College partners with Teya, a Brazilian company that provides training and development for private institutions

The new partnership between the Zuckerman College of Public Health and Teya, a Brazilian company that provides training and development for private institutions, will enable digital epidemiology research into learning dynamics in institutional settings.

We’re excited to announce that Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health has launched a Collaborative Research Agreement with Teya, a Brazilian company that provides training and development for private institutions. This partnership, led by Onicio Leal-Neto, PhD, MS, explores how learning spreads within organizations using digital epidemiology as a guiding framework.

Teya specializes in helping organizations improve knowledge transfer, adoption of best practices, and long-term sustainability of learning initiatives. By combining insights from organizational behavior with data-driven methods, the company provides a unique opportunity for MEZCOPH to study learning dynamics in institutional settings.

“We signed a Collaborative Research Agreement with Teya, a Brazilian company that provides training and development to private institutions,” said Dr. Leal-Neto. “This research initiative aims to repurpose classical epidemic models to better understand how learning spreads within organizations, using digital epidemiology as a guiding framework.”

The project focuses on four main goals:

• Adapting epidemic models to describe learning propagation
• Identifying people, roles, and conditions that help or hinder the spread of ideas
• Developing a “basic reproduction number” (R₀) for learning
• Analyzing how organizational networks affect the diffusion and sustainability of knowledge

“The partnership also seeks joint fundraising with technology companies to scale the research across multiple institutional settings,” Dr. Leal-Neto added.

This collaboration reflects MEZCOPH’s commitment to innovative, interdisciplinary research and provides exciting opportunities for students and faculty to engage with cutting-edge methods at the intersection of public health, data science, and organizational learning.