Daniel Semenza, PhD

Daniel Semenza will serve as a Stoneleigh Fellow with the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University. In this role, he will partner with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to study how direct and indirect exposure to gun violence influences the mental health of youth in Philadelphia, including their risk for suicidal ideation and self-harm behaviors.

Dr. Semenza is an associate professor at Rutgers University, where his research focuses on the causes and consequences of gun violence and related population health disparities. He is the Director of Interpersonal Violence Research at the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center, where he oversees a portfolio of grant-funded research on firearms, health disparities, and gun violence prevention.

Daniel is the author of more than eighty peer-reviewed journal articles and his research has been featured in The New York Times, Newsweek, Forbes, The Guardian, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The L.A. Times, The Boston Globe, The Trace, CBS Face the Nation, PBS, and NPR. As part of this work, Daniel has investigated the relationship between exposure to interpersonal violence and the risk of suicide, finding that many types of gun violence exposure are consequential for suicidal ideation and self-harm behaviors.

Daniel holds a bachelor’s degree in communication studies and Spanish from Marist College, a master’s degree in sociology from The New School for Social Research, and a PhD in sociology from Emory University.