Research Interests

The central focus of my research is to understand how viruses transform human and environmental health. 

My group develops theories and computational models of how viral infections modulate the fates of individuals, population and communities and influence ecosystem-scale function. We collaborate with a global network of experimentalists, field-centered biologists and public health experts, striving to integrate models and data to advance fundamental understanding of how living systems work and to inform science-driven action-taking. 

Our research efforts are broadly organized on viruses of microbes (i.e., ‘virus ecology’) and viruses of humans (i.e., ‘infectious disease dynamics’). Our team is interdisciplinary and includes quantitative and computational bioscientists, physicists, mathematicians, and biologists. We joined the University of Maryland research community in Summer 2023 and are actively seeking out students and scientists to deepen understanding of fundamental principles of viral spread as well as applications to phage therapy, marine ecosystems, microbial ecology and evolution and infectious disease dynamics.

Ongoing and planned research initiatives in Quantitative Viral Dynamics span (from left-to-right): (i) Foundations of quantitative viral ecology; (ii) Marine viral impacts; (iii) Bacteriophage therapy; (iv) Microbial ecology & evolution; (v) Infectious disease dynamics.

Awards

Simons Foundation Investigator in Theoretical Physics of Living Systems, 2023-2027

Chaire Blaise Pascal, Institut de Biologie of the ENS, Paris, France, 2021-2024

Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, 2019

Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2017

Best Postgraduate Textbook Prize Awarded by the Royal Society of Biology, 2016

Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface, 2007-2013 

NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Informatics, 2003-2005