People Group Archives: EMBRACE Lab

Jethro Raphael Suarez is a Biomedical Engineering PhD student in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in UCF’s College of Engineering and Computer Science. As a Graduate Research Assistant in the College of Nursing, he manages all physical activity measurement devices in the EMBRACE Lab, overseeing their continuous operation and maintenance. Suarez’s research focuses […]

Dr. Dahee Kim is a postdoctoral scholar working with Professor Ladda Thiamwong. Her research interests include diversity and intersectionality in aging and older families; community-based prevention/intervention programs, stress-coping strategies, resilience, health literacy, emotional wellbeing, measurement development and the life course perspective. Education Selected Awards & Honors Selected Professional Activities

Nurse, researcher and educator Michael Joseph “MJ” Diño, who works under Professor Ladda Thiamwong in the EMBRACE Lab, specializes in health informatics, educational technologies, robotics, human-computer interaction, mixed reality, artificial intelligence and academic integrity. He is an Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE) and the first Asian to win the Nurse in the Limelight Innovator Award given […]

Dr. Abigail Tice is a postdoctoral scholar in the UCF College of Nursing on Dr. Ladda Thiamwong’s research team. Tice focuses her work on healthy aging and working with older adults in the community. She is interested in finding lifestyle-based therapeutic modalities to correct circadian misalignment in older adults. Education Selected Awards & Honors

Carla Leinbach is a first-year PhD student in the College of Nursing. As Director of Community Partnerships and Participant Relations for the Enhancing Mind-body Resilience for Aging with Cultural Equity (EMBRACE) Lab, she connects with participants and develops partnerships across Florida. Leinbach’s research interests include motivation, cognitive reframing, and how neural-net-based artificial intelligence adoption impacts […]

Janet Lopez is a nurse scientist who is dedicated to addressing health inequities through a comprehensive approach. She focuses on developing innovative strategies to improve health outcomes for underserved communities. After completing her post-doctoral fellowship at the Veterans Rural Health Resource Center (VRHRC) in Gainesville, Florida, she concentrated on promoting health equity among rural Veterans […]

As a critical care- and case management-trained registered nurse, military veteran and dependent, and food pantry volunteer, Jennifer Crook had the opportunity to work in multiple states in the U.S., where she identified not only the existence of widespread food and nutritional insecurity, but a potentially overlooked connection between nutrition, chronic inflammation and chronic disease. […]

Associate Professor Rui Xie holds appointments in both the UCF College of Nursing and the UCF College of Sciences in the Department of Statistics and Data Science 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 […]

Ayse Malatyali is a Jonas Scholar with a priority research area of cognitive aging. She focuses her research primarily on biological, behavioral and social risk factors of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) and falls among underserved older adults. Her additional areas of research include healthcare utilization, palliative care and advanced care planning for individuals […]

Healthy aging; fall prevention in older adults; and aging education.