I am currently a senior staff scientist in the Applied Biological Sciences Group at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). I work broadly across APL’s biosecurity and public health portfolios for a range of US government sponsors. Previously, I completed my doctoral degree in Clinical Medicine (Virology) at the Peter Medawar Building for Pathogen Research at the University of Oxford. I was primarily supervised by Prof. Peter Simmonds and was supported as a 2019 Marshall Scholar and a Clarendon Scholar. My doctoral research was initially focused on the intersection of innate immunity and RNA virus evolution, but I pivoted to SARS-CoV-2 research early in 2020 (like many at the time). My thesis was ultimately a combination of clinical and evolutionary virology; portions of it were published in Nature Communications, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, and Journal of Clinical Microbiology, among others. Since moving to a full-time scientist position in September 2022, I would note most of my work is by design not bound for academic publication.

I’m interested in applications of science & technology across pandemic preparedness, intelligence, and response, as well as leveraging AI/ML to accelerate basic and applied scientific research. My biosecurity interests focus on limiting the human health impact of infectious diseases, both natural and manmade. Despite most of my doctoral research being in the wet lab, the vast majority of my professional technical work has been at the intersection of public health, bioinformatics, and data science, with some software engineering when I can manage it. My core research themes are detailed in the Research tab.

I do my best to keep an up-to-date version of my CV at this Google Doc.

Of my work at APL that has been cleared for public release, highlights include:

• Serving as Data Sourcing lead for the Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 dashboard from March 2020 to March 2023. APL’s support for the dashboard is described here. This project received recognition from Time Magazine, ESRI, Fast Company, and Geospatial World Forum, among many others.
• Being a member of the JHU/APL interagency COVID-19 response team from April 2020 to May 2023. Our team worked under FEMA, CDC, and (later) ASPR. Over the 3+ years, I served as an analyst on the Assessments team (supporting ad-hoc and regular reports for the White House and interagency partners) and as deputy lead of the CDC COVID-19 aggregate case and death time series pipeline (described here).
• Collaborating with Institut Pasteur du Cambodge on the use of Oxford Nanopore Technologies sequencing platforms to improve influenza surveillance at the human-animal interface. An output from this collaboration is currently available as a preprint. In March 2024, this collaboration was named to Fast Company’s annual List of most innovative companies.
• In collaboration with the BIO-ISAC, serving as lead author on the summary report for the “Going Viral: Bioeconomy Defense Exercise” (hosted at APL in May 2023), which focused on countering cyberthreats to the domestic bioeconomy. A press release for the exercise is available here.