Students

Emma Gorin

PhD Program in Climate and Health
emg2237@cumc.columbia.edu

Emma Gorin began her PhD in the fall of 2020. She grew up in New York City and received an MSPH in Global Disease Epidemiology and Control from Johns Hopkins University in 2019, where her research included investigating sanitation availability in northern India and mobility among female sex workers in Guinea-Bissau. She also spent a semester in Cameroon working on implementation research and programming for key populations at risk for HIV. Prior to starting her master’s program, she worked in health education, clinical research, and international non-profit settings. Emma is interested in infectious disease dynamics and, while at Columbia, hopes to apply mathematical modelling methods to issues of emerging infectious diseases.

Brittany Shea

PhD Program in Climate amd Health
bes2161@cumc.columbia.edu

Brittany started her PhD in Fall 2021. Previously, she was the Project Director for the Global Consortium on Climate and Health Education (GCCHE), based at the Mailman School. Brittany has worked to advance research on environmental health and climate change in other roles at the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health, Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies in Santiago, Chile, and Harvard Business School. Brittany has presented internationally on climate-health education and environmental health topics. She received a master’s degree from Harvard University and bachelor’s degree from Boston University. As a PhD student, she is interested in conducting research on the health impacts of climate change, climate-health mitigation and adaptation strategies, and environmental justice.

Raenita Spriggs

PhD Program in Climate and Health
rs4390@cumc.columbia.edu

Rae Spriggs began her PhD in Fall 2022. Rae is originally from San Diego, CA, but has also lived in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. She received her BA from UC Berkeley in 2016 and MPH from UCLA in 2019. Before joining Mailman, she served as the Manager of Climate Action Research at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. There she facilitated the center's climate action and extreme heat research through strategic partnerships and engagement with policymakers, advocates, and impacted communities. As a PhD student, Rae plans to explore the intersection of extreme heat and other climate-related exposures, neighborhood conditions including historical environmental injustice, and mental health outcomes. 

Sabah Usmani

PhD Program in Climate and Health
su2145@cumc.columbia.edu

Sabah Usmani started her PhD in Fall 2021. She is an urban planner and interdisciplinary researcher from India with experience across geographic scales in air pollution and health disparities, energy and water, transportation, informal housing, and climate mitigation and adaptation planning in India, USA, Ecuador, and Malaysia. Her research interests include neighborhood influences on environmental health and wellbeing, spatial/social inequities in access to and quality of basic services and health outcomes, and applied urban analytics and data science for health and climate policy in cities.  Her previous experience includes organizations such as Environmental Defense Fund, New York City Housing Authority, MIT’s Tata Center for Technology & Design, and Mahindra Lifespaces. Sabah has a Master of City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering (minor in Architecture) from Columbia University. She is also an Agents of Change in Environmental Justice Fellow.