Four members of the WashU Public Health community received research excellence awards in recognition of their scholarly creativity and the impact of their work on regional, national and global challenges.
Salma Abdalla, MBBS, MPH, DrPH, an assistant professor at the School of Public Health; Jonathan Hanahan, MFA, an associate professor at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and a member of the WashU Public Health secondary faculty; and Nhial Tutlam, PhD, an assistant professor at the Brown School and a member of the WashU Public Health secondary faculty, each received a 2025 Provost Research Excellence Award, an honor conferred on faculty members who have made – and continue to make – significant contributions to their fields through cutting-edge, innovative, impactful research. In addition, Catalina Melendez Contreras, MD, MPH, a senior research manager in Abdalla’s lab, received a Research Excellence Staff Recognition award. The awards were presented November 10 at the WashU 2025 Global Research Excellence Showcase.
Abdalla’s research focuses on understanding how social and economic policies shape the health of the global population, and how mass trauma affects mental health at the population level around the world. She studies how data on social, economic, and commercial factors can be used to inform decision-making to improve population health in different contexts, with a particular focus on noncommunicable diseases. Her work is grounded in systems science and uses methods such as epidemiological assessment, agent-based modeling, and policy impact evaluations. As part of her award, Abdalla received a Global Spotlight designation in honor of her work’s global impact and recognition.
Tutlam — who also received a Global Spotlight designation — studies the impact of war trauma on populations affected by conflict, both in the U.S. and in humanitarian settings in sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, he studies how intergenerational war trauma affects the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicide, substance use and HIV infection among youth and their caregivers among resettled refugees in the U.S., with a goal of developing culturally appropriate, community-based interventions. Among his current projects are a hybrid effectiveness-implementation study to test a family-strengthening model delivered through multiple family groups combined with a virtual peer mentoring program, and an effort to develop a research-training curriculum for refugee youth. He also studies mental health impact and HIV risk among youth in refugee settlements in Uganda.
Hanahan’s research is centered on alternative and ambient interfaces with technology and explores the physical, cultural and social ramifications of digital experiences in shaping our everyday realities. He leads the Sensory and Ambient Interfaces Lab, which aims to find ways for people to interact with digital devices using sound and touch so important information can be conveyed in situations when a screen would be distracting, dangerous or unfeasible. As the founding chair of the Master of Design for Human-Computer Interaction and Emerging Technology program at the Sam Fox School, Hanahan trains students in an innovative approach to digital product design, prioritizing societal issues, ethical and moral concerns, and the larger implications of technology.
Melendez Contreras helps manage projects in Abdalla’s Healthier Futures Lab that bridge social and economic policies with decision-making to improve the health of populations. Among the projects she contributes to are an evaluation of urban policies aimed at reducing the burden of noncommunicable diseases and injuries; an analysis of postpandemic social determinants of mental health across eight countries, with a special emphasis on trust as a determinant of health; and a recently launched project to transform how public health knowledge is generated such that it actively supports the goal of improving health equity.
