Mary V. Díaz Santana ’18 PhD

Mary Díaz Santana is an epidemiologist with a primary focus on risk prediction modeling and broad experience in studying modifiable risk factors for chronic diseases, specifically breast cancer and diabetes. Dr. Díaz Santana received her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Epidemiology from the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at UMass Amherst under the direction of Dr. Katherine Reeves.

In 2018, she joined the Biostatistics and Computational Biology Branch at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) as an Intramural Research and Training Award Postdoctoral Fellow, where she gained further experience improving methods for data analysis of epidemiological studies under the supervision of Dr. Clarice Weinberg. While completing her postdoctoral fellowship, she applied for and was awarded a position in the NIEHS Independent Research Scholar Program. Dr. Díaz Santana holds a secondary appointment in the NIEHS Epidemiology Branch.

Dr. Díaz Santana’s research group works to improve risk assessment techniques for precision prevention, to lessen the burden of cancer and chronic diseases like diabetes in racial and ethnic minority women, especially Hispanic women. As a chronic disease epidemiologist, she aims to advance health equity in racial and ethnic minority women by investigating the role of social and environmental determinants of health in risk prediction models, with the end goal of improving personalized risk prediction and screening recommendations and reducing the incidence and mortality associated with these chronic diseases.

Originally from Puerto Rico, Dr. Díaz Santana earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Puerto Rico. She has co-authored numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals.