Dr. Silenzio's work capitalizes on the increasing ubiquity of social media and Internet technologies to bring a public health and prevention research focus to the fields of social informatics, machine learning, and network analysis to support public health and public policy needs, risk factor research, and the translation of findings into prevention-oriented clinical and community initiatives. Currently Dr. Silenzio is completing a NIMH-funded, Research Career Award (K23) to study social media-based suicide prevention for LGBT adolescents and young adults, a "hidden population" at high risk for suicide related thoughts and behaviors. He is the P.I. of a three-year, NSF-funded research project to study the use of social media to reach typically "hidden populations" for prevention research, specifically focused on HIV and mental health risk factors among men who have sex with men (MSM) in the US. Through the support of the NIAID-funded Center for AIDS Research at the University of Rochester, Dr. Silenzio is P.I. of a pilot project to study social network-based data collection and intervention design for HIV and mental health risk factors for suicide among MSM in the Western Cape region of South Africa.
