Staff

Carol Lowenstein, MBA, Assistant Director

Ms. Lowenstein joined the SDMC in 2009 after serving for 10 years as Associate Director of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center Rapid Case Identification Core, Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health. Prior to that, she served for 6 years as Assistant Director for Registry Operations at the Massachusetts Cancer Registry within the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Ms. Lowenstein is responsible for the administrative oversight of Core activities as well as for provision of medical record review and abstraction services.

Joshua Gagne, MA, Question Design and Evaluation Coordinator / Qualitative Research Specialist

Mr. Gagne is a cultural anthropologist with extensive experience in conducting and analyzing in-depth interviews and other forms of qualitative research with patients, physicians and other key-informants.  He has extensive experience using standard qualitative coding systems to conduct line-by-line coding using NVivo data management software. Mr. Gagne manages qualitative research projects; develops qualitative research guides; facilitates focus groups and in-depth interviews; conducts cognitive interviewing; provides structural and thematic coding and thematic analysis of qualitative research; and trains interviewers and focus group facilitators.

Ruth Lederman, MPH, Survey Manager

Ms. Lederman provides specialized research support for projects that entail self-report and observational data collection from research subjects. Ms. Lederman is trained in epidemiology and brings expertise to the core in data management and analysis. She has extensive experience utilizing strategies to maximize participation rates in data collection efforts across a range of community and clinical settings. Ms. Lederman manages data collection activities; supports project directors in sampling and locating research subjects, question design and evaluation and construction of data collection forms; oversees administration of interviews and questionnaires; recruits and trains survey assistants; develops and implements quality assurance protocols; develops study-specific training materials and administrative forms; coordinates data-capture activities, codebook development, and documentation of coding decisions; oversees data cleaning and data file preparation.

Qi Wang, MIS, Database Designer and Administrator

Ms. Wang designs, builds, implements, and maintains software systems and database servers that allow project staffs to monitor and record process tracking outcomes, and manages the data collection process. She conducts the majority of her work using MySQL, which allows dynamic updating of subject status and flexible reporting via Web-enabled report tools and maintenance of complex data systems. Ms. Wang also develops standards and policies for maintaining systems and databases; provides programming assistance to support individual projects and enhance research management activities across projects; and verifies process tracking and data cleaning.

David Wilson, Survey Data Manager

Mr. Wilson has extensive experience conducting and managing data entry and creating datasets. His responsibilities include managing data entry systems and developing coding specifications for data entry, tailoring software applications to support scanning of data collection forms, supervising data entry operators, and extracting and cleaning datasets.