Organizer

Pejman Rohani

Regents’ Professor
UGA Athletic Association Professor in Ecology and Infectious Diseases 
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
Deputy Director, Center for Influenza Disease & Emergence Research
University of Georgia

Lab website: Rohani Lab

Research in the Rohani lab focuses on population biology, usually of host-natural enemy interactions, with a view to understanding fundamental processes in ecology and evolution. We use a combination of mathematical modelling, data analysis and statistical inference to understand the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases of humans and wildlife, including childhood infections and emerging infectious diseases.

Cecile Viboud

Senior Research Scientist
Division of International Epidemiology and Population Studies
Fogarty International Center, U.S. National Institutes of Health

Dr. Viboud is a mathematical epidemiologist in the Division of International Epidemiology and Population Studies of the Fogarty International Center, US National Institutes of Health, where she has worked since 2003. Her research focuses on the epidemiology and transmission dynamics of acute viral infections, particularly influenza, at the interface of public health and computational modeling. She has recently become interested in the transmission dynamics of Ebola and MERS-CoV, and the potential use of Big Data for infectious disease surveillance and forecasting. A native of France, she received an engineering degree in biomedical technologies from the University of Lyon (1998), and an MA in Public Health (1999) and PhD in Biomathematics (2003) from Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris, France.

Justin Bahl

Professor
College of Public Health
University of Georgia

Website: Applied Molecular Epidemiology Group

Dr. Bahl is an associate professor in the Department of Infectious Disease, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Institute of Bioinformatics, and a member of the Center for Ecology of Infectious Diseases and Center for Vaccine and Immunology. His research is focused on the molecular epidemiology, ecology and genetic evolution of RNA viruses, particularly those that pose a risk to animal and human health. He coordinates the research activities in the lab. The work is directed towards uncovering how population structure, host immune pressure, geographic spread and transmission bottlenecks shape viral genetic diversity. His work has been funded by NIH, NSF and CDC. Dr Bahl’s expertise has been in high demand during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. His team is now working on methods to rapidly identify growing transmission clusters using genomic data, assisting multiple institutions and Public Health Labs with processing newly sequenced CoVID-19 samples and investigating the emergence of beta-coronaviruses. Research in the group is interdiscilinary and highly collaborative. Interested in joinging the team? We have openings for talented and motivated PhD students and Post-Doctoral researchers. Contact me (justin dot bahl @ uga dot edu) for more information.

John M. Drake

Regents’ Professor
Distinguished Research Professor
Director, Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases (CEID)
Director, Global Infectious Disease Intelligence Consortium (GIDIC)
University of Georgia

Lab Website: Laboratory of Population Dynamics

Dr. John M. Drake is a Regents’ Professor and Distinguished Research Professor in the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia. His research seeks to understand the dynamics of biological populations and epidemics, focusing on how to bring experimental and observational data together with mathematical theory.

Biological phenomena of interest include extinction, fluctuations in variable environments, the spatial distribution of populations (niche theory), Allee effects, demographic stochasticity, spatial spread, and near-critical dynamics. Practical applications of this work include decision support for managing invasive species, mapping the spread of infectious diseases, and forecasting disease emergence. Recent projects concern the dynamics of Ebola virus in West Africa, spread of White-nose Syndrome in bats, and the development of a new theory for early warning systems of emerging infectious diseases.

Drake has an interest in history and philosophy of modern (twentieth century) biology. Drake received his PhD from the University of Notre Dame in 2004 and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California from 2004-2006. He has been at the University of Georgia since 2006. He was Leverhulme Visiting Professor in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University in 2012.