Ruijia Chen, ScD
I am a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Community Health Sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. My research combines social epidemiology with advanced quantitative methods to examine how social disadvantage, including financial strain, discrimination, and social isolation, shapes cognitive aging and dementia. I use big data, causal inference approaches, and cross-national comparisons to identify drivers of disparities and inform policy solutions. See my Research page for current projects.
I am an NIA K99/R00 fellow and a former NIA F99/K00 fellow. I received my ScD in Social Epidemiology from Harvard University and my MS in Social Policy from the University of Pennsylvania. I completed the first two years of my postdoctoral training in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF.
News
- 2026 — New paper in Scientific Reports on free water, occipital volume, and changes in depressive symptoms in the LifeAfter90 study (first author: AIB Posis)
- 2026 — New paper in Epidemiology on historical schooling laws and COVID-19 pandemic-era mortality (first author: W Wells)
- 2026 — New paper in Sleep Health on sleep and episodic memory across the adult lifespan (first author: E Hokett)
- 2026 — New paper in Epidemiology on reweighting the All of Us sample to mirror a nationally representative sample (first author: J Wang)
- 2026 — New paper in Alzheimer Disease & Associated Disorders on Cogstate performance and effects of prior test exposure (first author: AR Murchland)
- 2026 — New chapter in APA Handbook of Adult Development and Aging on racial and ethnic health inequities in middle-aged and older adults (first author: AG Cuevas)
- 2026 — New paper in Alzheimer’s & Dementia (TRCI) on amyloid change as a surrogate for cognitive decline in the A4 study of solanezumab (first author: SF Ackley)
- 2026 — New paper in Annals of Epidemiology on COVID-19 related brain MRI changes and anticipated long-term dementia risk (first author: J Wang)
- 2026 — New paper in The Journals of Gerontology: Series A on social isolation and functional impairment trajectories (first author: LP Rojas-Saunero)
- Aug 2025 — New first-author paper in American Journal of Epidemiology on the social exposome and cognitive aging
- 2025 — New senior-author paper in The Journals of Gerontology: Series A on population-level impact of insomnia on dementia (first author: Y Lin)
- 2025 — New paper in GeroScience on grip strength as a marker for cognitive function and neurodegeneration (first author: AIB Posis)
- 2025 — New paper in American Journal of Epidemiology on estimating effects of hypothetical public health interventions on health disparities (first author: X Wang)
- 2025 — New paper in American Journal of Epidemiology on Alzheimer’s disease genetic risk and social connectedness (co-first author with SC Zimmerman)
- Apr 2025 — Accepted an offer to join the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health as a tenure-track Assistant Professor
- May 2025 — K99/R00 award from NIA for research on poverty alleviation policies and ADRD
- 2024 — New first-author paper in Alzheimer’s & Dementia (TRCI) on sleep quality, sleep apnea, and cognitive function