Doug Wiebe, Rebeccah Sokol and Erika Newman as a faculty mentoring team.
Eugenio Weigend Vargas, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr. Weigend Vargas is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention. His research has focused on preventing arms trafficking and gun violence in the United States and Mexico. Dr. Weigend Vargas has provided testimonies before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights as well as the Inter-American Convention Against Illicit Firearms Trafficking in the Americas and has been invited to speak at conferences at Oxford University, Georgetown University, Washington University, Colegio de Mexico, and Universidad Autonoma Nacional de México.
Prior to joining the University of Michigan, Dr. Weigend Vargas was the research director for gun violence prevention at the Center for American Progress, where he published numerous articles, books, reports, fact sheets, and issue briefs advocating for measures that strengthen gun laws in the United States at the state and federal levels. Dr. Weigend Vargas has been a visiting scholar at Georgetown University and the University of Texas in El Paso. He holds a master’s degree in public affairs from Brown University and a doctorate from Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey.
Interns
Tazkira Ahad
Intern
Ms. Ahad is an incoming 1st-year in the Health Behavior Health Education Masters program through the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. She graduated in May 2024 with a BA in Community and Global Public Health from the University of Michigan. She minored in Community Action and Social Change. Her interests lie in improving healthcare access and reducing death and injury, particularly in underrepresented communities.
Einas Ali
Intern
Einas Ali is a 2025 graduate from the University of Alabama at Birmingham with a Bachelor’s degree in Public Health with a concentration in Global Health Studies. She is currently an intern with the CDC-supported Future Public Health Leaders Program at the University of Michigan, and is supporting the SafERteens, SynERgy, and IntERact projects. These three studies are aimed at reducing and preventing violence and risky firearm behaviors among youth in clinical, emergency, and remote settings. Her interests include global health, epidemiology, health systems resilience, and improving implementation of evidence based practices in resource constrained settings.
Victoria Arce
Intern
Ms. Arce is a freshman undergraduate student pursuing a B.S. in Biology and Spanish. She is interested in pursuing a career in surgery and is passionate about issues regarding health equity and disparities. As an intern at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, she will be working under Dr. Stearns.
Joshua Crook
Intern
Joshua Crook is an intern at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, working for the National Center for School Safety. He is a senior pursuing a B.A. in Public Policy and a minor in International Studies. Joshua is passionate about studying how firearm violence impacts local communities and policy solutions that promote school safety. He is excited to contribute to evidence-based initiatives under the STOP School Violence Act program and the Michigan School Safety Initiative.
Lauren Denton
Intern
Lauren Denton is a rising junior pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Public Health Sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. She is interested in public health issues such as firearm injury prevention and is particularly focused on understanding the root causes of the increasing firearm-related deaths in the U.S. Her interests include exploring evidence-based prevention strategies to help mitigate risk and improve community safety. As an intern at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, she is assisting the Data and Methods Core of the CFVP Coordinating Center.
Imani Elliot, MD, MPH
Research Assistant
Ms. Elliott is a dual degree MD/MPH student at the University of Michigan, originally from Detroit Michigan, she obtained her Bachelor of Science from Howard University. During her time at the University of Michigan she has been active as the co-president for the Association of Women Surgeons, A member of the Black Medical Association, and Wolverine Street Medicine. She is passionate about health advocacy, increasing access to care, and caring for minority populations. After medical school Imani plans to pursue a career as a surgeon. In her role as a research assistant, Ms. Elliott is working on Dr. Laura Seewald’s secondary data analysis project.
Brooke Forrey
Intern
Brooke Forrey is a junior undergraduate intern majoring in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience, with a minor in Crime and Justice. She is particularly interested in pursuing a Clinical Psychology PhD to seek a career that focuses on forensic psychopathology and enhancing the relationship between mental health and the justice system. In her free time, she enjoys dancing with her hip-hop team, going to concerts, and traveling with friends and family.
Kaitlyn Gastineau
Intern
Kaitlyn Gastineau is a rising Junior pursuing a B.A. in Political Science and Psychology. She is interested in how public policy incentivises and influences behavior. As an intern, she will work under Dr. Elyse Thulin’s projects aimed at exploring how Technology-facilitated reporting systems can reduce inter- and intrapersonal harm in youth populations.
Shravya Ghantasala
Intern
Shravya Ghantasala is a rising senior pursuing a B.S. in Public Health Sciences with a Community Action & Social Change minor at the University of Michigan. Shravya is passionate about enacting structural changes to mitigate health disparities and changing the criminal legal system. Shravya is working alongside Dr. Lisa Wexler in partnership with tribal health organizations in Alaska to pilot strength-based and evidence-informed interventions focused on firearm lethal means reduction with families who are concerned that one of their members is struggling with their mental health.
Jennifer Guo
Intern
Jennifer Guo is a current Masters student in Biostatistics at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. She has previously earned a B.S. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at the University of Michigan. As an intern at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, Jennifer is working with Dr. Daniel Lee to evaluate how exposure to firearms and firearm-related violence affects the health of black youth, as well as working on tools to measure racism experienced by young people.
Anay Halwasiya
Research Assistant
Anay Halwasiya is a Master of Science student in Data Science at the University of Michigan with a background in engineering and applied analytics. His academic and professional work focuses on using data science to understand and address real-world challenges through predictive modeling, statistical analysis, and system optimization.
Anay has led and contributed to multiple projects across sectors, including building risk prediction systems for hospitals, developing time-series models for environmental forecasting, and using graph-based approaches to study misinformation. He is particularly interested in applying data science methods to support public health, safety, and policy evaluation.
As a research intern at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, Anay is excited to contribute analytical insights that inform prevention strategies and help strengthen data-driven decision-making around firearm-related harm.
Holly Holland
Intern
Holly Holland is a first-year master’s student at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, pursuing an MPP with a concentration in Policy Analysis Methods. She graduated in May 2024 with a BA in Political Science and a minor in Gender, Race, and Nation from the University of Michigan. Her interests lie in social policy, particularly gender policy and achieving gender equality, as well as reducing gun violence across the United States. As an intern at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, she will be working under Dr. Zeoli.
Roman Kalaczinski
Intern
Mr. Kalaczinski is a rising Junior studying Public Health and applying for a minor in Public Policy. He is interested in pursuing a career as a physician and is passionate about the intersection between medicine and public health.
Sasha Kalvert
Intern
Sasha Kalvert is a 2025 summer intern with the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention. She is a rising senior pursuing a B.A. in Sociology & Spanish with a minor in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences. In her role as an intern she is working under Dr. Hsing-Fang Hsieh studying firearm injury risks among Asian-Americans. Her areas of interest include harm reduction, community-based models of intervention, and investigating social determinants of health. Institutional transparency and access to information are also key areas of interests for Ms. Kalvert, which she pursues in her capacity as a reporter for The Michigan Daily’s investigative team and news podcast.
Sophia Martinez
Intern
Sophia Martinez is a rising senior at the University of Michigan, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Community and Global Public Health through the School of Public Health. She is currently an intern with the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, where she is working on the SAFE ARMS study under the guidance of Drs. Miller and Hsieh.
Sophia is on the pre-med track with aspirations of becoming a physician and is deeply committed to advancing health equity. Her previous work with IFIP on the Youth Empowerment Solutions (YES) project focused on preventing youth violence through community engagement and empowerment strategies. She is especially interested in the intersection of healthcare and community-based policy and hopes to apply her background to advocate for more inclusive, community-informed healthcare systems within medicine.
Akhil Paleru
Research Assistant
Zaida Pearson
Research Assistant
Julia Plawker
Research Assistant
Ms. Plawker just graduated with a B.S. in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience with Honors. In the fall of 2023 she will begin a Master of Public Health in the Health Behavior and Health Education Department at the University of Michigan. Ms. Plawker will be working with Dr. Hsing-Fang Hsieh on her project, Moving Upstream: Understanding Racism, Firearm Injury Risks, and Resiliency Among Asian Americans, to help run focus groups, develop a national survey of Asian Americans, and review the literature.
Philip Quansah
Research Assistant
Mr. Quansah is a research assistant at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention and works on the SafERteens program which aims to prevent and reduce youth violence. He is a sophomore at the University of Michigan, majoring in cognitive sciences. He hopes to use his collegiate research experiences to either end up working in research in the future, or find various ways to make a difference in this world. Other than research, Philip is a part of many clubs at the university and is also a supervisor for Michigan Recreational Sports. In his freshman year, Philip also played for the University of Michigan Football Team as a walk-on.
Melia Schliebe
Research Assistant
Melia Schliebe is a research assistant at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention. She earned her MPH at Boston University School of Public Health and her BS at the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology. She previously worked as a research assistant for the School of Kinesiology’s Childhood Disparities Research Lab. She is interested in school and community safety for children, teachers, and their families.
Eileen Spiegel
Research Assistant
Ms. Eileen Spiegel is a senior undergraduate student in Public Policy at the University of Michigan’s Ford School, and she is minoring in the university’s environmental program. At the Ford School, she is able to research how different policies can affect varying state-level gun violence. She is a research assistant with the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention and works under Dr. Zeoli to address the intersections of firearm policies and domestic violence.
Alex Swirsky
Research Assistant
Ms. Swirsky is a research assistant at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention. She is a rising junior studying Sociology on the Law, Justice, and Social Change track, after which she hopes to pursue a joint JD/MPP degree. She aims to eventually build upon her research experience to apply a sociological lens to the policy sector in order to help build a society that will empower and support its citizens.
Hailey Weiss
Research Assistant
Ms. Weiss is a first-year MPH candidate at the University of Michigan with a concentration in Health Behavior and Health Education and a certificate in Injury Science. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology with a focus in Global Health and Environment from Washington University in St. Louis. She is passionate about the intersection of medicine and public health and is seeking to ultimately reduce preventable injuries among youth. As a research assistant, she is working under Lynn Massey on Dr. Partick Carter’s Project IntERact, Project SynERgy, and SafERteens studies aimed at reducing firearm violence among youth and young adults.
Natalie Wilcox
Intern
Natalie Wilcox is a rising senior pursuing a B.A. in Public Policy and a minor in Gender and Health. She is an intern at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, working under Mr. Holtz on the Michigan Firearm Law Implementation Program where she helps build ERPO implementation resources and studies the use of ERPOs in Michigan. She is passionate about the role public policy can play in reducing systemic inequities in gun violence.
Ava Zarewych
Research Assistant
Ms. Zarewych is a junior undergraduate student majoring in Biology, Health, and Society with a minor in Gender and Health at the University of Michigan. As an pre medical student, she is passionate about the intersection of clinical medicine and public health. In her role as a research assistant at the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention, she is working on Dr. Patrick Carter’s Project IntERact and Project SynERgy, which aim to reduce youth firearm violence in urban settings.