UCLA Luskin students to be profiled on new website.

Samuel Speroni

Sam Speroni is a doctoral student in the UCLA Department of Urban Planning and a researcher with the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.  He completed his master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning, also at UCLA, in June 2020.  Sam is advised by Dr. Evelyn Blumenberg and Dr. Brian D. Taylor.

Sam’s primary research interest lies at the intersection of transportation, education, and new mobility, where he looks for ways to improve equitable access to educational opportunities for vulnerable and disadvantaged student populations.  His research extends to many other aspects of travel behavior and transportation systems, all with an emphasis on equity.  Sam’s recent applied planning research project analyzing high school students’ ridehail trips to school for HopSkipDrive (full report | policy brief) received the national Neville A. Parker Award for outstanding master’s capstone in transportation policy and planning from the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC).

Sam is a Future Leaders Development fellow of the Eno Center for Transportation in Washington, D.C., and in 2020 he was named the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center (PSR UTC) outstanding student of the year.  He is also the recipient of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Graduate Fellowship (2019 and 2020) and the Intelligent Transportation Systems California / California Transportation Foundation joint graduate scholarship (2020).

Prior to UCLA, Sam was a high school English teacher and school administrator in Charlotte, North Carolina, through Teach for America.  Originally from New England, Sam grew up in Massachusetts and earned his bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies with honors from Brown University in 2011, where he was also captain of the varsity swimming & diving team.

Madeline Wander

Madeline Wander is a UCLA Urban Planning PhD candidate and a graduate student researcher at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Her research examines transportation disparities and justice amidst the changing geography of low-income communities of color, particularly in suburbs. Madeline holds a BA in Urban and Environmental Policy from Occidental College and a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA. Madeline sits on the Board of Directors of the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment.

Prior to pursuing her PhD, she was a Senior Data Analyst at the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (now USC Equity Research Institute) where she worked with community-based organizations, foundations, and government agencies on research around equitable urban planning, social-movement building, and environmental justice. Prior to that, she was involved in a variety of organizing efforts, including the affordable housing coalition Housing LA and Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign in Colorado.

Madeline is co-author of several publications, including: Housing Affordability and Commute Distance (Urban Geography); Carbon trading, co-pollutants, and environmental equity: Evidence from California’s cap-and-trade program (PLoS Medicine); The Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Health of Everyone: The Relationship Between Social Inequality and Environmental Quality (Annual Review of Public Health).

Madeline lives in northeast Los Angeles with her partner Ben and their children Hannah and Noah.

Gus Wendel

Gus Wendel began the Ph.D program in Urban Planning in the fall of 2020. His research is broadly concerned with the intersection of race, gender and sexuality, urban design and governance, and neighborhood change. In his concurrent role as the Assistant Director of cityLAB-UCLA, Gus oversees several design-research projects examining the links between housing insecurity, long-distance commuting, and public space access and use. Gus also manages the multi-year Mellon Foundation award to the Urban Humanities Initiative, where he also co-produces the Digital Salon and is involved in teaching and research. Prior to UCLA, Gus worked for the Oregon Secretary of State and advocated for LGBTQ rights in the state of Oregon. Gus has a Master in Urban and Regional Planning from the Luskin School of Public Affairs and a BA in International Relations and Italian Studies from Brown University.

Pamela Stephens

Pamela Stephens is a doctoral student in Urban Planning and a Graduate Student Researcher with the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy. Her doctoral studies and research examine how urban planning practices produce Black space and the ways that Black communities build power within and across these spaces. She is particularly interested in how this plays out in Los Angeles, where the Black population is both declining and becoming more dispersed throughout the region and beyond.

Pamela continues to contribute research to forward the organizing and advocacy efforts, building off her work prior to pursuing her doctoral studies. While her research has spanned a myriad of topics, it generally focuses on the intersections of space and racial and economic inequality. Pamela holds a Master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA and a Bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

AnMarie Mendoza

AnMarie Mendoza was born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley and identifies with both the original people (Gabrieleno-Tongva) and the distinctive working-class communities of the area. AnMarie is a proud first-generation transfer student from Citrus Community college who has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Masters in American Indian Studies from UCLA. Generations of her family have witnessed, endured, and contributed to the molding of Los Angeles (Occupied Tongva territory) and it is for this reason she continues her academic study in Urban Planning at UCLA. Her scholarship focuses on the barriers and opportunities that local Native Nations and indigenous people face in participating in proposed water projects in Los Angeles.

She has a passion for political organizing and is Indigenous Waters Program Director for Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples, an indigenous led grass roots organization based in Los Angeles. As program director, she works with Native Nations, universities, environmental organizations, institutions and agencies to protect fresh and saltwater and coastal areas significant to Native Nations and Indigenous Peoples to build the capacity of current and future tribal leaders to advocate effectively on behalf of their people for the protection of water.

AnMarie is cocreator and director of the “Aqueduct Between Us,”  a five-part social justice multimedia radical oral history documentary that aims to educate the people of Los Angeles about the Indigenous communities (Tongva –Gabrieleno and the Owens Valley Paiute/ Shoshone) who have been greatly impacted by their land and water use.  Topics covered in the documentary include: an introduction of each tribal community, their lifestyle precontract and post-contact, shared colonial struggles, contemporary environmental injustice issues, and conservation/wealth disparities in Los Angeles. Documentary can be accessed below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LldnSjDoMag  https://www.instagram.com/theaqueductbetweenus/

AnMarie is presently the Sawyer Seminar Fellow on Sanctuary Spaces for the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy

Hilary Malson

Hilary Malson is a planning and geography scholar whose research focuses on grassroots planning histories, Black life, housing justice, migration and displacement, suburban studies, and community building. For her dissertation, she is researching the ongoing displacement and dispersal of Black Angelenos to the Inland Empire, the Antelope Valley, and the High Desert, and is analyzing how placemaking and community development might be reframed through a regional-scale, diasporic lens. Since 2017, she has stewarded and supported numerous initiatives of the Housing Justice in Unequal Cities (HJUC) research coordination network, an NSF-funded program of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy. In keeping with her commitment to public scholarship, she co-edited and coordinated the publication of numerous HJUC open access publications, including Housing Justice in Unequal Cities and the Methodologies for Housing Justice Resource Guide (English / Español).

Hilary holds more than a decade of experience working in public history (Smithsonian, National Trust, Monument Lab), community development (Mt. Airy CDC), and community organizing in D.C. and Los Angeles. She earned a BA from Haverford College in the Growth and Structure of Cities program at Bryn Mawr College, and studied geography at the London School of Economics, where she earned a MSc in Urbanization and Development (Distinction). She is presently a Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellow, an editorial board member of Critical Planning Journal, and an advisory board member of the Los Angeles Center for Community Law and Action. Additionally, she has worked as a Teaching Associate in the Public Affairs (undergrad) and Urban Planning (graduate) programs, and is an affiliate of the Southern California Library, the UCLA Black Feminism Initiative, and the UCLA Urban Sociology Working Group.

Recent publications:

Emma Mehlig French

Emma is a PhD student in Urban Planning and a Graduate Student Researcher with the Luskin Center for Innovation. Her research seeks to understand the nature and causes of maladaptation in local climate planning. Her work is grounded in the political nature of planning, as well as a strong belief in the power of individuals and social movements to shift practice through coordinated action. At the Luskin Center, Emma is helping to evaluate the first round of the Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) Program, a state-funded, community-led initiative aimed at reducing local greenhouse gas emissions and improving public health and economic wellbeing in California.

Prior to coming to UCLA, Emma was a Research Scientist at the Center for Urban Innovation at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she helped launch the Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation Initiative. In 2016, Emma received a Smart Cities Fellowship, which she used to help fund independent research on the role of smart city technologies in participatory environmental planning in West Atlanta. Emma received a Master’s of City and Regional Planning and a MSc in Public Policy from Georgia Tech, and a BA in Environmental Analysis from Pitzer College.

Kate Watson

Kate Watson is a doctoral student in Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She researches childhood trauma and well-being from an ecological perspective and using qualitative and quantitative methods. Her interests include trauma-informed approaches in settings, including child welfare and schools.  

Kate earned a Master of Social Welfare (MSW) with a concentration in Social and Economic Justice from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from American University in Washington, D.C. A passionate advocate for children and youth, Kate has served on the boards of Child Advocates of Silicon Valley and the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce, as chair of the LAJCC Foundation, and as a court-appointed special advocate (CASA) for foster youth.

ResearchGate Link here.

Chaoyue Wu

Chaoyue Wu is a doctoral student in Social Welfare. She graduated with her LL.B. in social work from Beijing Institute of Technology and her M.A. in social policy from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include school violence, perpetration and victimization, mental and behavioral health, and quantitative research methods.

Before joining the PhD program at the Luskin School of Public Affairs, she worked as a research assistant on diverse projects in different Chinese societies (Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan), examining the risk factors for violence involvement and the negative impacts of victimization experience on mental and behavioral health among marginalized children and adolescents.

Chenglin Hong

Chenglin Hong is a PhD Candidate in Social Welfare at UCLA. Trained as a social worker, Chenglin’s research focuses on addressing health inequities among sexual and gender minority and other LGBTQ+ populations. His work is centered primarily on the development and testing of interventions that aim to improve sexual health and mental health outcomes among gay, bisexual, and other sexual minority men (SMM), with a particular focus on HIV and intimate partner violence (IPV) in the U.S. and globally. Chenglin’s work lies at the intersection of social work, public health, psychology, and data science, with the aim of developing interventions that disrupt violence, stigma, HIV, and other syndemic conditions among the SMM communities. He is particularly interested in examining the feasibility and acceptability and developing and testing eHealth, mHealth, and other technology-based interventions and data science approaches (e.g., machine Learning, natural language processing) to promote IPV help-seeking and HIV prevention services such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among SMM.

Chenglin’s mixed-method dissertation titled “Utilizing Machine Learning and Technology-Based Intervention for IPV and HIV Prevention among SMM” was funded by the American Psychological Association (APA) Science Directorate, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), the UCLA Dissertation Year Fellowship program, and received honorable mention in the inaugural Grand Challenges for Social Work Doctoral Award.

Since he started the Ph.D. program, Chenglin has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles and presented more than 40 abstracts at leading national and international conferences. As a global health researcher, he has established collaborations with researchers from the University of Michigan, the University of Washington, Emory University, and collaborators in China, Ukraine, and Kenya. His current work also includes community engagements with providers and partners in community organizations such as the Los Angeles LGBT Center. Before UCLA, he received his Master of Social Work and Master of Public Health (MSW/MPH) from the University of Washington (Seattle).

Selected Publications: 

Hong, C., Flinn, R.E., Miyashita, A., John, S.A., Garth, G, & Holloway, I.W. (in press). Internalized homophobia and social well-being among Black sexual minority men with HIV: The mediating role of LGBT community connectedness and racial and sexual identity integration. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity

Hong, C. (2023). Mpox on Reddit: a Thematic Analysis of Online Posts on Mpox on a Social Media Platform among Key Populations. Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 10.1007/s11524-023-00773-4. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-023-00773-4

Hong, C. (2023). Characterizing the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on HIV PrEP care: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature. AIDS and behavior27(7), 2089–2102. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-022-03941-w

Hong, C., Queiroz, A., & Hoskin, J. (2023). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, associated factors and coping strategies in people living with HIV: a scoping review. Journal of the International AIDS Society26(3), e26060. https://doi.org/10.1002/jia2.26060

Hong, C., Hoskin, J., Berteau, L. K., Schamel, J. T., Wu, E. S. C., King, A. R., Randall, L. A., HBOU Study Team, Holloway, I. W., & Frew, P. M. (2023). Violence Victimization, Homelessness, and Severe Mental Illness Among People Who Use Opioids in Three U.S. Cities. Journal of interpersonal violence38(19-20), 11165–11185. https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605231179720

Hong, C., Ochoa, A. M., Wilson, B. D. M., Wu, E. S. C., Thomas, D., & Holloway, I. W. (2023). The associations between HIV stigma and mental health symptoms, life satisfaction, and quality of life among Black sexual minority men with HIV. Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation32(6), 1693–1702. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-023-03342-z

Hong, C., Holloway, I. W., Graham, S. M., Simoni, J. M., Yu, F., Xue, H., Zhang, D., & Mi, G. (2023). Awareness of and Willingness to Use On-Demand HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis Among Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men Using a Gay Social Networking App in China. AIDS patient care and STDs37(4), 155–158. https://doi.org/10.1089/apc.2023.0004

Hong, C., Holloway, I. W., Bednarczyk, R., Javanbakht, M., Shoptaw, S., & Gorbach, P. M. (2023). High Vaccine Confidence Is Associated with COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake in Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men Who Use Substances. LGBT health10(6), 480–485. https://doi.org/10.1089/lgbt.2022.0255

Hong, C. (2023) The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health in social work students: A scoping review and call for research and action, Social Work in Mental Health, 21:3, 329-346, DOI: 10.1080/15332985.2023.2196361

Hong, C., & Graff, N. R., Guthrie, B., Micheni, M., Chirro, O., Wahome, E., van der Elst, E., Sanders, E. J., Simoni, J. M., & Graham, S. M. (2023). The Effect of the Shikamana Peer-and-Provider Intervention on Depressive Symptoms, Alcohol Use, and Other Drug Use Among Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men in Kenya. AIDS and Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-023-04027-x

Hong, C., Yu, F., Xue, H., Zhang, D., & Mi, G. (2022). The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health in gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men in China: Difference by HIV status. Journal of psychiatric research154, 198–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2022.07.028

Hong, C., Huh, D., Schnall, R., Garofalo, R., Kuhns, L. M., Bruce, J., Batey, D. S., Radix, A., Belkind, U., Hidalgo, M. A., Hirshfield, S., & Pearson, C. R. (2023). Changes in high-risk sexual behavior, HIV and other STI testing, and PrEP use during the COVID-19 pandemic in a longitudinal cohort of adolescent men who have sex with men 13 to 18 years old in the United States. AIDS and Behavior27(4), 1133–1139. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-022-03850-y

Hong, C., Stephenson, R., Santos, G. M., Garner, A., Howell, S., & Holloway, I. (2022). Intimate Partner Violence Victimization During the COVID-19 Pandemic Among a Global Online Sample of Sexual Minority Men. Journal of family violence, 1–10. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-022-00461-y

Hong, C., Yu, F., Xue, H., Zhang, D., & Mi, G. (2022). HIV Testing Among Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men During the COVID-19 Pandemic in China: Implications for Promoting HIV Self-Testing Among Key Populations. AIDS patient care and STDs36(12), 451–457. https://doi.org/10.1089/apc.2022.0184

Hong, C., Abrams, L. S., & Holloway, I. W. (2022). Technology-Based Interventions to Promote the HIV Preexposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Care Continuum: Protocol for a Systematic Review. JMIR research protocols11(3), e33045. https://doi.org/10.2196/33045

Hong, C., Feinstein, B. A., Holloway, I. W., Yu, F., Huang, W., Sullivan, P. S., Siegler, A. J., & Mi, G. (2022). Differences in Sexual Behaviors, HIV Testing, and Willingness to Use PrEP between Gay and Bisexual Men Who Have Sex with Men in China. International Journal of Sexual Health, 0(0), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/19317611.2022.2053922

Hong, C., Puttkammer, N., Riabokon, S., Germanovich, M., Shost, A., Parrish, C., Shapoval, A., & Dumchev, K. (2022). Patient-Reported Treatment Satisfaction and Quality of Life Among People Living with HIV Following the Introduction of Dolutegravir-Based ART Regimens in Ukraine. AIDS and Behavior26(4), 1056–1073. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-021-03461-z

Hong, C., Horvath, K. J., Stephenson, R., Nelson, K. M., Petroll, A. E., Walsh, J. L., & John, S. A. (2022). PrEP Use and Persistence Among Young Sexual Minority Men 17-24 Years Old During the COVID-19 Pandemic. AIDS and Behavior26(3), 631–638. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-021-03423-5