Education
University of Southern California - PhD Candidate; University of Southern California - Biostatistics and Epidemiology, MPH, 2008; University of Southern California - Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, BS, 2006
Background
Ahva is currently a third year doctoral student in the Molecular Epidemiology program in Preventive Medicine/Keck School of Medicine. She has a Bachelor of Science in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and a Master of Public Health in Biostatistics and Epidemiology from USC. In addition to being a student and research assistant under the mentorship of Dr. Mariana Stern (Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine), Ahva has been a teacher’s assistant for several undergraduate and graduate courses. Her current research is focused on the role of genes and environment on prostate cancer risk and prognosis. Ahva is currently working on the identification of biomarkers of prognosis for localized prostate cancer using expression profiles from malignant prostate glands from tumors of patients who underwent radical prostatectomy. She plans to develop improved predictive models to aid clinicians in prognostication with the goal of preventing over-treatment of indolent cases and more efficient treatment of aggressive disease. Dr. Jacek Pinski (Associate Professor of Medicine-Oncology) is her co-mentor.