Firoz Abdoel Wahid, MD, PhD, MPH and Jiebiao Wang, PhD, MS, have been selected to join the newest class of the Health Sciences Leadership Academy for Early Career Faculty, a yearlong professional development program designed to cultivate a generation of transformative academic leaders through shared leadership training.
The 2026 program, which began in January, is managed by the Office of Academic Career Development, Health Sciences, with a team made up of leadership consultants and established Pitt faculty and officials.
“I am delighted to see our faculty recognized as future leaders in Pitt Public Health and the Schools of the Health Sciences,” said Maureen Lichtveld, MD, MPH, Pitt Public Health dean and Jonas Salk Professor in Population Health. “Drs. Abdoel Wahid and Wang exemplify the dedication to public health in which our school excels.”
A native of Suriname in South America, Abdoel Wahid is assistant professor of environmental and occupational health. He received his MD and MPH from Anton de Kom University there and earned a PhD at Tulane University in New Orleans, La.
He has more than 20 years of experience in public health and is part of the Caribbean Consortium for Research in Environmental and Occupational Health, which is focused on the impact of chemical and nonchemical stressors on maternal and child health. He has a longstanding history of teaching and has trained and mentored frontline workers in Suriname, as well as medical, physical therapy and public health students. His areas of expertise include environmental and population health science, global environmental health research, research training, and climate and health effects on vulnerable populations.
Wang, who is from China, is assistant professor of biostatistics and health data science. He earned a PhD in biostatistics from the University of Chicago and completed postdoctoral training in statistics and data science at Carnegie Mellon University.
His research interests include statistical genomics, causal inference and machine learning. His group develops innovative statistical methods to address complex challenges in multi-omics data and public health. He has led several National Institutes of Health-funded projects as principal investigator, including the development of statistical methods for population-level cell-type-specific analyses of tissue omics data for Alzheimer's disease.
-Michele Dula Baum