Description:

Please join us at ISGMH for the 2025 Postdoctoral Scholar Showcase! This year's showcase features presentations on research done by five of the Institute's postdoctoral scholars.

About the Showcase

Venue-Level Drivers of HIV Risk
Emily Esposito, PhD 

Address Key Issues in HIV Self-Testing Program Implementation for Black and Latino Sexual Minority Men in the Southern United States
John Guigayoma, PhD

Policy Levers to Improve Syndemic (HIV/SUD/MH) Health Service Delivery in the US Health Care Safety Net
Timothy Levengood, PhD, MPH

Acculturative Stress, Mental Health and HIV Prevention among Hispanic Immigrant Sexual Minority Men: An Integrated Model of Minority Stress and Acculturation
Jonathan Lopez-Matos, PhD

Engaging Youth in HIV Prevention: A Pathway to Scalable & Sustainable Community-Led Interventions
Mariajose Paton, PhD

About the Speakers

Emily Esposito, PhD, is a postdoctoral scholar at the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing, working under the mentorship of Dr. Michelle Birkett. She has a bachelor's degree in psychology and chemistry from Rutgers University, a master's degree in general psychology from the City College of New York, and a doctoral degree in social psychology with a subspecialty in diversity and inequality from the University of California, Riverside. Her research focuses on the contextual and psychological mechanisms related to health and wellbeing outcomes among marginalized populations, with a focus on sexual and gender minority people.

John Guigayoma, PhD, is a postdoctoral scholar at the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. He has an undergraduate degree from UCLA, a master’s in public health from UC Berkeley, and a doctoral degree in Behavioral and Social Health Science from the Brown University School of Public Health. His research interests focus on implementation science for HIV prevention and care among sexual and gender minorities. Before his public health research career, he worked in project management for HIV programs at community-based organizations in California.

Tim Levengood, PhD, MPH, is a first-year postdoctoral fellow studying under Brian Mustanski, PhD. Levengood completed his PhD in Health Services and Policy Research at Boston University School of Public Health. Prior to that, he worked as an ORISE fellow at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Community Guide Branch, conducting systematic reviews on chronic disease management that informed recommendations of the Community Preventive Services Task Force. His work focuses on policy and financial incentives that affect the uptake and sustainability of HIV and behavioral health services, with a particular focus on improving access for low-income and socially marginalized individuals. He uses econometric, systematic review, and implementation science methods to study provider organization service delivery. His dissertation, and ongoing work, examines the relevance of the 340B Drug Pricing Program for access to syndemic health services in safety-net care settings.

Jonathan Lopez-Matos, PhD, completed a B.A. in Psychology at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez and an M.A. in General Psychology at CUNY-Hunter College in New York City, and a PhD in Health Psychology at the CUNY-Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and (ISGMH) at Northwestern university in Chicago. Jonathan has vast experience working in various not-for-profit organizations in the United States, including Puerto Rico, focusing on mental and sexual health among marginalized sexual, gender, and racial underserved LGBTQ+ populations. Additionally, he has worked as an adjunct professor and guest speaker with different academic agencies, has served as a Research Assistant at various research centers in NYC and PR, as a Health Educator in community-based organizations, and have managed pilot studies and large-scale grants funded by the National Institutes of Health aiming to develop interventions and programming to reduce health inequities and improve positive mental health outcomes among self-identified LGBTQ+ Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Recently, he has focused his research work on minority stress, acculturation, and immigrant Latinx sexual and gender minority’s’ health.

Mariajose Paton, PhD, works with the Teen Health Lab on projects such as a social marketing campaign empowering youth with PrEP knowledge, a digital health intervention to promote HIV testing among teens, and the development of “prebunking” videos to combat misinformation about HIV vaccines. Paton also works with Sociostructural Implementation Science Coordination Initiative (SISCI) primarily in the development and evaluation of implementation science trainings addressing social determinants of health that affect HIV outcomes. She believes community-driven solutions are the key to ending the epidemic, and she values community-engaged methods in her HIV prevention research.