Rafael Meza

Dr. Meza is assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Michigan. He received his BSc in applied mathematics from the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM), and his PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Washington. After receiving his PhD, Dr. Meza completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center - and a three-year fellowship at the University of British Columbia Centre for Disease Control.

Dr. Meza's research interests lie at the interface of epidemiology, biostatistics and biomathematics. In particular, he is interested in cancer risk assessment and the analysis of cancer epidemiology data using mechanistic models of carcinogenesis. He is also interested in the mathematical modeling of chronic and infectious disease dynamics and its applications in public health policy design. Dr. Meza is Coordinating Principal Investigator of the Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network (CISNET) lung group, core member of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center (UMCCC), and member of the UM Tobacco Research Network (UMTRN). He is also Honorary Professor at the Mexico National Institute of Public Health (INSP). 

Currently, Dr. Meza is developing models to evaluate the impact of screening and smoking cessation on lung cancer risk. Additional projects include the development of methodologies to investigate the effects of infectious disease dynamics on the risk of cancers with infectious disease etiology, modeling the impact of policies on cigarette and smokeless tobacco use, and modeling the impact of diabetes prevention strategies in Mexico.