2025 Sharma Fellows Announced

Three UTHealth Houston School of Public Health students have been selected as the 2025 Shreela and Vibhu Sharma Endowment for Excellence in Community Nutrition, Climate Health, and Sustainability fellows. Over the next year, each fellow will have the opportunity to collaborate with established research centers to leverage and enhance the fellow’s work and impact on public health.

Established in 2017 by Shreela Sharma, PhD, RDN, LD, professor and vice chair of the Department of Epidemiology and director, Center for Health Equity, and her husband Vibhu Sharma, CEO of InnoVent Renewables, the Sharma Fellowship provides pre-doctoral students with a $2,000 stipend per semester to support research in the critical areas of nutrition, climate health, and sustainability research.  

The Sharma family, long-time supporters of UTHealth Houston, expanded the fellowship opportunity in 2024 to include research and education in environmental and climate health, recognizing their direct impact on community health and nutrition. Selected fellows will collaborate closely with university research centers, including the Center for Health Equity, the Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, and The Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living (led by Deanna Hoelscher, PhD, RD) as well as non-profit organizations like Brighter Bites.

"Climate health has a monumental impact on our food system. Extreme climate events and increased emissions and landfill waste adversely affect our health and the air we breathe," says Vibhu. "Climate disasters can immediately impact the food supply chain, increasing food insecurity in our communities. Improving climate health can greatly stabilize our food systems locally and globally," he says.

The 2025/26 Fellows:

• Katherine Joseph
• Tyson Murray
• Zihan Yang

Katherine Joseph

Katherine Joseph, a third-year PhD student in Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, is eager to work amidst the school and its partners to leverage her academic and research background.

“This fellowship will give me the opportunity to combine my engineering and public health research experience into meaningful contributions to public health practice,” she said. “This supports my research interests in sustainable infrastructure and resilient strategies that will promote health and technological growth,” she shared.

Currently, Joseph is completing her degree in Environmental Health with a focus on Disease Prevention. Her areas of interest include wastewater epidemiology and population health, two growing fields that impact sustainability and monitor future infectious disease outbreaks and emerging health risks.

As a student studying the environmental impact on our population, Joseph is positioned to expand her knowledge alongside industry leaders and hands-on experience in wastewater monitoring and more.

“I look forward to collaborating with peers and mentors who share a passion for sustainability and innovation. I am excited to gain new perspectives and challenge myself to think more critically about the intersection of environment and health. I hope to translate research into tangible action that not only addresses current infrastructure challenges but also builds the foundation for more sustainable communities in the future,” she said.

Tyson Murray

Second-year PhD student Tyson Murray, with the Department of Epidemiology, will collaborate with the Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health to examine the impact of extreme heat on Texans. His fellowship will allow him to pair his interest in epidemiology and community health to aid in building resilient communities.

For Murray, this fellowship presents both academic and professional growth opportunities while simultaneously supporting the health of Texans. “This fellowship will allow me to strengthen my collaborative, leadership, and research translation skills,” he said. “I look forward to partnering with colleagues in academia and industry to translate climate health research into action. My goal is to generate scientific evidence that informs real-world solutions for Texas communities that improve community health and sustainability.”

The Sharma fellowship will pair epidemiologic efforts with environmental health to safeguard all populations. Through its expansion efforts to include climate health and sustainability, Murray will craft evidence-based solutions to address the many effects it has on the health of our populations alongside experts at the School of Public Health. “Working with the Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health will allow me to strengthen my collaborative, leadership, and research translation skills,” he stated on this opportunity.

Zihan Yang

Zihan Yang, PhD candidate in the Department of Biostatistics and Data Science, will work closely with the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living, the Center for Health Equity, and the non-profit Brighter Bites.

For Yang, this fellowship is an affirmation of her commitment to using rigorous analytics for community-focused solutions, particularly for families facing social and structural health barriers. Her research interests include studying the social roots of active living and mindful eating to turn data into lasting change — “one household, one meal, and one story at a time.”

"Alongside my work in scalable Bayesian modeling for spatial and high-dimensional data, I hope to work with the Brighter Bites research committee to measure how nutrition access and education affect diet quality, cancer-related biomarkers, and preventive behaviors — and to identify the social factors that make these programs most effective.”

Over the course of the academic year, Yang will be able to contribute both technically and collaboratively to public health projects that reflect her values as a team-oriented quantitative researcher.

"Working with Brighter Bites will keep me grounded in the day-to-day realities of the children and families we serve,” Yang said about the opportunity. "I look forward to strengthening partnerships that place community voices and culturally relevant data at the center of program evaluation and innovation.” 

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Shreela Sharma co-founded Brighter Bites alongside Lisa Helfman, senior director of public affairs for H-E-B's Houston Region. Brighter Bites delivers fresh fruits and vegetables directly to families and teaches them how to prepare the food. Since its inception in 2012, Brighter Bites has delivered millions of pounds of fresh produce and nutrition education to children and families in multiple cities.

Vibhu Sharma is the CEO of InnoVent Renewables, a renewable energy company that converts waste tires into valuable fuels and chemicals, and CEO of InnoVent Technology, a technology company that provides engineering and technological solutions to oil and gas, and chemical industries.

The Shreela and Vibhu Sharma Endowment for Excellence in Community Nutrition, Climate Health and Sustainability fellowship program is administered through the Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living.