Epidemiology · Informatics · Climate & health
I study how our environment shapes health, using clinical records, geospatial data, and epidemiologic methods. My work focuses on extreme heat, cardiovascular risk, and making health data useful beyond the hospital.
Pulmonary & Critical Care Postdoctoral Fellow
Center for Computational Medicine and Clinical Artificial Intelligence, University of Chicago
Co-founder, Straia Health
About
I am a pulmonary and critical care postdoctoral fellow in the Biological Sciences Division at the University of Chicago, a prior American Heart Association predoctoral fellow in Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University, and co-founder of Straia Health.
My work focuses on electronic health record linkage for population health surveillance, dynamic risk prediction, and machine learning methods that make clinical and environmental data more useful. I have built computer-aided detection and geolinkage tools that use protected health information in HIPAA-compliant workflows to improve individual and community health outcomes.
Through Straia, I am helping develop climate-health intelligence products, including HeatScope, to quantify environmentally driven health risk and help organizations act earlier. My dissertation evaluated the impact of climate change-related extreme heat in Chicago through community-level assessment and individual-level computational phenotypes integrating EHR and ecological data.
Projects
Company & Product
As co-founder of Straia Health, I help develop intelligence tools for environmentally driven health risk. HeatScope combines climate data, observed health outcomes, structural risk factors, and modeling to help teams understand where extreme heat may drive excess deaths, emergency visits, and EMS calls.
Climate Data Tool
A Docker-based geospatial linkage tool for connecting geocoded patient encounters with Daymet surface weather and climate variables at 1 km resolution.
Explore the toolCritical Care & Environment
A multicenter critical-care research program linking ambient air pollution exposure, respiratory failure phenotypes, and ICU outcomes to quantify environmental risk in severe illness.
View preprintCivic Data
An interactive Shiny app mapping Chicago crime reports for northern wards, built for neighborhood-level exploration by type, date, and location.
Publications
2026 | Science Advances
2026 | GeoHealth
2026 | Journal of the American Heart Association
2026 | Environmental Research: Health
2026 | SSRN Preprint
2020 | The Lancet Digital Health
Media & Mentions
Latest conversation
Climate Proofers
· 45 minutes
I joined Louie Woodall to talk about Chicago’s heat vulnerability research, Straia Health, and how health data can help communities prepare for a changing climate.
Chicago Sun-Times & WBEZ |
Reporting on the summer’s heat deaths, including my comments on our study of heat-related emergency visits and how hospital records can inform prevention.
Read coverageAssociated Press | 2026
National AP coverage of the Science Advances heat-wide association study linking extreme heat with a wider range of emergency and urgent-care diagnoses.
Read coverageThe New York Times | 2026
Climate Forward coverage of the GeoHealth tree-canopy mortality study and the public-health value of protecting mature urban trees.
Read coverageThe Cool Down | 2026
Public-facing coverage of the tree-canopy study's estimate that small sustained canopy gains could prevent more than 100 deaths per year.
Read coverageInside Climate News | 2026
Climate-health reporting on the 2026 heat-wide diagnosis findings and why conventional heat-illness tracking may miss a larger burden.
Read coverageLive Science | 2026
Science coverage of the Chicago tree-canopy analysis and why preventing canopy loss can matter as much as planting new trees.
Read coverageFOX 32 Chicago | 2026
Broadcast coverage of the Northwestern tree-canopy work and its implications for neighborhood-level health and heat resilience.
Watch segmentYale Climate Connections | 2025
Feature coverage of Chicago heat vulnerability work on the 30th anniversary of the 1995 Chicago heat wave.
Read coverageCBS News Chicago | 2025-2026
Broadcast and local coverage of research tools used to identify communities at elevated risk during extreme heat.
Medical & Science Coverage | 2020-2026
Additional coverage of heat-related diagnoses and CT-based biomarkers for cardiovascular risk prediction.
Beyond Work
Outside of research, I spend most of my time being active, coaching or playing sports, and with family and friends. I played collegiate soccer and was an internationally recognized ultimate frisbee player with multiple national championships. I now compete in fitness races such as CrossFit and Hyrox, with my sights set on a sub-9H Leadville 100 MTB race.
Contact
For research collaborations, climate-health projects, or a conversation about the work:
petergraffy@gmail.com