President
Deepit Bhatia
Deepit is a 3rd year PhD student (Biology) in Matt Ferrari’s lab and is working on understanding heterogeneity and inequity in infectious disease dynamics. Before coming to Penn State he worked both in industry and public health applying data analytics to control of vaccine preventable disease. Now he is working on both human (measles) and livestock (foot-and-mouth disease) problems seeking to develop data-informed strategies to identify local variation in program performance and target vaccine-based interventions.
Vice President
Callum Arnold
Callum is a 4th year PhD student (Biology) in Matt Ferrari’s lab where he builds mathematical models to try to understand how discretization of continuous variables affects our understanding and responses to infectious disease outbreaks. At present, Callum is working on developing an outbreak detection model for measles in limited-resource settings. When he’s not working, Callum can be found outside doing one of the following (depending on the season): mountain biking, road cycling, rock climbing, hiking, snowboarding, cross-country skiing, or very occasionally, running.
Vice President
Fuhan Yang
Fuhan is a 5th year PhD student (Biology) in Maciej Boni’s lab and received her BS in Biological Sciences (Honors Program) from China Agricultural University (Beijing) and MS in Neuroscience from University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Fuhan started her PhD at Penn State in neuroscience, and decided in 2020 to switch to epidemiology and infectious disease dynamics. She is working on the dynamics of influenza, influenza-like illness, and other respiratory diseases in tropical countries. One of her key questions is looking at the competition among respiratory viruses in a data set from Ho Chi Minh City.
Treasurer
Joy Flowers
Joy is a 2nd year PhD student (Biology) in Nita Bharti’s lab. She earned a dual B.S. in Wildlife Conservation and Biology at Virginia Tech. Her current research focuses on analyzing landscape dynamics and creating spatiotemporal models to understand the pathogen-host-environment interactions that lead to high-risk situations for Ebola virus spillover in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Secretary
Theresa Buckley
Theresa is a 4th year PhD student (Chemistry) in Ganesh Anand’s lab.
Research Synopsis Coord.
Brandon Simony
Brandon is a 2nd year PhD student in David Kennedy’s lab and his research looks to pair mathematical models with laboratory experiments to characterize pathogen evolution. Using these tools, he is interested in exploring how mechanism-based disease models can predict evolutionary trajectories of pathogens, particularly under pressures from pharmaceutical interventions.
Webmaster
Katie Yan
Katie is a 2nd year PhD student (Biology) in Kat Shea’s lab where she studies the interplay between messaging and disease transmission. Her research focuses on how we can use targeted messaging to illicit a response in the population that will affect disease transmission. Within her research she employs an interdisciplinary methodology combining empirical social science research with mathematical modeling to determine the optimal messaging time, type, and uptake in the general population. Through deepening our understanding on the impact of public health messaging she hope to inform decision makers on the optimal messaging strategy to help curb the spread of a disease.
Social Chair
Beth Tuschhoff
Beth is a 4th year PhD student in David Kennedy’s lab and her research interests focus on evolutionary dynamics of pathogens and transmissible vaccines and enjoys modeling infectious diseases and vaccination campaigns in general. She is currently working on a project to quantify heterogeneity in a population’s susceptibility to an emerging pathogen to better predict final epidemic size in conjunction with R0. She is conducting this work using a mixture of mathematical modeling and data collection techniques
Social Chair
Suk-Lan Ser
Suk-Lan is a 2nd year PhD student in Beth McGraw’s lab. Suk-Lan obtained her biochemistry undergraduate degree and Master’s degree in biology from West Virginia University. She is interested in how environmental factors such as temperature and microbial community play a role in dengue virus transmission.
Click to view prior committees
2022 - 2023
President: Ellie Mainou (Conway labs)
Vice President: Chiara Vanalli (Cattadori lab)
Treasurer: Fuhan Yang (Boni Lab)
Secretary: Theresa Buckley (Anand Lab)
Research Synopsis Coordinator: Callum Arnold (Ferrari lab)
Webmaster: Edward Amoah (Hughes lab)
Social Chair: Deepit Bhatia (Ferrari lab) & Suk-Lan Ser (McGraw lab)
2021 - 2022
President: Fhallon Ware-Gilmore (McGraw lab)
Vice President: Ellie Mainou (Conway labs)
Treasurer: Chiara Vanalli (Cattadori lab)
Secretary: Christina Ann Harden (Friant lab)
Research Synopsis Coordinator: Hannah Greenberg Tiffin (Machtinger lab)
Webmaster: Dominika Dec Peevey (Bjornstad/Ferrari lab)
Social Chair: Renuka Elizabeth Joseph (Rasgon lab)
2020 - 2021
President: Alexandre Blake (Bharti lab) and Emily Howerton (Shea lab)
Vice President: Allyson Ray (Grozinger/ Rasgon labs)
Treasurer: Damie Pak (Bjornstad lab)
Secretary: Ellie Mainou (Conway lab)
Research Synopsis Coordinator: Hannah Greenberg Tiffin (Machtinger lab)
Webmaster: Fhallon Ware-Gilmore (McGraw lab)
Social Chair: Zeinab Elmasri (Jose lab)
2019 - 2020
President: Karen Kemirembe (Rasgon Lab)
Vice President: Alexandre Blake (Bharti Lab)
Treasurer: Allyson Ray (Grozinger/ Rasgon Lab)
Secretary: Fhallon Ware-Gilmore (McGraw Lab)
Research Synopsis Coordinator: Ellen Brandell (Hudson Lab)
Webmaster: Kelly Rios (Lindner Lab) & Thu Tran (Boni Lab)
Social Chair: Kelsee Baranowski (Bharti Lab)
2018 - 2019
President: Catherine Herzog
Vice President: Molly Rathbun
Treasurer: Cory Henderson
Secretary: Natalie Imirzian and Thu Tran
Research Synopsis Coordinator: Ellen Brandell and Allyson Ray
Webmaster: Karen Kemirembe
Social Chair: Edelio Rivera Bazán and Fhallon Chiara Ware-Gilmore
2017 - 2018
President: Johanna Ohm
Vice President: Damie Pak & Catherine Herzog
Treasurer: Utsav Pandey
Secretary: Mackenzie Shipley
Research Synopsis Coordinator: Ellen Brandell
Webmaster: Karen Kemirembe
2015 - 2016
President: Lauren Quevillon
Vice President: Amalie McKee
Treasurer: Spencer Carran
Secretary: Mackenzie Shipley
Research Synopsis Coordinator: Johanna Ohm
Webmaster: Derek Nye
2013 - 2014
President: Becky Heinig
Vice President: Lauren Quevillon
Treasurer: Monica Acosta
Secretary: Amalie McKee
Research Synopsis Coordinator: Nina Wale
Webmaster: Ells Campbell
2012 - 2013
President: Lindsay Beck-Johnson
Vice President: Becky Heinig
Treasurer: Molly Steele
Secretary: Amalie McKee
Research Synopsis Coordinator: Katey Glunt
Webmaster: Ells Campbell
Founding Board (2011 - 2012)
President: Megan Greischar
Vice President: Lindsay Beck-Johnson
Treasurer: Becky Heinig
Secretary: Katey Glunt
Research Synopsis Coordinator & Webmaster: Alexia Karanikas
