People Group Archives: Aging & Vulnerable Populations

Jethro Raphael Suarez is a biomedical engineering researcher in the Healthy Aging Lab at UCF’s College of Nursing. His research focuses on the static balance performance and physical activity levels of older adults. Additionally, he applies his engineering expertise to develop cost-effective rehabilitative assistive devices designed to enhance mobility and improve quality of life for […]

Jenna M. Wheeler is an assistant professor at UCF’s College of Nursing. As a practicing registered nurse with nearly 15 years of experience in the neonatal intensive care unit, she has witnessed firsthand the effect of preterm birth on families. Wheeler’s research focuses on the mother-father relationship and mental health during pregnancy utilizing a mixed […]

Nurse, researcher and educator Michael Joseph “MJ” Dino specializes in health informatics, gerotechnology, educational technologies, robotics, human-computer interaction (HCI), extended reality (XR), artificial intelligence (AI), and academic integrity. He is part of the Delphi Group, which pioneered the new definition of Nursing and Nurses at the International Council of Nurses, and past president of the […]

Lisa Linville is the director of the Leadership and Management MSN program at UCF’s College of Nursing. She has held administrative, legal and clinical roles in health care systems for more than 25 years and has taught in graduate nursing programs for more than 15 years. Her legal experience includes medical malpractice, health care law […]

Janet Lopez is an assistant professor at UCF’s College of Nursing and a nurse scientist dedicated to promoting healthy aging. Her work focuses on improving outcomes for older adults, caregivers and veterans, and her research and scholarship integrates community-engaged approaches to address fall risk, frailty, mental health and caregiving outcomes, as well as digital health […]

Associate Professor Rebecca Koszalinski investigates the relationships between air, water, the environment and health outcomes, and leads the interdisciplinary Human Health Outcomes of Exposure to Environmental Toxins Lab at UCF’s College of Nursing. Her harmful algal bloom research seeks to evaluate significant health care implications of potential toxin exposures. She is currently the primary investigator […]

Assistant Professor Jennifer Crook is a nationally recognized nutritional epidemiologist and nurse scientist whose work investigates how nutritional insecurity becomes biologically embedded to drive inflammation, symptom burden and cancer disparities. Her research integrates omics‑based biomarkers, nutritional epidemiology and community‑engaged methods to develop clinically actionable tools that advance cancer outcomes. In a previous faculty role at […]

Associate Professor Rui Xie holds appointments in both UCF’s College of Nursing and College of Sciences, and is the principal investigator at the university’s Artificial Intelligence and Statistics for Health and Nursing Research Lab. His research encompasses the domains of statistics, biostatistics, machine learning and public health. His primary focus revolves around advancing statistical sketching and […]

Hyojung “Kay” Kim, a registered dietician nutritionist, is a lecturer at UCF’s College of Nursing where she teaches nutrition. Her research focuses on nutritional epidemiology with an emphasis on the role of nutritional and dietary factors in chronic disease risk and health outcomes. Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, she investigates […]

Ayse Malatyali is a Jonas Scholar with a research priority in cognitive aging. She focuses primarily on risk and protective processes of cognitive decline in the continuum of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias among underserved older adults. Her additional areas of research include healthcare utilization and end-of-life care among persons living with dementia and dementia […]