Fridman Lab
Ilona Fridman Ph.D., is an Assistant Member of the Center for Discovery and Innovation. Dr. Ilona Fridman is devoted to promoting health communication that facilitates informed decision-making and enables high-quality equitable patient care. She completed her Ph.D. at Columbia University, followed by post-doctoral training at the Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy and a T32 fellowship in the University of North Carolina's Cancer Care Quality Training in Cancer Outcomes Program.
As a health communication researcher, Dr. Ilona Fridman focuses on developing innovative solutions and interventions to address public health challenges. Her previous projects have tackled critical issues such as the overtreatment of patients with advanced cancer and the overtreatment of patients with early-stage prostate and breast cancer. Dr. Fridman’s academic portfolio includes over 20 publications, many of which have been featured in high-impact journals such as JAMA Oncology, Health Psychology, and JMIR Public Health and Surveillance. In 2023, she had the honor of delivering an oral presentation on her contributions to the field of digital health communication at the AcademyHealth Research Conference. Her work has been supported by several grants, including the DukeDataPlus Program (2018), the UNC NC TraCS Pilot Research Award (2022), and the Career Development Award K-22 from the National Cancer Institute.
Dr. Fridman has mentored many undergraduate and graduate students, contributing to both their academic growth and her professional development. She has served as a teaching assistant for MBA classes at Columbia Business School and co-led a Capstone Project seminar for graduate students in Applied Data Science at Duke University. Before pursuing her Ph.D., Dr. Fridman gained experience working on communication projects within a multinational corporation. Additionally, she co-founded an IT startup that specialized in developing digital solutions to enhance communication between corporate clients and their customers.