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Tim Beukelman, MD, MSCE

Senior Clinical Epidemiologist

Tim is a clinical epidemiologist and practicing pediatric rheumatologist physician. He obtained his MD from Washington University in 2001 and master’s degree in clinical epidemiology (MSCE) from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. His academic research career has focused on the utilization, safety, and effectiveness of treatments for juvenile idiopathic arthritis. He has extensive experience in the design and conduct of observational pharmacoepidemiology studies using data from registries, electronic health records, and administrative claims. He has performed and overseen numerous systematic and targeted literature reviews. As a Senior Clinical Epidemiologist at Epi Excellence, he provides carefully considered synthesis and expert clinical interpretation to projects whenever needed.  Tim resides in Adelaide, Australia.

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Hillary Cuesta, MS

Project Manager

Hillary Cuesta, MS, is an experienced pharmaceutical industry professional having held in-house roles in both epidemiology, and project management. She has a strong background in providing epidemiological scientific consult and operational support to cross-functional teams for observational research projects in all stages of development, and across a diverse range of therapeutic areas. Hillary’s expertise in management of external partnerships, includes contract oversight, project scoping and financial planning for support needs of any size and business purpose, in addition to day-to-day project-level execution management and related process improvement initiative activities. Her experience and interest in real-world evidence generation, particularly in identifying and evaluating real-world data sources to meet fit-for-purpose project needs, enables seamless management of Epi Excellence projects from operational start-up activities through scientific deliverable development and administrative closeout. Hillary holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Public Health and a Master of Science degree in Epidemiology from Temple University’s College of Public Health in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During her academic career, she held internships supporting a number of community-based public health research projects, as well as an epidemiology internship at a biotechnology company, laying the foundation for her career in pharmaceutical industry epidemiological research.

Hillary lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her rescue dogs. Outside of work, she spends her time enjoying all of the things that make Philadelphia so special—her family and friends she is grateful to have living in the city and close by, in addition to the vibrant city culture, and, of course, the professional sports teams! Go Birds!

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Jennifer Finley

Operations Manager

Jennifer Finley brings more than 24 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry with a career that spans research, clinical trials, and operational management. She worked as a Research Assistant for behavioral health studies at Fox Chase Cancer Center and later served as an In-House CRA for Pharmaceutical Research Associates (PRA); a contract research organization (CRO), primarily focusing on gastrointestinal and orthopedic studies.

She then went on to hold Clinical Trial Manager positions at Sanofi-Synthelabo, Wyeth and AstraZeneca pharmaceuticals, managing many global clinical trials across a variety of therapeutic areas from start-up, through maintenance and close-out.

Since 2015, Jennifer has served as Operations Manager at Epi Excellence, where she supports business development, business operations and project delivery.

Jennifer received her bachelor’s degree in Public Health/Health Promotion from West Chester University.

Jen lives in Chester County, PA with her husband, twin son & daughter and rescue dog, Riley.  She values teamwork and is driven by collective goals and shared success.

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Jessica Hinman, MS, PhD

Epidemiologist

Jessica Hinman, MS, PhD, is an epidemiologist with extensive experience designing, conducting, and analyzing research studies across academic, industry, and governmental public health settings. Her expertise spans neuroepidemiology, infectious disease epidemiology, and pharmacoepidemiology.

She is skilled in secondary analysis of administrative and government datasets, longitudinal data analysis, geospatial modeling, and causal inference. She has also led disease surveillance and data collection initiatives using mobile applications, wearable devices, and community-based surveys.

Over her career, Jessica has designed studies using clinical and population-level databases, developing protocols to evaluate prescribing patterns, creating algorithms to identify disease cohorts, and assessing disease progression and heterogeneity in insurer datasets. She has also mentored Master’s-level researchers in projects involving claims data, electronic health records, and multistream datasets.

In addition, Jessica has applied her expertise to the health technology sector, validating and analyzing time series data from wearable devices and sensors as digital endpoints for remote clinical monitoring. Her work has contributed to proposals, regulatory submissions, and peer-reviewed publications in both academic and corporate settings.

Jessica earned a BA from the University of Southern California, an MS in Epidemiology with a certification in Biostatistics from the University of Iowa, and a PhD in Epidemiology and Population Health from Stanford University.

Outside of work, Jessica spends as much time as possible outdoors: hiking, kayaking, and volunteering with a wild raptor rehabilitation organization. She lives in Iowa with her husband and their two dogs.

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Laura Horne, MHS

Senior Pharmacoepidemiologist

Laura Horne, MHS, has over two decades of experience in epidemiology, with a primary focus on pharmacoepidemiology. She has worked both in-house at Wyeth Research and AstraZeneca, and as a consultant supporting a wide range of pharmaceutical clients. In addition, Laura has hands on public health epidemiology experience, having worked at the Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center. One of Epi Excellence’s earliest team members, she now serves as a Senior Epidemiologist, providing hands-on project support while also overseeing project teams.

Throughout her career, Laura has contributed across the full scope of pharmacoepidemiology, including conducting literature reviews, drafting regulatory documents and responses, and designing and executing observational studies. She has worked with diverse data sources such as administrative claims, registries, national datasets, and clinical trial data. Her expertise includes studies that describe disease epidemiology as well as analytic safety studies forming part of post-authorization safety study (PASS) programs.

Collaborative by nature, Laura values working across functions and engaging stakeholders to ensure success for each unique project.

She holds an AB in Molecular Biology from Princeton University and an MHS in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

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Elizabeth Triestina Palazzo

Director, Delivery Excellence

Elizabeth Triestina Palazzo brings a 17 plus year track record of consulting, operational leadership and project management experience in the healthcare and pharmaceutical consulting industry. Her background is in partnering with pharmaceutical, medical device and biotech clients to lead a diverse portfolio of clinical research projects and clinical trial operations, including CAR-T cell therapy for patient centered outcomes research, regulatory consulting support for FDA and EMA submissions and clinical trial integrity through subject eligibility, patient recruitment and instrument development and design.

Across a variety of clinical trial phases and therapeutic areas, she served as a Senior Project Manager with a clinical trial technology and services company, Signant Health, a Senior Project Manager at ICON, a global clinical research organization, and the Director, Head of Project Delivery for the Health Economics and Outcomes Research division and RWE division at Lumanity.

She most recently built out and led a global Project Management Office for a mid-sized biopharmaceutical consulting organization. Elizabeth is recognized for leading high-performing, cross-functional teams to achieve sustained results in project delivery, process improvement, and profitability.

Elizabeth serves as Director, Delivery Excellence with Epi Excellence. She provides consulting pertaining to general business operations, project management, resource and performance solutions and process improvement initiatives. She is responsible for driving operational effectiveness, ensuring efficiency and standardization in delivery processes, and supporting the scalability of Epi Excellence consulting services across the organization.

Elizabeth lives in southern coastal Maine with her husband, enjoys playing pickleball, hiking and spending time in the great Maine outdoors.

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Publications

Selected publications and posters showcase our contributions to study design, evidence synthesis, and RWE reflecting rigorous methods, transparent reporting, and clinical relevance

2025

Journal Article

Gianfrancesco M, Awofeso A, Branquinho D, Guo X, McDonnell A, Jacobs W, Regueiro M.

A narrative literature review of the incidence and prevalence of safety outcomes in patients with ulcerative colitis

Expert Review of Gastroenterology & Hepatology 19(6):639-656

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2025

Poster

Ami S Patel, Jessica Hinman, Chuang Liu, Kristin Moy, Alexander Cole

Data Source Selection for Clinical Trial Diversity Planning: Rare Data in Rare Disease

41st Annual International Conference on Pharmacoepidemiology (ISPE) August 2025, Washington DC

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2025

Poster

Taichi Ochi, Andrea Marcus, Isha Mehta, Enriqueta Vallejo-Yagüe, Chao Chen, Tianze Jiao, Eileen E. Ming, Monica L. Bianchini, Camelia D. Bucșa, Paula D. Strassle, Elizabeth S. Russell

Equity in Pharmacoepidemiology: Improving Understanding of Use, Benefits, and Risks of Medicinal Products in Human Populations

41st Annual International Conference on Pharmacoepidemiology (ISPE) August 2025, Washington DC

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2024

Journal Article

Mufaddal Mahesri, Su Been Lee, Raisa Levin, Suzan Imren, Lanju Zhang, Timothy Beukelman, Lina Titievsky, Rishi J Desai

Infrequent Resolution of Vaso-Occlusive Crises in Routine Clinical Care Among Patients Mimicking the Exa-Cel Trial Population: A Cohort Study of Medicaid Enrollees

Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics 116(6):1572-1579

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2024

Poster

Chuang Liu, Dan Carey, Kristin Moy, Hector Chinoy Support with poster development: Monica Bianchini, Bao-Anh Nguyen-Khoa, Stephanie DeVore

Treatment patterns in patients with dermatomyositis in the United Kingdom: a cohort study using the Clinical Practice Research Datalink

40th Annual International Conference on Pharmacoepidemiology (ISPE); August 24–28, 2024; Berlin, Germany.

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2023

Journal Article

Jonathan D. Santoro , Timothy Beukelman , Cheryl Hemingway, Suvi R. K. Hokkanen, Frank Tennigkeit, Tanuja Chitnis

Attack phenotypes and disease course in pediatric MOGAD

Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology 10(5): 672–685

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2023

Journal Article

Sola-Morales O, Curtis LH, Heidt J, Walsh L, Casso D, Oliveria S, Saunders-Hastings P, Song Y, Mercado T, Zusterzeel R, Mastey V, Harnett J, Quek RGW

Effectively Leveraging RWD for External Controls: A Systematic Literature Review of Regulatory & HTA Decisions

Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics 114(2):325-355

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2023

Poster

Ami Patel, Monica Neri, Wilco Jacobs

Epidemiology and Treatment of Sickle Cell Disease Associated Vaso-Occlusive Crises in Adults in Inpatient and Emergency Care Settings: A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-analysis

European Hematology Association 2023 Hybrid Congress; June 2023; Frankfurt, Germany.

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2023

Poster

Ami Patel, Monica Neri, Wilco Jacobs

Epidemiology and Treatment of Sickle Cell Disease Associated Vaso-Occlusive Crises in Inpatient and Emergency Care Settings: A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis

International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology Annual Meeting; August 2023; Halifax, Canada.

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2023

Journal Article

Ioannou Y, Beukelman T, Murray M, Erkan D

Incidence of Antiphospholipid Syndrome: Is Estimation Currently Possible?

European Journal of Rheumatology 10(1):39–44

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2023

Journal Article

Ward HA, Nguyen-Khoa BA, Massouh R

Literature Review of Safety Event Reporting in Observational Studies: Challenges Extrapolating across Comparable Products

Pharmacoepidemiology 2(4):338–349

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2023

Journal Article

Curtis LH, Sola-Morales O, Heidt J, Saunders-Hastings P, Walsh L, Casso D, Oliveria S, Mercado T, Zusterzeel R, Sobel RE, Jalbert JJ, Mastey V, Harnett J, Quek RGW

Regulatory and HTA Considerations for Development of Real-World Data Derived External Controls

Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics 19(6):639-656

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2021

Poster

Sandrine Leroy, Patrick Saunders-Hastings, Paolo Eusebi, Vanessa Taieb, Bo Abrahamsen, Eugene V McCloskey, Saeko Fujiwara, Cesar Libanati, Alireza Moayyeri

Treatment Gap Among Patients With Primary Osteoporosis: A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis

WCO-IOF-ESCEO Virtual Congress; August 26–28, 2021; Poster P288.

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2016

Poster

Moch A, Ming E, Horne L, Curley A, Macaron K, Stern L.

Abstracts from Women’s Health 2016: The 24th Annual Congress

Journal of Women's Health: The 24th Annual Congress April 14–17, 2016 Washington, DC

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