Faculty

Marc Lipsitch is Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is an internationally-recognized expert in methods and disease transmission modeling, and has been a leading scientific authority during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Lipsitch is an author of more than 350 peer-reviewed publications on antimicrobial resistance, epidemiologic methods, mathematical modeling of infectious disease transmission, bacterial and human population genetics, immunity to Streptococcus pneumoniae, and COVID-19 epidemiology. His research informs the use of transmission-dynamic simulations to improve the design of randomized and observational studies of infectious disease interventions, and bioethics related to infectious diseases and clinical trials in emergencies. Read more

Dr. Caroline Buckee is a Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her work is focused on understanding the mechanisms driving the spread of infectious diseases that impact the most vulnerable populations worldwide, particularly malaria. Before coming to Harvard, Dr. Buckee completed a D.Phil. at the University of Oxford, and Omidyar and Wellcome Trust fellowships at the Santa Fe Institute and the Kenya Medical Research Institute, respectively, where she analyzed malaria parasite evolution and epidemiology. Dr. Buckee’s group uses a range of mathematical models, experimental and genomic data, and “Big Data” from mobile phones and satellites to understand how human pathogens spread and may be controlled. Her work has appeared in high profile scientific journals such as Science and PNAS, as well as being featured in the popular press, including CNN, The New Scientist, Voice of America, NPR, and ABC. Dr. Buckee was featured as one of MIT Tech Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35, a CNN Top 10: Thinker, and Foreign Policy Magazine’s 100 Global Thinkers.

Grace Chan is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her work focuses on improving maternal and child health in under-served populations by using epidemiologic methods to discover and deliver evidence-based interventions. In partnership with the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, she leads HaSET (“happiness” in Amharic) a program for maternal and child health research in Ethiopia. With colleagues at St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College, her team established a health and demographic surveillance system in rural Ethiopia to better understand the causes of maternal and child morbidity and mortality. Research projects focus on understanding the etiologies and causes of neonatal sepsis, antimicrobial resistance patterns among pregnant women and their newborns, and the mechanisms for adverse birth outcomes. Collaborating with the World Health Organization, she is developing strategies to accelerate effective implementation of Kangaroo Mother Care for preterm newborns and designing studies to develop modified antibiotic regimens for hospitalized newborns. She has evaluated newborn survival projects and trained health care workers on essential newborn care practices in India, Indonesia, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. Read more.

Jeff Eaton is an Associate Professor in Epidemiology in Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He holds an Master’s degree in Statistics from the University of Washington and PhD in Infectious Disease Epidemiology from Imperial College London. His research focuses on developing new mathematical models, statistical methods, and surveillance tools to characterize HIV epidemic trends, transmission dynamics and the demographic impacts of HIV, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Eaton co-chairs the UNAIDS Reference Group on Estimates, Modelling and Projections, a technical advisory group that provides scientific guidance to UNAIDS and partner organizations on the data, methods, and tools used to quantify the global HIV epidemic. His team in the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London develops software tools used annually by national HIV programmes to produce national and subnational epidemiologic estimates to guide their response to HIV, in collaboration with UNAIDS, PEPFAR, Global Fund, CDC, and other organizations. He has a longstanding interest in demographic surveillance, population cohort studies, and methods for collecting and analysing longitudinal data. Key collaborations include with the Manicaland Centre for Public Health Research in eastern Zimbabwe and the ALPHA Network of population HIV cohort studies.

Yonatan is a professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He earned his MD and PhD at Harvard Medical School, trained in internal medicine at BWH and infectious diseases at BWH and Massachusetts General Hospital, and did his research fellowship in the CCDD with Marc Lipsitch. The Grad Lab investigates how pathogens evolve and spread using a combination of genomics, microbiology, mathematical modeling, and epidemiological tools, and includes projects studying outbreaks in collaboration with hospitals and public health institutions and the biology and epidemiology that underlies the emergence and spread of antibiotic resistance. More information on the Grad Lab can be found at the lab website: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/grad-lab/

Dr. Bill Hanage is a Professor of Epidemiology and Associate Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. His research and teaching focus on the epidemiology of infectious disease and the evolution of infectious agents. He received his PhD from Imperial College London. Dr. Hanage has made seminal contributions to the study of diverse pathogens, both bacteria and viruses, and has a special interest in evolution in response to interventions such as vaccination or antimicrobials. His research on the current pandemic has included modeling transmission in healthcare and the impact of vaccination in the context of variants, how fatality rates vary with age, and how the virus evolves in individual hosts. His awards include the Fleming Prize from the Microbiology Society and a young investigator award from the American Society for Microbiology. He has published more than 200 scientific articles and book chapters and is a regular contributor to popular media aiming to improve public understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and other infectious diseases.

Nick Menzies is Associate Professor of Global Health in the Department of Global Health and Population, and part of the core faculty of the Harvard Center for Health Decision Science. Professor Menzies uses decision science and quantitative research to understand the consequences of policies to combat major infectious diseases, and help design effective disease control programs when resources are limited.
Professor Menzies combines empirical data with mathematical modeling to examine infectious disease control policy in high burden settings, currently focusing on the intersection of HIV and TB epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa and other high-burden settings.
In his empirical research Nick has worked to improved the level of evidence on the resource requirements for HIV interventions in high burden settings, allowing for better budgeting of these large programs and allowing decision-makers to weigh the advantages of different implementation approaches. Nick is currently working on a multi-country study to understand the costs, cost drivers and efficiency determinants of routine immunization services. Other applied work has addressed the costs and benefits of expanding access to HIV screening and diagnosis in high prevalence settings. Read more.

Megan Murray is an epidemiologist and an infectious disease physician with over 25 years of experience studying tuberculosis and other emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Dr. Murray is the Ronda Stryker and William Johnston Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. She is also the director of the Research Core in the Department of Global health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Murray’s research focuses on host and pathogen specific determinants of TB infection, disease and treatment outcomes. Much of her research is done in collaboration with the non-governmental organization Partners in Health and its Peru-based sister organization Socios en Salud. The joint team uses bacterial and human genetic and genomic tools to identify variants of interest and to understand the mechanisms of their interactions. Read more.

Mauricio Santillana, PhD, MSc is the director of the Machine Intelligence Research Lab in the Network Science Institute. He is a Professor in the Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments at Northeastern University. Mauricio enjoys working with public health officials and clinicians in the design of decision-making support tools by leveraging Internet-based data sources such as Electronic Health Records, Bedside Monitors, Google search trends, Twitter microblogs, News Alerts, Weather, and Human Mobility.

Mauricio is a physicist and applied mathematician with expertise in mathematical modeling and scientific computing. He has worked in multiple research areas frequently analyzing big data sets to understand and predict the behavior of complex systems. His research modeling population growth patterns has informed policy makers in Mexico and Texas. His research in numerical analysis and computational fluid dynamics has been used to improve models of coastal floods, and to improve the performance of global atmospheric chemistry models. In recent years, his main interest has been to develop mathematical models to improve healthcare. Read more.