Infectious Disease Modeling in Practice

Dr. Amy Wesolowski is an Assistant Professor in Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her research leverages computational methods to explore transmission patterns of infectious diseases, with a particular focus on vaccine-preventable and vector-borne diseases. Before joining Johns Hopkins, she completed postdoctoral fellowships at Princeton University and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Wesolowski earned her Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University.

Dr. Gurley has been involved in public health research in Bangladesh since 2003, spending 12 years at the icddr,b (International Center for Diarrheal Diseases Research, Bangladesh), where she led the Surveillance and Outbreak Investigation Unit and served as Director of the Program on Emerging Infections. She collaborated with the US CDC and the Government of Bangladesh to establish national surveillance systems for diseases like meningo-encephalitis, respiratory infections, acute gastroenteritis, acute hepatitis, and hospital-acquired infections, with an emphasis on developing junior scientists. Dr. Gurley leads multi-disciplinary studies on the transmission, burden, and epidemiology of emerging and vaccine-preventable diseases, considering the ecological context in which these diseases occur. Her work focuses on enhancing collaboration between field epidemiologists and infectious disease modelers, as well as developing novel surveillance and outbreak detection strategies. Since 2004, she has been studying the ecology and epidemiology of Nipah virus, including transmission pathways and drivers of person-to-person spread, and designing interventions to prevent human infection. She serves on the WHO's Nipah Virus Taskforce, advising on the research and development of medical countermeasures. Dr. Gurley's research adopts a One Health approach to understanding and preventing infectious diseases. She is also the Co-Director for the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) site in Bangladesh, which focuses on determining the causes of and preventing child deaths, and works closely with the US CDC's Global Disease Detection program.

Alison Hill is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, where she leads a research team focused on developing mathematical models and computational tools to understand, predict, and control the spread of infectious diseases. Her research encompasses various areas, including HIV/AIDS, drug-resistant infections, and the COVID-19 pandemic, examining infection dynamics both within individual hosts and across populations. Hill holds a PhD in Biophysics from Harvard University and an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. She has received several accolades, including the NIH Director's Early Independence Award and recognition on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in Healthcare. Before her tenure at Johns Hopkins, she was a John Harvard Distinguished Science Fellow at Harvard, where she also contributed to science policy and outreach initiatives.

Shaun Truelove is an Assistant Scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, specializing in epidemiology and infectious disease dynamics. He holds a PhD in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins, as well as a Master of Public Health (MPH) and a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on predicting, responding to, and preventing outbreaks and epidemics, with particular interests in communicable diseases, vaccination strategies, and humanitarian health issues. Truelove has contributed significantly to the field through various publications and is actively involved in modeling studies related to infectious diseases. Additionally, he has experience as a Regional Epidemiologist with the CDC Global Disease Detection Program, where he led surveillance initiatives in Egypt.