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Maria Rosario (Happy) G. Araneta PhD is a Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health. She received her BA in Biology from UCSD and her MPH and PhD in Epidemiology (with special emphasis in Perinatal Epidemiology) from Yale University. Dr. Araneta received the 2014 American Diabetes Association’s Vivian Fonseca Scholar Award for her research on diabetes among Asians and Pacific Islanders, and serves on the NIH Advisory Council for the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities.

Her research interests include maternal and pediatric HIV/AIDS, birth defects, life course exposures, and ethnic health disparities in type 2 diabetes, regional fat distribution, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic abnormalities. She is the Principal Investigator of the UCSD Filipino Health Study, a longitudinal study of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis among Filipino men and women, the UCSD PI of the Practicing Restorative Yoga vs. Stretching for the Metabolic Syndrome (PRYSMS) study, co-investigator of the Rancho Bernardo Study, where she leads research on ethnic health disparities among Caucasian, Filipino and African-American (Health Assessment Study of African-American Women) women, and a co-investigator of the Diabetes Prevention Program. She serves as a perinatal epidemiologist for the UCSD Mother, Child and Adolescent HIV Program, where she is a co-investigator on maternal and perinatal HIV studies in Mexico, and a study to reduce child abandonment and neglect among HIV positive parents. Her prior research include studies on birth defects and adverse reproductive outcomes among Gulf War veterans, HIV transmission through donor artificial insemination, and mother-to-child HIV/AIDS transmission.

Dr. Araneta is the Director of Epidemiology Courses for the UCSD CREST/MAS program where she teaches Epidemiology I and Applied Epidemiology and taught Applied Epidemiology to junior faculty in Ethiopia through the Medical Education Partnership Initiative. She teaches research principles to UCSD medical students and doctoral students in the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Public Health.