Mary L. Peng MPH is a current Master of Science candidate at Harvard Medical School, majoring in Media, Medicine, and Health. With a Master of Public Health in Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health, Peng is deeply passionate about integrating design thinking with patient-centered care, whole-person care, and preventive healthcare, committed to embedding equity-driven health tech, mobile health(mHealth), and user-centered digital health solutions into a healthcare ecosystem customized to every patient. Studying under Dr. Terika McCall, Peng joined the Consumer Health Informatics Lab in February 2022. Currently, Peng serves as a media consultant and research affiliate at CHIL.Her previous mHealth and health informatics research included AI health technology for HIV prevention, chronic disease management, and equity-driven digital mental health intervention. In addition, she has collaborated with Dr. Federick Altice and Dr. Zhao Ni from the Yale School of Medicine and Yale School of Nursing on the NSL-funded research and development of AI-powered anti-HIV chatbots in Malaysia. During her time at Yale, Peng was also an implementation scientist at Dr. Ashley Hagaman’s Innovation Lab at the Yale Center for Methods in Implementation and Prevention Science (CMIPS), where her team conduced systematic scoping reviews to understand the different implementation strategies to improve implementation of evidence-based practices as well as various implementation outcomes and how they are assessed. As a self-taught artist showcased by Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Photoshop, Yale Schwarzman Center, New Britain Museum of American Art, the Masonic Temple and Museum, Times Square NYC, and 40+ galleries worldwide, Peng is committed to blending the landscapes of art and science to improve people's holistic well-being. Peng has 8+ years of experience in graphic design, media design, and data visualization, where she has designed for 30+ international and national organizations and corporations spanning across Jamaica, Singapore, Cambodia, China, the US, and Kenya. Peng is also an adamant champion of mindful living, empathy, and holistic well-being, and aspires to merge the sensorial experience of art with the creative capacity of health technology to create digital health tools. Peng received her B.A. from University of Virginia in 2021, where she majored in Global Studies and double minored in Anthropology and Philosophy. In the early stage of Peng’s undergraduate career, she conducted two years of ethnographic research on social belonging, intersectionality-informed social power dynamics, and identity politics, culminating in three ethnographic portfolios. Under the guidance of Dr. Richard L Merkel Jr., Peng conducted research on patients’ acceptance of tele-psychiatry during COVID-19 and presented her research at the Mid-Atlantic Telehealth Resource Center Summit 2021. Peng was awarded the Horstmann Scholarship 2021-2023 at Yale University , and received the Catherine F. Underwood Murray '89 Scholarship 2020-2021 and the Lorna Sundberg International Scholarship Award 2020 for outstanding dedication to community service and academic performance. She was also the recipient of the four-year Singapore Ministry of Education Senior-Middle 1 (SM1) Scholarship 2013-2018.
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Mary has a black belt in taekwondo.