Research Interests
Research Topics
Computational Biology, Host-Pathogen Interactions
Disease Research Interests
Infectious Diseases
Research Description
In most pathogens, epidemiological and evolutionary processes occur on similar time scales due to the large population sizes and short generation times. This makes infectious diseases amenable to study and the interplay of their ecology and evolution particularly relevant for both fundamental biology and applied public health. However, temporal and spatial changes in infectious disease dynamics are difficult to anticipate due to the effects of environmental drivers on the transmission of pathogens and the complex diversity that these microorganisms exhibit.
To address these challenges, my research on the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases focuses on the following general questions:
- How do climatic and demographic factors shape the population dynamics of infectious diseases in space and time?
- How does pathogen diversity interact and interfere with public health interventions?
For answering these questions, I use mathematical and computational tools that are applied to different types of time series data.
Additional Campus Affiliations
Assistant Professor, Microbiology
Assistant Professor, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Recent Publications
Ke, R., Martinez, P. P., Smith, R. L., Gibson, L. L., Mirza, A., Conte, M., Gallagher, N., Luo, C. H., Jarrett, J., Zhou, R., Conte, A., Liu, T., Farjo, M., Walden, K. K. O., Rendon, G., Fields, C. J., Wang, L., Fredrickson, R., Edmonson, D. C., ... Brooke, C. B. (2022). Daily longitudinal sampling of SARS-CoV-2 infection reveals substantial heterogeneity in infectiousness. Nature Microbiology, 7(5), 640-652. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-022-01105-z
Ke, R., Martinez, P. P., Smith, R. L., Gibson, L. L., Achenbach, C. J., McFall, S., Qi, C., Jacob, J., Dembele, E., Bundy, C., Simons, L. M., Ozer, E. A., Hultquist, J. F., Lorenzo-Redondo, R., Opdycke, A. K., Hawkins, C., Murphy, R. L., Mirza, A., Conte, M., ... Brooke, C. B. (2022). Longitudinal Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Breakthrough Infections Reveals Limited Infectious Virus Shedding and Restricted Tissue Distribution. Open Forum Infectious Diseases, 9(7), [ofac192]. https://doi.org/10.1093/ofid/ofac192
Santos-Vega, M., Martinez, P. P., Vaishnav, K. G., Kohli, V., Desai, V., Bouma, M. J., & Pascual, M. (2022). The neglected role of relative humidity in the interannual variability of urban malaria in Indian cities. Nature communications, 13(1), [533]. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28145-7
Ke, R., Martinez, P. P., Smith, R. L., Gibson, L. L., Mirza, A., Conte, M., Gallagher, N., Luo, C. H., Jarrett, J., Conte, A., Liu, T., Farjo, M., Walden, K. K. O., Rendon, G., Fields, C. J., Wang, L., Fredrickson, R., Edmonson, D. C., Baughman, M. E., ... Brooke, C. B. (2021). Daily Sampling of Early SARS-CoV-2 Infection Reveals Substantial Heterogeneity in Infectiousness. (medRxiv). Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.12.21260208
Kishore, N., Kahn, R., Martinez, P. P., De Salazar, P. M., Mahmud, A. S., & Buckee, C. O. (2021). Lockdowns result in changes in human mobility which may impact the epidemiologic dynamics of SARS-CoV-2. Scientific reports, 11(1), 6995. [6995]. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-86297-w