Career Connection

March: Full Career Panel! - Save the date.

Picture of Sara Bleich

Areas of interest: USDA Agriculture, Geospatial Data, Nutrient Management, Bioinformatics
Date & Time: March 27, 11-12noon
Zoom link

Picture of Sara Bleich

Title: Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity
Company: Food and Nutrition Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Date & Time: Will reschedule in spring.
Room & Zoom:
Bio: Dr. Sara Bleich is the Director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity in the Food and Nutrition Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), after serving as the Senior Advisor for COVID-19 in the Office of the Secretary at USDA (2021). She is a policy expert and researcher who specializes in diet-related diseases, food insecurity and racial inequality with more than 175 peer-reviewed publications. She is on leave from her post as a Professor of Public Health Policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Kennedy School of Government, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Dr. Bleich was also a White House Fellow during the Obama administration, where she worked at USDA as a Senior Policy Adviser for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services and with the First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Initiative. She holds degrees from Columbia (BA, Psychology) and Harvard (PhD, Health Policy).

Picture of Ricardo Aguilar

Title: Research Computational Scientist I
Company: Children’s Health of Orange County (CHOC)
Date & Time: Feburary 10, 12pm-12:45pm PST
Room & Zoom: Online Only. Zoom link
Bio: Ricardo Aguilar is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles with a MS degree in Biostatistics. His academic research focused on identifying interaction terms in correlated, high-dimensional data using a feature selection machine learning algorithm. He has 5 years of experience as a statistical consultant where he gained experience in various areas of research such as life sciences, community health sciences, education, and agriculture. He is now a Research Computational Scientist I at Children’s Health of Orange County (CHOC) where he supports research through project ideation, study design, data management, inferential statistics, statistical and machine learning model building, and manuscript writing. Additionally, he catalogs and investigates databases to expand the scope of research conducted at CHOC.

Picture of Jeff Gonzalez

Title: Research and Policy Associate
Company: National Alliance for Hispanic Health
Date & Time: November 30, 12pm-1pm PST
Room & Zoom: Online Only. Zoom link
Bio: Natalia leads research efforts on the NIH All of Us Research Program at the National Alliance for Hispanic Health. She is part of a team working to understand the impact of COVID-19 on the Hispanic community using All of Us data. Additionally, she has conducted qualitative research with the Latinx community in Washington, D.C. and in Colombia with Venezuelan migrants. Additionally, she has written mixed-methods reports on COVID-19 perceptions among Hispanics throughout the U.S. for CDC grants.

Picture of Jeff Gonzalez

Title: Director of the Mathematical Statistics Research Center in the Office of Survey Methods Research
Company: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Date & Time: November 17, 12pm-1pm PST
Room & Zoom: Online Only. Zoom link
Bio: Jeffrey Gonzalez is the Director of the Mathematical Statistics Research Center in the Office of Survey Methods Research at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. He completed his Ph.D. in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland in 2012, following a MS degree in Biostatistics at the University of Michigan and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina. Jeff has over 15 years of service in the Federal Statistical System, having recently been a Research Mathematical Statistician with the Economic Research Service at the USDA where he served as the technical lead for survey and data development for the Second National Food Acquisition and Purchase Survey as well as a Mathematical Statistician at the BLS from 2007 to 2019. His research interests include modular survey designs, responsive/adaptive designs, respondent burden, and nonresponse bias and in his free time enjoys spending time with his spouse their three cocker spaniels - Griffin, Winston, and Stirling - and enjoys traveling, marathoning, and non-competitive Cross Fitting.

Picture of Ana Zepeda

Title: PHD Student in Geography
Company: UC Davis
Date & Time: October 27, 2pm-3pm PST
Room & Zoom: Online only. Zoom link Passcode: 188851
Bio: Ana is a Geography PhD student at UC Davis, where she studies the impacts of compounded disasters on farmers, specifically women farmers in Latin America and the Caribbean. Using qualitative data, she analyzes how public policies and educational programs can best assist farmers. In addition to her research, Ana is a teaching assistant for various courses at UC Davis, including qualitative research methods and international agricultural development theory.

Picture of Mariby Cruz sitting on steps looking at the camera

Title: Process Analyst I
Company: Quidel
Date & Time: September 22, 12noon-1pm
Room & Zoom: Online only. Zoom link
Bio: Mariby is a Process Analyst at Quidel Corporation, a diagnostic healthcare manufacturer serving to enhance the health and well-being of people around the globe through the development of diagnostic solutions. She is responsible for developing reports to analyze data, to predict product quality, and summarize product performance periodically. She assists in product quality improvements which increase quality, lower cost, and increase manufacturing capacity.