Hyochol Brian Ahn, PhD, APRN, ANP-BC, FAAN, is the Dean of the College of Nursing at the University of Arizona. Previously, he served as the Associate Dean for Research and was the founding director for Brain Science and Symptom Management Center at the Florida State University. Prior to that, he served as the Assistant Dean for Research and held the Isla Carroll Turner Endowed Chair in Gerontological Nursing at the University of Texas Health Science Center.

Dr. Ahn's educational background encompasses diverse fields, including a BE in Electrical Engineering from the University of Seoul, South Korea, an MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering, a BSN/MSN/PhD in Nursing, and an MS in Medical Sciences, all attained from the University of Florida. He combines his expertise in nursing, medicine, and computer engineering, and uses mobile and connected computer technology to optimize delivering home-based nonpharmacological intervention and improve patient-centered outcomes in chronically ill and aging populations, especially among underserved populations.

His research has been continuously funded since 2011, including an NIH/NINR R01 award as PI, and has produced more than 180 peer-reviewed publications and scientific presentations related to healthcare technology, health equity, symptom science, and population health and wellness. His contributions extend beyond academia as he has served on numerous grant review panels for esteemed institutions such as the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, and the Department of Veterans Affairs, where he had the privilege of chairing some of these panels. Furthermore, he actively serves on the editorial boards of various esteemed journals, including the Asian/Pacific Island Nursing Journal (APINJ) as the Editor-In-Chief.

As an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse and nationally board-certified Nurse Practitioner recognized by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, Dr. Ahn actively contributes to the development of curriculum in his role. He plays a pivotal part in the restructuring of the curriculum, placing emphasis on problem-solving and team-based approaches. Additionally, he incorporates online learning methods to complement early clinical exposure. Adhering to the guidelines set by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, Dr. Ahn provides invaluable support to faculty members in adapting educational models and ensuring adherence to accreditation standards as outlined by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education. With his Graduate Certificate in Nursing Education, he takes the lead in spearheading the creation of innovative strategies aimed at expanding programs to meet the growing demand for highly skilled nurses. Furthermore, he actively cultivates and nurtures professional partnerships with healthcare and community organizations. Dr. Ahn's dedication to advancing Bachelor of Science in Nursing and gerontological nursing education has been recognized with the esteemed Distinguished Educator Certificate in Gerontological Nursing from the National Hartford Center of Gerontological Nursing Excellence.

Dr. Aleeca Bell, PhD, CNM, FACNM, is an Associate Professor in the Advanced Nursing Practice and Science Division of the College of Nursing at the University of Arizona. Dr. Bell has sustained a funded program of research for 16 years on women and infant perinatal outcomes, and underlying biomarkers from the oxytocin system. From her clinical experience as a Certified Nurse Midwife, she worked to support women’s emotional and physical transition from pregnancy to motherhood. After ten years in practice as a Certified Nurse Midwife, she earned a PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 2009. She continued at UIC’s College of Nursing as a post-doctoral Fellow, Assistant Professor, and Associate Professor through 2020. Dr. Bell then relocated to the University of Arizona in 2020 where she created clinical partnerships at Tucson’s leading maternity care providers. Her initial funding was from an NIH F31 NRSA and the Irving Harris Foundation to investigate the influence of maternal epidural anesthesia and synthetic oxytocin on cortisol and newborn behaviors within the first hour after birth. Combining an NIH KL2 Scholar Award with a Fetzer Institute foundation grant, she partnered with leading international experts in oxytocin, epigenetics, attachment behavior, and epidemiology to conduct several studies utilizing Britain’s respected Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children database. Through these studies, Dr. Bell’s findings revealed A) a genetic-epigenetic susceptibility to postpartum depression (specifically via an interaction between methylation at oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) loci and an OXTR polymorphism); and B) that a positive birth experience supports the mother’s mental health and caregiving behavior. Funded pilot work led to an NIH-funded R01 award (2020-2024) conducted as PI at the University of Arizona, affectionately known as the “Mothers & Babies Project.” By targeting at-risk women with a history of childhood adversity expecting their first child, the RCT’s primary aim was to determine the efficacy of Massage+, a behavioral infant massage intervention, on improving the quality of mother-infant interaction (known as synchrony). The RCT’s secondary aim was to determine the role of the oxytocin system underlying the efficacy of Massage+ and mother-infant synchrony, respectively. A unique contribution to the literature will be characteristics of the oxytocin system across pregnancy and postpartum at four-time points and include data on infant oxytocin, maternal neurophysin 1 (an oxytocin carrier molecule), OXTR DNA methylation, OXTR gene expression and an OXTR polymorphism. In summary, funding sources to study mother-infant perinatal outcomes and the underlying oxytocin system have included a NIH F32, NIH KL2, NIH R01, university seed grants, and grants from private foundations including the Fetzer Institute and Irving Harris Foundation. Importantly, Dr. Bell collaborates with leading scientists in anthropology, oxytocin and social behavior, genetics/epigenetics, nursing, and neurobehavioral psychology.

Elise Erickson PhD, CNM, FACNM has been a Certified Nurse Midwife since 2005 and earned a PhD in 2018 at Oregon Health and Science University where she served as a faculty midwife from 2014-2022. Her research lab, "Mechanisms Underpinning Maternal Health" (MUMH), is broadly focused on understanding variation in the physiology governing labor and birth to improve individualization of care practices and promote healthy transitions to motherhood/parenthood. At the University of Arizona she conducts research on epigenetic and genetic variation in oxytocin function for improving the use of oxytocin during the birth process and addressing postpartum hemorrhage specifically. In addition, her work includes the role of epigenetic aging (biological aging) in maternal health and maternal morbidity. Through this line of study, Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) and social environmental factors (adversity/ support) are considered for their role in contributing to epigenetic age acceleration. In addition, Dr. Erickson conducts studies using wearable devices for monitoring maternal autonomic/ hormonal physiology during pregnancy with the objective of understanding signals leading up to pregnancy complications or events for enhanced prediction of labor or pregnancy-related complications. She specializes in latent mixture modeling for understanding heterogeneous and complex phenomenon. She is accepting doctoral and post-doctoral trainees. She lives in Tucson and enjoys playing in nature with her children, spouse and dogs "Biscuit" and "Gravie." 

Sheila Gephart has been a nurse for 20 years and has been a nurse scientist since 2012. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Arizona. She studies technical and parent-engaged solutions to reduce the burden of necrotizing enterocolitis. Her methodological expertise in spreading innovations using informatics, especially clinical decision support technologies, has included algorithm development and testing of tools to measure Electronic health record related unintended consequences. Her research has been funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, National Institute of Nursing Research and the National Library of Medicine. She is an active member of the NEC Society Scientific Advisory Council, the International Neonatal Consortium, and the Editorial Board of Advances in Neonatal Care. She loves to drink coffee, spend time with her 3 teenage daughters, watch murder mysteries with her husband, and disappear into the wilderness. 

The focus of research is on cognitive function over the lifespan and implications of cognitive function (specifically executive function and working memory) on self-management of chronic disease, or in the case of children, on school achievement. Self-management is often indexed by examining medication adherence. The population of interest is older adults with hypertension and in collaboration with Dr. Ki Moore, children who are diagnosed and treated for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Findings have implications for self-management challenges in other populations with chronic disease conditions. 

I have specific interest and expertise in quantitative research methods. 

Juyoung Park, PhDProfessor, NursingProfessor, BIO5 InstituteDr. Juyoung Park is a Professor and Associate Director of the Brain Digital Technology Laboratory within the College of Nursing. She earned her PhD in 2009 from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Prior to joining her current institution, she served as a Professor and Chair of the Healthy Aging Academy at Florida Atlantic University's School of Social Work. Before pursuing her doctoral studies, she worked as a clinical social worker at the South Carolina Department of Mental Health.Dr. Park’s expertise lies in chronic pain and nonpharmacological pain management for older adults with chronic conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). Her research also explores technology-based interventions for remotely supervised home-based care for older adults with chronic conditions and their caregivers.She was honored as a Hartford Faculty Scholar in 2011 and received funding from the John A. Hartford Foundation (2011-2013) for research work on nonpharmacological pain management among racially and ethnically diverse older adults. She was recognized in the U.S. Bone & Joint Initiative’s Young Investigators Initiative Program in 2014. Since 2017, she has been a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) in the Health Sciences Section.Dr. Park’s current research interests focus on remotely supervised home-based brain stimulation approaches, including transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and nonpharmacological pain management for older adults with chronic conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease, related dementias, and osteoarthritis. Her work also explores brain stimulation approaches, such as tDCS and diverse therapeutic designs, including complementary and mind-body alternative medicine techniques such as online chair yoga and qigong.As a Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) on several intramural, foundation, and NIH-funded grants (National Institute on Aging and National Center for Complementary Integrative Health), Dr. Park has led projects involving human subject protection, data safety and management, and budget oversight. She has authored numerous peer-reviewed publications and has presented her research extensively at national and international conferences.

Dr. Pamela G. Reed is Professor at The University of Arizona College of Nursing where she also served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Her research has focused on well-being and mental health across the lifespan, spirituality at end-of-life, and moral distress and ethical concerns of frontline caregivers and terminally ill individuals.  Her current scholarship focuses on nursing theory, philosophy, and scientific knowledge development, and work on intermodernism as a philosophy of nursing science.  Dr. Reed’s self-transcendence theory is published in nursing theory textbooks and articles for research and practice, and her Spiritual Perspective Scale and Self-Transcendence Scale have been used by researchers around the world. In addition, she and a colleague have authored several editions of two books, Perspectives on Nursing Theory and Nursing Knowledge and Theory Innovation: Advancing the Science of Practice. Dr. Reed teaches philosophy of nursing science & practice, and theory development & evaluation to PhD and DNP nursing students. She holds a BSN, MSN (in Child/Adol PMH) and PhD (major in nursing) from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and an MA in philosophy from The University of Arizona. She has been a Visiting Scholar at several institutions including New York University and Duke University and is a member of the University of California-Irvine Center for Nursing Philosophy Steering Committee.  Dr. Reed is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing.

Dr. Julienne Rutherford is Professor and John & Nell Mitchell Endowed Chair for Pediatric Nursing in the University of Arizona College of Nursing. She is a biological anthropologist whose work integrates bioanthropological theory with biomedical science. For 20 years, she has sustained a program of research exploring the intrauterine environment as a biosocial determinant of health. She studies how maternal life history and lived experience shape this earliest developmental setting, and how, in turn, the intrauterine environment influences growth, health, and development across the life course and across generations. Her innovative marmoset monkey research comprises the bulk of her16 years of continuous federal funding as PI/MPI and Co-I (total federal awards >$6M). As Principal Investigator (PI) she designed a “Womb to Womb” NICHD-funded R01 study of marmosets to determine how prenatal influences shape female reproductive development and pregnancy outcomes across generations. She and her team have shown that in the marmoset, a mother's own birth weight and litter size are associated with her pregnancy outcomes in adulthood and the reproductive development of her daughters. She is currently funded as an MPI on an NIA-funded R56 study of marmoset developmental genetics. These studies in the marmoset demonstrate the ways maternal health and child outcomes may be shaped by events beyond the reach of individual agency. She applies this justice-informed lens to collaborate with nurse midwifery scholars to examine the relationships among experiences of Covid-19-dictated changes in care, obstetric racism, and physiological measures of stress, laying the groundwork for NIH grant submissions to implement prospective studies of the impact of obstetric racism and the lingering effects of the pandemic on the physical and mental health of mothers and their children through the first 3 years of life. Dr. Rutherford has produced 45 publications (cited over 1600 times), over 60 conference presentations, dozens of invited talks, and multiple plenary and keynote addresses at national and international meetings. She was a UIC Researcher of the Year Rising Star in Clinical Sciences, American Society of Primatologists Legacy Awardee, and National Academy of Science Kavli Foundation Fellow. Further, Dr. Rutherford has been recognized as a teacher and mentor of nursing students and faculty as a Robert Wood Johnson Future of Nursing mentor and as the recipient of the American College of Nurse Midwives Excellence in Teaching Award and multiple major teaching awards from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Dr. Meghan Skiba is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Arizona. She received her doctorate in Health Behavior Health Promotion from the Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, has additional formal graduate training in epidemiology and nutritional sciences, and completed post-doctoral training at Oregon Health & Science University. Dr. Skiba has experience delivering remote diet and physical activity interventions as well as health coaching, accelerometry, community-engaged research, and advanced data analytics. Her research has emphasis in biological aging, digital health, and dyads. She is interested in addressing cancer health disparities by connecting cancer survivors and their caregivers to the skills and behaviors to live their healthiest and longest life.

Ruth Taylor-Piliae, PhD, RN, FAHA, FAAN is a Professor and the PhD Program Director (interim) in the College of Nursing at the University of Arizona. She is recognized internationally as a nurse scientist and mind-body exercise interventionist, with training in cardiovascular epidemiology and clinical trials. Her research is focused on promoting physical activity and improving patient-centered outcomes among older adults with heart disease and stroke through the implementation of innovative non-pharmacologic interventions such as Tai Chi. Her passion to improve the lives of those with cardiovascular disease and stroke also translates to real world impact, as evident by widespread and continued media interest in her research. In a recent Bibliometric Evaluation of Global Tai Chi Research from 1980–2020 (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021), Dr. Taylor-Piliae was ranked 6th among the top 10 authors during this time period. Dr. Taylor-Piliae received her B.S.N. from California State University Fresno, her M.N. from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and her Ph.D. from the University of California San Francisco. She completed a 2-year post-doctoral fellowship in cardiovascular epidemiology and prevention at Stanford University. Dr. Taylor-Piliae has received funding as a principal investigator from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, Hospital Authority of Hong Kong, National Institute of Health, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She reviews for professional journals and has had over 80 peer-reviewed manuscripts published in top-tiered journals both within nursing and inter-professional journals. She is highly cited for her work (citations>4900, h-index=36, i10-index=60). Dr. Taylor-Piliae is a long-standing member in the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, European Society of Cardiology, Sigma Theta Tau’s International Honor Society of Nursing, and the American College of Sports Medicine. She has received several teaching, research and service awards including the Suzanne Van Ort Peer Award for Graduate Teaching, the Extraordinary Faculty Award, the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Mathy Mezey Excellence in Aging Award from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Cardiovascular and Stroke Nursing Council, and the Award of Distinction for Excellence in Research from Sigma Theta Tau International, Beta Mu Chapter.