Team

Dr. Testa is a senior lecturer in biostatistics. As an experienced public health practitioner, health outcomes researcher, evaluator, biostatistician, and the current co-director of the EPREP program, for the past 30 years Dr. Testa has worked closely with federal, state, county, regional and local public health, community and government authorities. She previously served as the head of the evaluation core for the CDC-sponsored, Harvard Academic Center for Public Health Preparedness, and as a co-investigator within the Harvard Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Center (PERRC) leading several national committees in bioterrorism, disaster planning and operations. She also was the principal investigator and director of the Harvard Chan Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Center (PERLC) between 2010 and 2016 working on competency-based instructional development and evaluation, and leading several national committees focused on public health and emergency preparedness curriculum development, training and tools. She has been the director of the Harvard MPH Program in Quantitative Methods for nearly 30 years, mentoring over 1,200 student research projects. She is currently president of the Massachusetts Association of Health Boards working with 351 BOHs and 329 health departments.

Dr. Paul Biddinger holds the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Endowed Chair in Emergency Preparedness and is the director of the Center for Disaster Medicine, and vice chairman for Emergency Preparedness in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston. He is also the director for emergency preparedness at Partners Healthcare. Dr. Biddinger additionally serves as the director of the Emergency Preparedness Research, Evaluation and Practice (EPREP) Program at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Chan School. Dr. Biddinger serves as a special advisor to the Massachusetts Medical Society’s committee on preparedness and serves as a medical officer for the MA-1 Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) in the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Dr. Savoia is a principal scientist in Biostatistics and a medical doctor by training. During the past 15 years, Dr. Savoia has been leading research and training activities at Harvard Chan School focused on public health emergency preparedness. She is the co-director of the Emergency Preparedness Research, Evaluation & Practice (EPREP) Program where she has been P.I. of over 20 research and training projects. She is also the founder of the Community Safety branch where she directs research projects focused on youth violence, violent extremism, and the evaluation of reintegration programs for terrorist offenders. She has devoted her professional life to the use of evaluation methods to measure systems’ capabilities in response to large-scale emergencies, and in recent years in evaluating the impact of programs designed to prevent violent extremism and online hate. Her work has focused on the advancement of evaluation science to assess the elements of a public health system that lead to a successful response and the population-based factors and workforce training and characteristics that may improve the capacity and resiliency of public health systems and communities. Dr. Savoia’s portfolio of activities includes projects sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Homeland Security, and National Institute of Justice. Access Dr. Savoia’s full CV…

Dr. Su is a research scientist with backgrounds in mathematics, biostatistics, patient-centered outcomes research, and information technology. He received his ScB in mathematics from Brown University and his ScD in Biostatistics from Harvard University. Dr. Su is serving as the senior statistician and information technologist for the EPREP program. He has over 20 years of experience as a biostatistician specialized in outcome research and clinical trials. For the EPREP program, he leads the development of study designs and conducts statistical analysis of all evaluation-centered activities. 

Montrond is a senior preparedness fellow in the DPTLD. He acquired his professional expertise and knowledge in the field of public service and politics at College of the Holy Cross, MA. He obtained a master’s degree in international relations from the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Boston. During the past seven years, Montrond has committed to serving the immigrant community protecting the needs of the Cape Verdean diaspora in the international political context and identifying strategies to address immigrants’ needs in the United States. From 2016 to 2021, he has been a deputy Member of Parliament for the Republic of Cape Verde representing the diaspora community in the Americas. Montrond contributes to policy analysis for the EPREP program in projects related to community safety and human trafficking.

Dr. Piltch-Loeb is a research scientist in the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard Chan School. She received her master’s degree from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University and her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University. She also holds a doctorate degree in public health, and is a junior research scientist at NYU’s College of Global Public Health’s Program on Population Impact, Recovery, and Resilience. Dr. Piltch-Loeb’s current research interests are in interdisciplinary public health systems improvement.

Evelyn Masterson has worked as a research assistant with the EPREP Program since June 2021, focusing on vaccine hesitancy, human trafficking, occupational safety, communication, and training. She joined EPREP in May 2021 as a Harvard Chan School Master of Public Health practicum student, with the health management field of study and an interdisciplinary concentration in infectious disease epidemiology. She has long been interested in emergency preparedness, and has been volunteering with the American Red Cross and the Boston Medical Reserve Corps since 2017 and 2019 respectively.