Faculty Research Profiles

Dr. Jinling Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology housed in both College of Public Health and Health Professions and College of Medicine at the University of Florida (UF). She is also co-directing the UF Center for Genetic Epidemiology and Bioinformatics. Before joining UF, she was a faculty member in the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering (EMSE) and Department of Biological Sciences at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T). Dr. Liu holds a Ph.D degree in Biology from the Pennsylvania State University as well as an MS degree in Biomedical Informatics from the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Liu also completed a National Library of Medicine Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biomedical Informatics. She has extensive experience in big data analytics, systems biology, probabilistic graphical models, causal inference and machine learning.

Dr. Liu’s research interests lie in modeling the rapidly-accumulating big data (e.g., muti-omics) in biology and medicine for precision medicine via a variety of statistical and machine learning techniques – one of her projects along these lines has been recently funded by a prestigious NIH Career Development Award for young investigators. One main theme of her research is to infer from the multi-omics data the activation states of signaling pathways and utilize such information in precision medicine. She is committed to advancing precision medicine through her work. She is also collaborating with researchers in other domains for data analytics and decision making.

Liu lab has access to rich high-dimensional multi-omics data, including WGS, WES, DNA methylation, RNA-seq, proteomics, lipidomics and metabolomics in large-scale human populations. The lab is interested in integrating and mining the different types of data to understand the genomic causes and other biomarkers as well as the underlying signaling network for a variety of diseases including aging, cardiovascular diseases, brain diseases, cancer, et al., through novel statistical or deep learning methods development and application. If you are interested in data analytics, artificial intelligence, genetic epidemiology or precision medicine, please see the above Liu Lab website on how to apply. Feel free to direct any questions you may have to Dr. Liu through jinling.liu@ufl.edu.

Dr. Malin’s research program examines impacts of environmental toxicants and nutrition on various health outcomes. She is a leading expert in health effects of fluoride exposure and has published extensively on this topic. She has published studies on potential impacts of fluoride exposure on neurodevelopment, sleep behaviors, thyroid gland activity, kidney and liver function, and women’s reproductive health. She has also published on fluoride exposure assessment and metal co-exposures. She was awarded a K99/R00 grant from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to examine impacts of early life fluoride exposure on child neurodevelopment and sleep patterns in the United States and Canada. Her recent publication on prenatal fluoride exposure and child neurobehavior in Los Angeles, California was selected as a paper of the year for 2024 by The National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Her fluoride research has been featured by major media outlets including, The New York Times, Wallstreet Journal, Associated Press, CNN, Fox News and NPR. She has also presented on fluoride and health for policy makers across Florida, and in other states.

Dr. Malin is also interested in the role of nutrition in health. She has published research on associations between dietary nutrient intake and child neurodevelopment, adult cardiometabolic outcomes and depression, and dental caries. She has also conducted research on measurement of adequacy of dietary nutrient intake. Lastly, she has a program of research examining potential systemic impacts of nutrition on dental caries.

Learn more about Dr. Malin’s lab: https://fabblab.phhp.ufl.edu

Computational epidemiology Bio-health informatics Artificial intelligence Viral – bacterial diseases

As a psychiatric epidemiologist, Dr. Striley conducts community-engaged research that aims to increase community members’ recognition of need for health screening, mental health and behavioral health services and to decrease barriers to those services. She has extensive training and experience in community engaged research, including recruitment and retention of diverse community members, and in drug use, abuse and misuse epidemiology. Dr. Striley is one of the few researchers who conducts research in caffeine and energy drink misuse. She is also researching the epidemiology of movement disorders including Tourette Disorder, Dystonia and Essential Tremor.

Dr. Westmoreland is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Florida. Broadly, her research interests are in behavioral and sexually transmitted infections (STI) epidemiology. Much of Dr. Westmoreland’s research has focused on sexual behavior associated with HIV/STI risk and prevention including the role that social and structural contexts play in influencing sexual behavior. Her current research centers the intersection of alcohol/substance use and sexual health behavior culminating in her NIAAA funded K01 Mentored Research Scientist Development Award investigating the impacts of alcohol use and misuse on daily PrEP (pill form) adherence. Additionally, Dr. Westmoreland has research interests and experience in the use of technology to conduct research and disseminate interventions to hard-to-reach populations, in LGBTQ+ health disparities, in applied social network analysis, and in survey research methodology.

Prior to joining the Department at UF, Dr. Westmoreland was a Research Assistant Professor in the City University of New York’s Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health where she also completed her post-doctoral training. Dr. Westmoreland completed her doctorate in Epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, her MSPH at the University of South Carolina, and her BS in Public Health Sciences at Clemson University.