Richard Scheffler has been the Director of the Nicholas C. Petris Center since its inception in 1999. He is a Distinguished Professor of Health Economics and Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and holds the Chair in Health Care Markets & Consumer Welfare endowed by the State of California Office of the Attorney General. His research is on health care markets, health insurance, the health workforce, mental health economics, social capital and health, pharmacoeconomics, and international health systems. Professor Scheffler is a recipient of the American Public Health Association's Carl Taube Award, which honors distinguished contributions to the field of mental health services research. He was a Rockefeller and a Fulbright Scholar, and served as President of the International Health Economists Association 4th Congress. He has been a Scholar in Residence at the Institute of Medicine and the World Bank. He also served as an advisor to the World Health Organization in the area of human resources. He has published more than 150 papers and edited and written six books. His newest book will be published by Stanford University Press in September 2008-Is There a Doctor in the House: Market Signals and Tomorrow's Supply of Doctors.

Harold Luft, PhD, is the Caldwell B. Esselstyn Professor of Health Policy and Health Economics and Director of the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco. His research and teaching interests include health maintenance organizations, hospital market competition, quality and outcomes of hospital care, risk assessment, and risk adjustment. Professor Luft chaired the National Advisory Council of what is now the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, serves as a member of the Institute of Medicine, and currently sits on the board of the Academy. He also serves on several editorial boards, has been a senior editor of Health Services Research, and will soon be a co-editor of HSR. Professor Luft received his AB, MA, and PhD in economics, specializing in health sector economics and public finance, from Harvard University.

Jim manages the financial and business operations of the Petris Center, which includes budget administration, fund management, project management, liaison with funding agencies, vendor relations, and general operations. He worked in finance, budgeting, and information systems at UC Berkeley and the University of Massachusetts, and was a consultant in these areas to private secondary education and health care organizations. Jim also brings a private industry perspective to the Petris Center, having led finance and information technology teams in the large corporate environments of Wells Fargo Bank, U.S. Leasing, Itel Corporation, American President Lines, and Levi Strauss, and in the small-firm, high-tech world - two software companies and a systems integration firm. He has a BA from Indiana University and an MBA from Saint Mary's College of California.

Tim received his BA in Biology from Dartmouth College and his PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California at Berkeley. His research investigates population responses to ambient events (e.g., policy change, perturbations in the social/economic environment). Key projects as an AHRQ Postdoctoral Fellow include evaluating involuntary civil commitments in California following the enactment of Proposition 63 / Mental Health Services Act; and examining determinants of ethnic disparities in medication use for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Tim's doctoral dissertation focused on economic antecedents of parenting behavior and infant mortality due to SIDS and accidents.

Sukari received her BA in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago. As a social epidemiologist, her general research interests are in the social and structural determinants of health outcomes, particularly among vulnerable populations. Dr. Ivester is currently leading the qualitative analysis of the Petris Center's Proposition 63 / Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) Evaluation. In addition, Dr. Ivester is currently investigating urban health vulnerabilities from a spatial perspective as related to food access and the built environment.

Ashley is an economics Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley working on topics related to the growth in health care technology. Within economics, her fields of specialty are health economics, public finance and industrial organization. Prior to graduate school, Ashley did macroeconomic research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. She earned her B.A. in economics from Washington and Lee University, where she wrote an honors thesis called "Discounting Health Insurance".

Jennifer Rice received her BA in Biology from Rice University and her MPH degree at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she focused particularly on adolescent health. She is also a licensed teacher and has worked with adolescents in the US and abroad. She is a first year Ph.D. student in Health Services and Policy Analysis. Her current research interests include mental health, social exclusion, and the influence of policy on social and physical environments.

Gordon is a first year student in the Health Services and Policy Analysis Ph.D. program and an Agency for Healthcare and Research and Quality pre-doctoral trainee at the UC Berkeley Petris Center. Gordon received his bachelor's degree in Psychobiology and Public Health from UCLA and master's degree in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. Gordon has conducted both neuroimaging and psychiatric epidemiology research. His nascent research interests include the evaluation of the Mental Health Services Act of California, mental health care for disaster victims and public mental health issues in general.