Research

Projects planned for the upcoming year include:

• Identify tuberculosis (TB) transmission "hotspots" using new statistical and epidemiological methods that take into account the full complexity of TB infections. TB is the leading infectious killer in the world. Current TB transmission models assume that each TB patient is infected by one tuberculosisstrain. This project will help us understand where TB is spread and, thereby, significantly improve the effectiveness of TB prevention programs.
• Determine the impact of climate change on multi-drug resistant infections. Temperature has direct impact on bacterial fitness and persistence. This project will investigate how global and local changes in the climate could affect the emergence of drug-resistant infectious diseases.
• Evaluate the effect of population food insecurity and malnutrition on sepsis dynamics in the United States. Nutrition is known to impact host microbiome and immunologic status. This study will investigate the dynamics of sepsis risk in U.S. populations with high rates of food insecurity and poverty.
• Develop new computer models to understand the spread of infectious diseases, predict future outbreaks, and inform strategies to control an epidemic. Computer prediction models will be developed that accurately predicts epidemics by combining multiple data sources, including genetic data and infection case counts. This model will enable rapid understanding of how diseases spread, which could be used for deployment of effective public health interventions for containing outbreaks.