Five New Faculty Members Join Brown School for 2024-25 Myra López 8/1/2024 Faculty Share this Story: The Brown School is excited to welcome five new faculty members for the 2024-25 academic year, each bringing substantial expertise to our community. These new additions strengthen our commitment to advancing research in global health, socio-economic disparities, health equity, implementation science, and social policy. Several of these new faculty members have already made significant contributions to the Brown School in various roles, including as alumni and researchers. Learn more about them below. New Brown School Faculty Laura Brugger, Research Assistant Professor Laura Brugger joins the Brown School from the university’s Social Policy Institute, where she served as a senior data analyst. Her work focuses on using spatial methodologies to investigate spatial relationships across various social issues. She has researched spatial disparities in climate-related problems and investigated the connections between natural disasters, risk, resilience, and voting outcomes. Additionally, her projects have explored how cash transfer programs can reduce socio-economic disparities and improve economic mobility. Cal J. Halvorsen, Associate Professor Cal J. Halvorsen joins the Brown School from the Boston College School of Social Work, where he was most recently an associate professor. However, he’s not new to the Brown School having earned his MSW and PhD here. Halvorsen is a gerontological social work scholar whose work is at the confluence of aging societies, paid and unpaid work, and social purpose and impact. With expertise on self-employment, job-training programs, volunteering in later life, and intergenerational initiatives, his national reputation continues to grow. His scholarship has been published in top peer-reviewed journals in gerontology, social work, and public health, and his op-eds have been published in Fast Company, Forbes, and Next Avenue. Aytakin Huseynli, Research Assistant Professor Aytakin Huseynli joins the Brown School from the school’s Center for Social Development where she has been a postdoctoral fellow. Her research centers on social policies aimed at improving the well-being of disadvantaged populations, families and children. Her research includes studying social welfare in oil-and-gas-rich countries and the effect of resource curse on vulnerable populations. She studies social policy and social work in Eurasia specifically in former Soviet Union countries. As the founder of the National Association of Social Workers in Azerbaijan, Huseynli has played a pivotal role in advancing the social work profession and education in the region. She serves on the Editorial Board of the journal International Social Work and International Journal of School Social Work. Samuel Kizito, Research Assistant Professor Samuel Kizito is a physician-epidemiologist with over a decade of experience in HIV clinical and research settings. His work focuses on developing interventions to overcome barriers to HIV prevention and treatment, particularly for vulnerable youth in low-income settings. Additionally, he is a research methodologist specializing in advanced quantitative and statistical techniques for studies with longitudinal and clustered data. Emmanuel Tetteh, Research Assistant Professor Emmanuel Tetteh will be primarily working with the Center for Public Health Systems Science. A trained physician and infectious disease epidemiologist, his research focuses on applying implementation research and systems science methods to enhance healthcare delivery in routine care settings. Currently, his work aims to understand the multi-level mechanisms and pathways for integrating non-communicable disease care for individuals living with HIV in resource-limited settings. Tetteh is an alumnus of the Brown School and a member of the Delta Omega Honorary Society in Public Health.