Afaf Moustafa
After moving from Southern California, Afaf graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016, where she studied Biological Basis of Behavior and English. Upon graduating, she spent two years coordinating a clinical research study on nicotine addiction. Outside of work, she spent her gap years publishing a paper on the lack of national funding for addiction precision medicine, and also working on a study regarding healthcare policy and access to naloxone for those at risk of an opioid overdose. In 2018, she began medical school at New York Medical College. Afaf’s career interests include addiction medicine, global and population health, and mental health policy. In her free time, Afaf enjoys baking, cooking, playing tennis, and visiting her two sisters.
Institute Associates
Branka Stamatovic Gajic, MD, PhD.
Associate Professor, Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Faculty of Health, Legal and Business Studies, Singidunum University
Her previous work was mainly in Serbia, where she worked as a clinical psychiatrist, but also as an external surveyor/evaluator for the Serbian Agency for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions. She actively participated in Serbia Health Project funded by the World Bank, dealing with health care reform in Serbia, and implementing it in Valjevo Hospital. She is affiliated to the Singidunum University, Faculty of Health, Legal and Business Studies, in Valjevo, Serbia, with several undergraduate courses as an Associate Professor. Her research activities are related to clinical issues, but also to quality improvement efforts in the field of mental health. In her teaching work she includes the promotion of mental health awareness in other professions, and the dissemination of mental health information. She is a member of several professional organizations (Serbian Medical Society; Serbian Psychiatric Association; Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists of Serbia; Association for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Allied Professions, Serbia; American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry).
Hedayat Ghazali
Hedayat Ghazali has BSs in psychology and MSc in Educational Psychology and Methodology State University of New York at Albany. Currently, he is a PhD student in Educational Psychology and Methodology with a concentration on Human Development. Before joining UAlbany, he studied Psychology in Allameh Tabatabaei University in Tehran. He was Kurd student activist and he published several articles about mother tongue, psychological problems of Kurd people in student publication at Tehran University. However, unfairly he was expelled from university and prisoned just because of his activities. Now, he is also the human right activist and works as the research consultant on human rights violation in Iran especially execution and economical, psychological, social impacts of execution on victim’s families.
Krista Bennett
Krista Bennett is a graduate of the Columbia School of Social Work in New York City. Currently, she is a Social Worker at St. Peter's Health Partners in Albany, NY where she works on a clinical level as a behavioral health counselor. She was a research assistant with the Global Institute for Health and Human Rights from 2016-2018, where she conducted a full range of activities required to prepare, submit, and manage grant proposals on issues including health, human rights, and sustainable development. She also designed and directed a project that provided legal information to prisoners in their native language.
Krista has extensive volunteer experience with both domestic and international agencies including but not limited to the National Association of Social Workers, Lion's International, Obama for America, MoveOn.org, Amnesty International, Code Blue Emergency Shelters, and Samaritan's Purse Disaster Relief.
Mahnaz Alaei
- Mahnaz Alaei, MS
Director of the department of the IT and Information Systems at the Institute for International Health and Education,
After receiving her Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering as well as the Master's degree in Computer Science, She is currently creating several online learning platforms where health professionals and outreach workers can attend online courses to advance their skills and continued training in the field of global health and international law. To facilitate the learning process, these online courses incorporate stateof- the-art technology and provide visual and audio teaching components in multiple languages.
Nicole Mertz
Nicole Mertz completed her bachelors degree at West Virginia Wesleyan College in 2015, where she majored in Psychology and had minors in Human Biology and Gender Studies. Nicole worked at a trauma-based psychiatric residential treatment facility In North Carolina then with children with Autism in local schools near Philadelphia. Nicole is a recent graduate from Drexel University’s School of Public Health, where she earned her MPH in community health and prevention with a minor in global health. Nicole is passionate about public health and is primarily interested in topics related to mental health, interventional health, health communications, and human rights. Nicole came to IIHE after completing her masters thesis with Dr Kamiar Alaei. In her free time, Nicole is a competitive powerlifter and enjoys spending time with her pets.
Reza Sayeed
"Reza Sayeed B.A. Reza completed his undergraduate coursework at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies studying Economics and International Relations in 2018. Since graduating, he has begun working in public health consulting, tackling challenging Medicaid transformation initiatives in states along the East Coast. He has always been drawn to the arena of policymaking, interning for the British Labour Party’s Shadow Foreign Ministry and for the New York State Department of Health’s Medicaid office through 2017. He has intentions of further studies in the field of international political economy, furthering his grasp of the implications and intricacies of policy decisions in the lives of people across the globe. Reza has a particular inclination to learning the history of the Middle East and can be found reading avidly in his spare time. "
Tomislav Gajic, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor, Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Faculty of Health, Legal and Business Studies, Singidunum University, Serbia
Dr Gajic is a physician from Serbia. He was as a External Investigator and Affiliated Faculty member at the Global Institute for Health and Human Rights University at Albany SUNY with professor Kamiar Alaei. He worked as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist for more than twenty years, served as Head of Department of Psychiatry General Hospital Valjevo, worked in private practice and later as Assistant Professor at University of Singidunum in Serbia. He collaborated with Indiana University, USA in 2004 and 2005 as coinvestigator in two research projects about subjective expirience, physical activity and social support among people with mental illness. He is active in many national and international professional NGO organisations. He served as a member of the Presidency of the Serbian Medical Society, Former Vice Presidant of Serbian Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association, Delegate in European Federation of Psychoanalitic Psychotherapy and as member of the National Comission for Mental Health Serbia. He published his research in national and international peer reviewed journals.