I am a physician-scientist who is passionate about safeguarding human, animal, and planetary health. My current research focuses on globally emerging zoonotic and vector-borne diseases, and I work on pandemic preparedness at the public health interface. Clinically, I care for patients as an infectious disease fellow at Johns Hopkins. I also explore the medical humanities through my art and writing about the intersection of medicine and nature.
Using interdisciplinary Planetary Health and One Health approaches, I have designed projects to understand Ebola virus transmission and spillover events, prevent hospital-acquired infections of SARS-CoV-2, and help international policymakers prepare for outbreaks of emerging viruses. I have led projects in Latin America and Africa and collaborate with the NIH and CDC. I divide my research into detecting emerging zoonotic pathogens, preventing disease transmission, and translating these findings for patients and policymakers.
My initial career path began as an ecologist and conservation biologist. I found the intersection of human and wildlife health through researching bats and the diseases they carry. For my honors thesis at Stanford University, I studied the potential for disease spillover from bats in Costa Rica. My interest in the disease ecology of bats led me to the NIH/NIAID for a research fellowship to study the ecology and evolution of ebolaviruses and coronaviruses. While I was working with the NIH, the largest epidemic of Ebola virus disease occurred in West Africa. In order to answer critical questions about the epidemic, I developed diagnostics to be used at Ebola treatment units and designed experiments to determine the stability of the outbreak strain in different environments, understand modes of Ebola virus transmission, and identify habits were other ebolaviruses may emerge.
My experiences researching infectious diseases led me to medical school at UCLA where I had the privilege to work with patients in diverse settings throughout Los Angeles. I also built off of my previous research to establish a project in Cameroon to make predictions of emerging zoonotic viruses more useful for national policymakers. Working in these different settings further developed my understanding of how both global and local environments influence our health. It also furthered my appreciation for the importance of healthcare systems and pandemic preparedness.
As a resident physician at the University of Washington I worked on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, caring for patients and conducting research to better understand transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and regional risk for COVID-19 in Africa.
For my postdoctoral research at Johns Hopkins, I am developing risk maps, transmission models, and surveillance methods for policymakers to improve early detection and mitigation of Yellow Fever outbreaks. My hope is that these tools can then be used for outbreaks of other emerging arboviruses and hemorrhagic fever viruses. I am also studying the effects of climate change on the emergence of zoonotic and vector-borne diseases among vulnerable populations as well as improving international data reporting for pandemic preparedness.
I hope to continue to bridge the gap between ecology and medicine by elucidating how different environments influence our health, specifically through the emergence of infectious diseases. Recent zoonotic epidemics continue to remind us how both environmental and human health are connected to each other. Both global and local perspectives are necessary to solve these issues, and I look forward to further opportunities to collaborate locally and globally.