Study Team/Contact Us

Your happy, dedicated, multi-disciplinary Emory CHD Team

Wendy Book, MD
Principal Investigator

Adult Congenital Heart Defect Cardiologist, Director Emory Adult Congenital Heart Center 2001-2022, Emory SOM Cardiology.
Dr. Wendy Book is an adult congenital cardiologist at the Emory Clinic and the Principal Investigator of the Congenital Heart Defects Surveillance across Time And Regions (CHD STAR, Component A) and CHD STAR Machine Learning (Component B) projects at Emory University. She has a primary appointment as Professor of Medicine in the Emory University School of Medicine and a Secondary appointment in Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health.

Atlanta, GA
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Rusty Rodriguez, MD
Co-Principal Investigator

Adult Congenital Heart Defect Cardiologist and Pediatric Cardiologist, Emory SOM Cardiology & CHOA

Dr. Rodriguez is a congenital adult and pediatric CHD clinician and a co-investigator on the Surveillance of Congenital Heart Defects across the Lifespan project.


Atlanta, GA
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Cheryl Raskind-Hood, MS, MPH
Co-Investigator

Epidemiologist | Research Professor, Emory RSPH, Epidemiology

Cheryl Raskind-Hood is a Research Professor in the Department of Epidemiology in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, and a Guest Researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD).  She is a co-Investigator on the Congenital Heart Defects Surveillance across Time And Regions (CHD STAR, Component A) and CHD STAR Machine Learning (Component B) projects at Emory University.

Email Cheryl Raskind-Hood
Atlanta, GA

Lindsey Ivey, MPH
Asst. Epidemiologist

Rollins School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology

Lindsey Ivey oversees the clinical research team for the Adult Congenital Heart Defect Center at the Emory Clinic and is an Assistant Epidemiologist for the CHD Surveillance across Time And Regions (CHD-STAR) project at Emory University.

Email Lindsey Ivey
Atlanta, GA

Alex Haffner, BS
Research Informatics Specialist/Sr. Data Analyst

Emory SOM Cardiology

Alex Haffner is a Researcher Data Informatics Specialist in the Emory School of Medicine. She has over 15 years of experience working with Public Health data, and specializes in technical knowledge of data management systems. She loves working with large datasets! She is passionate about developing streamline data processes to make data more accessible and usable for the end user. Although Alex is new to our team, she has already developed novel, improved ways of handling and manipulating our multi-source data repository! In her spare time, Alex likes to run, travel, and spend time outdoors with friends and family.

Email Alex Haffner
Atlanta, GA

Vijaya Kancherla, PhD
Epidemiologist

Emory RSPH, Epidemiology

Dr. Vijaya Kancherla is a birth defects epidemiologist. She works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Emory University Rollins School of Public Health. She is also the Deputy Director of the Center for Spina Bifida Prevention at Emory University. Her research focuses on surveillance, epidemiology, prevention, and policy related to birth defects both in the US and internationally.

Email Vijaya Kancherla
Atlanta, GA
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Chad Robichaux
Research Informatics Analyst

Emory SOM, DBMI

Chad Robichaux is a Research Informatics Analyst with the Department of Biomedical Informatics in the Emory School of Medicine. He has over 15 years working with clinical data from a quality improvement or research perspective. He specializes in SQL, R, SAS, and finding the data that match clinician’s needs.

Email Chad Robichaux
Atlanta, GA

Rishi Kamaleswaran, PhD
Assistant Professor

Emory DBMI/GA Tech DBMI

Dr. Kamaleswaran’s research focuses on applying temporal machine learning and event stream processing methods to real-time data streams. To analyze trends that predict the onset of deterioration in critically ill patients, such as single or multiple organ dysfunction, sepsis, respiratory and neurological dysfunction. His goal is to develop intelligent systems that can be used to cure diseases and advance clinical understanding of critical and acute illness. See more at Kamaleswaran Lab.

Email Rishi Kamaleswaran
Atlanta, GA
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Reza Sameni, PhD
Associate Professor

Emory DBMI

Dr. Sameni is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Biomedical Informatics, School of Medicine and director of the Alphanumerics Lab at Emory University. Dr Sameni is an expert in biomedical signal processing and machine learning, and a co-investigator of the Surveillance of Congenital Heart Defects across the Lifespan project at Emory University.

Email Reza Sameni
Atlanta, GA

Abeed Saker, PhD
Assistant Professor

Emory DBMI/GA Tech DBMI

Dr. Sarker is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biomedical Informatics. His lab particularly focuses on designing end-to-end data-centric solutions that can convert big, noisy, free text data, such as those from electronic health records and social media, into valuable and actionable knowledge usable by domain experts. He is currently leading several projects at the intersection of natural language processing and health, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Email Abeed Saker
Atlanta, GA

Haoming Shi
Graduate Student

Emory Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI)

Haoming Shi is a Biomedical Engineering PhD student at Georgia Tech/Emory University and currently works in the Kamaleswaran Lab developing novel machine learning methods and applications in healthcare.

Email Haoming Shi
Atlanta, GA

Yuting Guo
Graduate Student

Emory Computer Science and Informatics

Yuting Guo is a doctoral student in computer science advised by Dr. Abeed Sarker, Department of Biomedical Informatics. Her research focuses on natural language processing, social media data mining, biomedical NLP application, and deep learning.

Email Yuting Guo
Atlanta, GA

Samantha Strelzer
Graduate Student

Rollins School of Public Health, Global Health Department

Samantha Strelzer is a 2nd year at the Rollins School of Public Health and in the Hubert Department of Global Health. She has interests in community health, access and non-communicable diseases.

Email Samantha Strelzer
Atlanta, GA

Joel Hardin, MD
Cardiologist

Adult Congenital Heart Defect Cardiologist, Emory Adult Congenital Heart Center

Atlanta, GA
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Maan Jokhadar, MD
Cardiologist

Adult Congenital Heart Defect Cardiologist, Emory Adult Congenital Heart Center

Atlanta, GA
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