Meet the Team

Chelsea L. Shover, PhD 

Principal Investigator

Chelsea L. Shover, PhD is an Assistant Professor-in-Residence at the University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research. She completed her PhD in Epidemiology at the University of California Los Angeles and a postdoctoral fellowship in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Her research focuses on addiction, infectious disease, and their shared social and structural risk factors. 

Caitlin Molina, BS, BA

Project Manager

Caitlin Molina, BS, BA was born and raised in Southern California. She attended Chapman University, where she graduated with dual degrees in Biology and Spanish. After her introduction to harm reduction while working as a street medicine EMT, Caitlin joined the EPI lab in late 2022 as the Project Manager for the drug checking program. She plans to continue this important work in harm reduction as the first physician in her family. 

Ruby Romero, BA

Project Director 

Ruby Romero, BA was born in Inglewood, CA and is the daughter of Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants. She is a first-generation college graduate, earning BAs in Anthropology and Biology from Grinnell College. She has been a Research Coordinator at the EPI lab since 2021 and plans to continue her education to become a physician. In pursuing a career in medicine, she hopes to work towards addressing health disparities that affect underserved communities such as her own. She is currently the Project Director for an R01 funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA057630, PIs: Shover, Goodman-Meza).