Letícia Marteleto is the Principal Investigator for the Decode Zika and Covid Project. A social demographer and Penn Presidential Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, she is also a Population Studies Center Research Associate. She uses data, sociological and demographic theories, and cultural knowledge to understand inequality and its intersection with fertility, education, and health, focusing on Latin America and Africa. Her work has appeared in flagship journals in sociology, demography, and other disciplines, such as Demography, Population and Development Review, and Social Forces. Professor Marteleto’s research has been funded by several foundations, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation. Professor Marteleto is an international speaker, a media expert, and an adviser to governmental and non-governmental agencies on social development, population, and data collection. Her work is motivated by the central question of how social and economic disadvantages and demographic change intertwine in low- and middle-income countries with persistently high levels of inequality at times when widely held social and demographic norms are in flux. Before joining Penn, Marteleto taught at The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Michigan, and the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Learn more about her work.
Molly Dondero is an Associate Professor of Sociology at American University in Washington, D.C. and Fulbright-Iméra-Aix-Marseille Université Chair in Migration Studies (2024-2025). She is a sociologist and social demographer whose research examines how population-level inequality in health and well-being emerges along three key axes of stratification—immigration, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status—in highly racially diverse societies. She has developed this broad focus through two lines of research: 1) the consequences of immigration for health and well-being throughout the life course, and 2) racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in health and well-being. Her work research makes use of large-scale quantitative data sources to examine emerging and enduring social problems and articulate the complex structural forces that create and maintain inequality.
As a co-investigator of DZC, she examines the social patterning of reproductive health consequences of the Zika epidemic and Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil. Prior to joining the faculty at American University, she was a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development postdoctoral fellow at the Population Research Institute at the Pennsylvania State University.
Jen Bracco is a PharmD, CCRA with experience in managing global clinical trials for pharmaceutical companies and clinical research organizations, phases II-IV. Experience areas include Cardiovascular, Osteoporosis and Osteoarthritis, Geriatrics, Infectious Diseases, Diabetes, Pediatrics, Respiratory Diseases, Gynecology, Oncology, Nephrology, Immune Diseases and Psychiatry. She also worked as an auditor and in quality assurance, producing training and standard operational procedures for local and global trials. Jen is the project manager for the DZC Project.