Grad Students
Callum Arnold
I am a PhD Student in Biology at Pennsylvania State University, where I build mathematical models of infectious diseases as part of Dr. Matt Ferrari’s lab (within the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics), in addition to other infectious disease epidemiology work. I previously worked as a clinical research coordinator in the Infectious Disease Division at the Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto, Canada), and concurrently completed an MSc in Global Health Policy at LSHTM. Whilst completing my Masters in computational chemistry, I realized that I enjoyed research and computational modeling, but wanted to work in a more applied healthcare-related field. Since then, I have applied and developed my skills in Public Health research.
My research interests are in infectious disease epidemiology, with a particular focus on the use of mathematical models to improve outbreak response and resource utilization. I primarily work with R and Julia, but have experience with Python, Bash, and am learning Stan for Bayesian modeling.
Deepit Bhatia
I am a PhD student in Biology at Penn State working on understanding heterogeneity and inequity in infectious disease dynamics. Before coming to Penn State I worked both in industry and public health applying data analytics to control of vaccine preventable disease. Now I am working on both human (measles) and livestock (foot-and-mouth disease) problems seeking to develop data-informed strategies to identify local variation in program performance and target vaccine-based interventions.
KaiYue Zou
I am a Ph.D. student in Dr. Matt Ferrari’s lab, where my focus lies in infectious disease dynamics using mathematical models and statistical inference. My primary research interests include optimizing disease surveillance and vaccination, exploring virus-human evolutionary dynamics, and utilizing agent-based modeling, neural networks, and reinforcement learning. Prior to joining the lab, I gained practical and research experience in the medical field and public health. I worked as a nurse intern in various hospital departments, earned my MPH degree in epidemiology at UMich, and held a full-time position at JHU working on spatial modeling and spatial statistics related to cholera.
Post-Doctoral Scholars
Tenley Brownwright
I am a spatial epidemiologist working on the distribution of risk for vaccine-preventable diseases. I received my PhD from University of Pittsburgh where I worked on spatial variation in measles vaccination. At Penn State I am working on fine-scale variation in the burden of measles, diphtheria, tetanus, and rubella in Nigeria.
Ariel Greiner
I use mathematical modelling to study the dynamics of ecosystems to predict mechanistic relationships among ecosystem processes and then use that knowledge to inform management policies. I aim to work with local stakeholders to develop and parameterize mathematical models to answer pertinent questions about local ecosystems that may inform management policy and design.
I am currently a postdoc with the Shea and Ferrari labs at Pennsylvania State University and with the MCEM lab at Oxford University modelling Foot and Mouth disease dynamics (in collaboration with ILRI and the Tildesley and Jewell labs) and coral reef dynamics to inform management strategies. My PhD focused on modelling coral reef larval dispersal networks to determine how larval dispersal among reefs might change the stability of the coral-dominated state (link) and to delineate present-day larval dispersal networks and assess the capacity of natural re-seeding to re-seed present-day reef networks (link). My final chapter was in collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society of Fiji and modelled a Fijian reef network and assessed the efficacy of various different management strategies. I have also worked on projects modelling SARS CoV-2 dynamics in Canada, assessing human impacts on worldwide genetic diversity, determining pigeons capacity to learn efficient routes in travelling salesman (or salespigeon) problems and writing guidelines for graduate students working with mathematical models for the first time.
Tiffany Leung
I am an applied mathematician working on dynamical systems. I have previously worked on optimal allocation of vaccination for pertussis and cholera and am now working on optimization of surveillance effort for measles and rubella. Picture coming!
Staff
Brian Lambert
I am a staff programmer with over 15 years working in academic computing.