Matt Thiese

Matthew S. Thiese, Ph.D., MSPH’s research focuses on the overlap between a person’s job and their health, including everything from musculoskeletal disorders, like low back pain or carpal tunnel syndrome, to motor vehicle crashes, COVID-19, and mental well-being. He is interested in the identification of potential risk factors, interventions to prevent injury or illness, evidence-based practice for both treatment and prevention, and assessments of worker health and safety fitness-for-duty.

Matthew’s graduate degrees are in public health, specifically occupational epidemiology and injury prevention. He has coauthored 103 articles (27 as first author), 34 practice guidelines, and five book chapters. He is a tenured associate professor, has mentored 19 Ph.D. and Master’s students, and teaches four courses. Matthew has extensive experience in designing and conducting epidemiologic and interventional research. He has worked with first responders, healthcare providers, and manufacturing, construction, and transportation workers, including on research analyzing relationships between driver health and subsequent crashes in a retrospective cohort of 90,000 drivers. He has been part of multiple large prospective cohort studies evaluating relationships between musculoskeletal disorders and both job and personal factors.

Matthew is currently working as an expert for the CDC regarding COVID-19 and is a co-investigator on the largest COVID-19 study regarding transmission rate and vaccine efficacy. He is also currently conducting research into the occupational relationships between hazards of law students and law professionals and their well-being to identify current trends and design effective interventions.