Josh Barocas

Josh Barocas is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine (CUSOM), an infectious diseases physician, PI of The Missing US Lab Project, and Director of the Social Determinants of Health and Disparities Modeling Unit at CU. He leads an interdisciplinary research program that is specifically aimed at the goal of improving health outcomes for marginalized populations who are at high risk for overdose, and infectious diseases such as HIV, hepatitis C virus, and injection-related bacterial infections. His research, which uses a combination of clinical epidemiology, health economics, simulation modeling, and cost-effectiveness, informs clinical decision making and health policy. He is engaged in research using these innovative methods to help understand the impact of and improve upon policies that affect people who use drugs. He has received funding from the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, including the prestigious Avenir Award. He has developed a microsimulation that simulates the natural history of injection drug use and projects the long-term outcomes such as overdose, endocarditis, and skin infections. I have also used longitudinal data from across the US to answer salient research questions. He serves as an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Drug Policy. He has published extensively in high impact journals including New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Lancet Public Health. His work has been featured in multiple media outlets including The Boston Globe, NPR, The New York Times, among others.

Josh is an avid concert goer, climber, skier, and runner. He tries to weave in a phish themed gem to every talk that he gives. He grew up in Denver and lives here now with his wife, two kids, and dogs. He enjoys growing hot peppers in his garden.

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Alyssa Haberle

Alyssa Haberle is a Research Services Information Science Manager in the Division of Infectious Diseases. She earned both a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice from Metropolitan State University of Denver while working as a full time 911 operator for the City of Aurora. Alyssa joined the Office of Grants and Contracts in 2016 and was quickly promoted into research administration within the Divisions. During this time, she completed her Masters of Business Administration from the University of Colorado and volunteered for six years as a victim advocate for the City of Aurora.

Over the past nine years, Alyssa has worked with PIs from a wide range of specialties, providing comprehensive administrative support including pre-award and post-award services, clinical trial negotiations and management, and the development of innovative research programs. In 2025, she was promoted to the Lab Manager for The Missing US.

Born and raised in Aurora, Colorado, Alyssa relocated to the Florida Panhandle in 2023 and now works fully remote. She is a proud wife to Zack, stepmother to Kevin, and mother to Jackson and Alivia. Outside of work, she enjoys CrossFit and contributes to her husband’s real estate business.

Kristina Yamkovoy

Hello! I am an IT Principal Professional and the lead programmer of the lab. I received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2018 and a Master of Arts in Biostatistics from Boston University in 2022. I have a passion for creating tools to better understand public health, and my analytic background allows me apply mathematical and statistical models to learn more about the epidemiology of infectious disease. I have previously focused on dengue fever, tuberculosis, and substance use. I also proudly designed this website.

What would your profession be if you weren’t currently in the field you are in? I’d be in a metal band.

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Pranav Padmanabhan

Pranav Padmanabhan is a Senior Research Services Professional with the lab and a PhD student in Epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health. He obtained a Bachelor’s of Science in Geography from The Ohio State University in 2022, and a Master’s of Public Health in Epidemiology from the Colorado School of Public Health in 2025. Pranav is interested in social and political determinants of health, and hopes to use data analysis and simulation modeling methods to improve health outcomes of people experiencing homelessness and people who use drugs. Pranav also has a background in community harm reduction, and is currently the lead developer of the iHOUSE agent-based model.

What would your profession be if you weren’t currently in the field you are in? A film festival curator.

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Xiaoyu Guan

Hello! My name is Xiaoyu, and I am excited to join the team as a Research Services Senior Information Science Professional. I hold a bachelor’s degree in Veterinary Medicine and a master’s degree in Preventive Veterinary Medicine from China Agricultural University. After moving to Denver, I earned my MPH in Applied Biostatistics from the Colorado School of Public Health.

I am passionate about working with data to generate data-driven evidence that can be used to improve public health and positively impact individuals’ health.

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be and why? Maybe Seattle. The rainy climate there is really attractive to me compared to the dry climate in Denver. However, I still love the mountains in Colorado.

What would your profession be if you weren’t currently in the filed you are in? A fashion designer.

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Lauren Kerr

Lauren Kerr is a Senior Research Services Professional with the lab. She earned her Master of Public Health in Health Systems, Management & Policy from the Colorado School of Public Health, with a certificate in Applied Biostatistics. Prior to joining the Missing US Lab, she worked with an interdisciplinary research group focused on improving opioid-related health outcomes in rural Southeast Colorado through community outreach, coalition building, and applied research. Her professional interests center on using data-driven research to engage and inform policy and decision-makers, fostering collaboration to improve health outcomes. She is passionate about advancing health by translating and advocating for evidence in ways that make systems more effective and equitable. 

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Kirk Fetters

Kirk Fetters is a senior fellow in infectious diseases at the University of Colorado and a researcher interested in the intersection of infectious diseases, social determinants of health, and health policy. He received a Bachelors of Science from Westmont College in Kinesiology, Biology, and Chemistry in 2016 and his MD from University of Colorado School of Medicine in 2020. He completed an internal medicine residency and chief residency at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, California, before returning to Colorado for infectious diseases fellowship. He enjoys traveling and drinking wine, but likes it even better when they’re at the same time.

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Sam Nall

Hi! My name is Sam, and I am a Research Assistant with the lab. I graduated in 2019 from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University with a Bachelor’s in Biomedical Sciences. Following graduation, I moved to Denver and pursued my Master’s in Public Health (MPH) with a focus in Epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health. After gaining my MPH, I began working with Dr. Barocas and the lab in November 2021. I’ve worked on various projects, with the most recent focusing on people experiencing homelessness and community-engaged work.

Additionally, the lab has connected me to some amazing organizations where I now volunteer or shadow, like the Harm Reduction Action Center (HRAC) and the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. When I am not volunteering with the HRAC, I am giving my time to the Dedicated to Aurora’s Wellness Clinic on campus, as a mentor for a high school student, or working part-time at Kumon. Further, I am in the process of applying to medical school where I hope to translate my learned and lived experiences to the medical field and my future patients.

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be and why? New Zealand because of its gorgeous landscapes and unique culture.
What would your profession be if you weren’t currently in the field you are in? Either a makeup artist or a professional baker.
Do you have any unique talents? I can fold my tongue into a three-leaf clover.

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Sarah Scott

Sarah Scott, MD, MSc is an Assistance Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. She attended Vanderbilt for college, medical school, and Med-Peds residency. Following residency, she was a CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer assigned to the Arizona Department of Health Services and the Maricopa County Department of Public Health (2018-2020). Following EIS, and in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, she stayed at Maricopa County as a Medical Epidemiologist for two years, before returning to Infectious Diseases Fellowship at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. While in fellowship, she earned a Masters in Clinical Research, supported by the Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance (CTSA). She is interested in multidisciplinary research to better understand why marginalized populations are more vulnerable to poor health outcomes such as drug overdose, HIV and HCV, and injection-related infections. More importantly, she plans to pursue research to identify actionable and policy-relevant interventions to help improve health outcomes in these populations.

Sarah, her partner, and 2 cats moved to Colorado in Summer 2025 and are enjoying exploring everything Denver has to offer. They have quickly become bandwagon fans for nearly all of the local professional sports teams and are proud season ticket holders for the inaugural season of the Denver Summit in 2026 (the new professional women’s soccer team).

Sarah Brewer

Sarah is an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at the CU Anschutz School of Medicine. She is health and behavior scientist, community-engagement guru, and mixed methods researcher who focuses her research on how primary care and public health systems can be catalysts for the prevention and effective management of disease in ways that deliver relevant and responsive healthcare and create equitable outcomes for people across the lifespan. She has spent nearly 15 years exploring approaches to increasing vaccine uptake and combatting vaccine hesitancy and misinformation. Her work has also addressed asthma management, advanced medical education, refugee health, primary care engagement, mental health, and maternal health. Additionally, she conducts research on the science of engagement. Grounded in her experiences of community organizing and community-based participatory action research, Sarah’s research also seeks to integrate the lived experience and optimize the impact of patient and community partners on the research process through authentic and robust engagement methods. Specifically, she studies approaches for engaging disenfranchised and underrepresented patients and communities in the conduct of research, including youth, refugee and immigrant communities, and multilingual partners.

Sarah co-directs the Training, Education and Mentorship (TEaM) Core and serves as a methodologist in the Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research Core at ACCORDS. Sarah’s research has been supported by the NIH, CDC, PCORI, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, American Cancer Society, among others. Sarah serves an academic editor for PLOS Global Public Health and she has publishes her work in journals such as American Journal of Public Health, PLOS One, Vaccine, Implementation Science, Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, and Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.

What would your profession be if you weren’t currently in the field you are in? I’d be a literary fiction editor; someone should definitely pay me to read books.

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Jianing (Jenny) Wang

Jianing (Jenny) Wang, PhD, is an Assistant Investigator of Biostatistics at the Massachusetts General Hospital Biostatistics Center and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on the development of indirect methods for estimating hidden population sizes and hierarchical modeling approaches for disease characterization and prediction of population dynamics. With substantial collaborative experience in HIV, Hepatitis C, and substance use disorder outcomes research, Dr. Wang has developed innovative statistical frameworks aimed at enhancing knowledge transfer across large-scale health surveillance systems. She collaborates with national researchers from various institutions for developing novel community-based surveillance network for disease monitoring and refining general analytic approaches to improve public health surveillance.

At MGH, she is the lead biostatistician for the Healey ALS Center Platform trial and serves as the study statistician for various neurological studies. Her primary focus is on advancing clinical trial science in ALS through biomarker development, and the identification and evaluation of meaningful endpoints and outcome measures.

Jianing is a dog trainer and amateur pianist. If she weren’t a biostatistician, she’d be organizing a band with her husband, an amateur drummer and guitarist, and their dancing Maltese, Kushan.

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Danielle Kline

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Cole Jurecka

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Yjuliana Tin

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Matthew Westfall