Butzin-Dozier Lab

Stanford University School of Medicine

Incoming Assistant Professor June 2026

Department of Pediatrics (Division of Clinical Informatics) and Department of Medicine (Center for Biomedical Informatics Research)

NIAID K01 Awardee 2024-2029

I am a postdoctoral scholar in the Division of Biostatistics at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health working under Professors Alan Hubbard, Jack Colford, and Mark van der Laan. My work applies Targeted Machine Learning methodology to data from the National Clinical Cohorts Collaborative (N3C) to evaluate protective interventions against Long COVID, including COVID-19 vaccination, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), metformin, and immune-modulating drugs. I led a research team that placed third in the NIH Long COVID Computational Challenge for building an ensemble machine learning model that predicted individual risk of Long COVID diagnosis. My previous work evaluated drivers of child growth and development in rural Bangladesh through the WASH Benefits study. I received my Ph.D. in Epidemiology and MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from UC Berkeley.

Media Coverage

Study shows use of SSRIs may protect against long COVID. Sheila Kaplan, December 6, 2024. University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/news-media/research-highlights/ssris-may-protect-against-long-covid

NIH NCATS Clinical and Translational Sciences Awards spotlight article of the month, September 10, 2024. Featured article: “Predicting Long COVID…” (JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 2024)

UC Berkeley research teams wins $100k prize for long COVID-19 prediction model. Sheila Kaplan, April 11, 2023. University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health.

Postdoc Spotlight: Zachary Butzin-Dozier Sheds Light on Long COVID with Advanced Machine Learning. Simmerdeep Kaur, June 24, 2024. Berkeley Visiting Scholars and Postdoc Affairs. 

Teaching

UC Berkeley School of Public Health

Methods in Epidemiology 1

Methods in Epidemiology 2

Intervention Trial Design

Experience teaching remotely/asynchronously and in person

Mentorship and Collaboration

UC Berkeley

Faculty: Alan Hubbard, Jack Colford, Mark van der Laan, Jay Graham

Postdoctoral: Andrew Mertens, Jeremy Coyle, Rachael Phillips

Graduate Students: Yunwen Ji, Seraphina Shi, Haodong Li, Sky Qiu

Undergraduate Students: Sarang Deshpande, Manav Kumar, Ailsa Sun, Alexis Silvera, Farheen Jamshed, Da Kyung Jung

National Taiwan University School of Medicine: Ewen Huang

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: Eric Hurwitz, Jerrod Anzalone, Til Sturmer

University of Iowa: Charisse Madlock-Brown

University of Minnesota: Carolyn Bramante

Johns Hopkins University: Jing Sun

UC Santa Cruz: Audrie Lin

Completed and Ongoing Research Projects

Long COVID

COVID-19 Vaccination Timing, Relative to Acute COVID-19, and Subsequent Risk of Long COVID (under review at eBioMedicine, 2025)1

SSRI Use During Acute COVID-19 Infection Associated with Lower Risk of Long COVID Among Patients with Depression (BMC Medicine, 2024)1

Predicting Long COVID in the National COVID Cohort Collaborative Using Super Learner: a Cohort Study (JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 2024)1

Association of glycemic control with post-COVID-19 sequelae in patients with type 2 diabetes: Findings from the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) (BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care, 2025)*

Crowd-sourced machine learning prediction of Long COVID using data from the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (eBioMedicine, 2024)*

Research Methods in Epidemiology and Biostatistics

A review of the ring trial design for evaluating ring interventions for infectious diseases (Epidemiologic Reviews, 2022)1

Highly Adaptive Lasso: Machine Learning That Provides Valid Nonparametric Inference in Realistic Models (under review at the Journal of Machine Learning Research)1

Child growth, development, and immune status

Stress biomarkers and child development in young children in Bangladesh (Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2024)1

Treatment Heterogeneity of Water, Sanitation, Hygiene, and Nutrition Interventions on Child Growth by Environmental Enteric Dysfunction and Pathogen Status for Young Children in Bangladesh (PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 2025)1

Can drinking water, sanitation, handwashing, and nutritional interventions reduce antibiotic use in young children? (Nature Communications, 2025)*

Maternal experience of intimate partner violence, maternal depression, and parental stress are not associated with child telomere length in Bangladesh (Scientific Reports, 2025)*

Effects of drinking water, sanitation, handwashing, and nutritional interventions on immune status in young children: a cluster-randomized controlled trial in rural Bangladesh (under review)*

Cortisol production patterns in young children living with birth parents vs children placed in foster care following involvement of Child Protective Services (Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med [now JAMA Pediatrics], 2010)*

Observational Analyses of Electronic Health Records

Harnessing consumer wearable digital biomarkers for individualized recognition of postpartum depression using the All of Us Research Program dataset (JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 2024)*

Unlocking the potential of wearable device wear time to enhance postpartum depression screening and detection (JMIR Formative Research, 2025)*

Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control

Assessing Upstream Determinants of Antibiotic Use in Small-Scale Food Animal Production through a Simulated Client Method (Antibiotics, 2021)1

Challenges and opportunities for scaling up infection prevention and control programmes in rural district hospitals of Tamil Nadu, India (IJIC, 2021)*

For the Good of Us All: Addressing the Needs of Our Unhoused Neighbors During the COVID-19 Pandemic (Not peer reviewed, 2020)*

1First author

*Co-author

CV

Available via Google Drive