Alumni News: Summer 2026
Alumni honors, career moves, and items of note
Mateusz Firlej, MPH ’25, and Annanya Panagala, Ed.M. ’25, co-founders of Wise AI, announced that the company was recently acquired by Theris. Theris provides technology-enabled behavioral health services, including clinical psychology and psychiatry care, to patients across eight states.
Wise AI, founded in June 2025, developed contactless health screening and monitoring technology to help improve access to care for patients in remote, underserved, and hard-to-reach settings. Wise AI was backed by CEAS Investments and Dent Capital. They closed their pre-seed round in November at an $8M valuation. Through the acquisition, Wise AI’s technology and team will support Theris AI’s work expanding access to behavioral health and complex care services for older adults and high-need populations.
Nickhill Hitesh Bhakta, MPH ’09, was honored with the Challenging the Status Quo Yvonne Award, which celebrates leaders whose work questions accepted limits and creates new ways to improve cancer care. In Dr. Bhakta’s case, that work has helped reshape how the global oncology community measures childhood cancer burden, evaluates cost-effectiveness, builds registries, and supports care delivery in resource-variable settings. The recognition highlights Bhakta’s work in global pediatric oncology, childhood cancer disease burden estimation, health economics, implementation science, survivorship, and resource-adapted cancer care. His career has focused on some of the most urgent unanswered questions in global childhood cancer: how many children develop cancer, how many survive, what the long-term consequences of cure are, and how health systems can finance sustainable childhood cancer programs.
Syed Nabeel Zafar, MPH ’10, was honored with the Global Oncology Yvonne Award. Presented by OncoDaily, the award celebrates individuals whose work is shaping the future of oncology through leadership, innovation, service, and impact. The 2026 ceremony brought together oncology professionals, researchers, advocates, and global health leaders to recognize outstanding contributions across cancer care and research. The recognition highlights Zafar’s work at the intersection of surgical oncology, global health, health systems strengthening, cancer care equity, and academic leadership. As a surgical oncologist, researcher, educator, and global oncology leader, Zafar has built a career focused not only on advancing complex cancer surgery, but also on expanding access to high-quality surgical and oncology care across health systems.
Kathryn Falb, MPH ’12, was announced as one of the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Andrew Carnegie Fellows—one of twenty-four scholars will each receive a $200,000 research stipend to explore the causes of political polarization and to identify possible solutions. The cohort focused on developing a body of rigorous, evidence-based research about what can be done to strengthen the forces of cohesion in the United States, an overarching priority for the foundation’s grant-making. Falb is an assistant professor in the Center for Humanitarian Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and current Leon S. Robertson Faculty Development Chair in Injury Prevention. She joined Johns Hopkins from the International Rescue Committee, an international humanitarian aid organization, where she spent nearly a decade and most recently served as research director. Trained as a social epidemiologist, her work integrates qualitative and quantitative methods to understand and prevent violence against women, children, and other marginalized populations, primarily in humanitarian settings. Her recent work has focused on how to prevent children from engaging in armed groups. She has conducted field research across diverse contexts, including Raqqa Governorate in Syria, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and refugee camps in Ethiopia.
Christine Crawford, SD ’20, was the keynote speaker at the Graduate Hooding and Commencement Ceremony at Augusta University in Augusta, Georgia. After graduating from Harvard Chan School, she worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer on several widely publicized public health emergencies. Today, Crawford is vice chair of the Augusta University Foundation; chair of the City of North Augusta Planning Commission; and co-hosts the “Mistakes Over Failure” podcast, which brings leaders and fellow members of the Young Presidents’ Organization together for candid conversations about issues facing the global leadership community of more than 38,000 chief executives around the world.
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