Leah Johnson

Research Interest:

Statistics, Biology, Computational Modeling and Data Analytics, with emphasis on Quantitative Ecological Dynamics       

Synopsis:

Dr. Johnson’s research focuses on understanding how external drivers, such as environmental temperature, can affect the dynamics of populations, primarily in the context of infectious diseases. Current studies explore how environmentally mediated vector traits interact with environmental drivers to affect vector-borne disease transmission, with the goal of predicting how climate change impacts where and when diseases are likely to be transmitted.    

Description:

Vector-borne diseases are major sources of illness and mortality in humans, especially in developing countries, as well as in plants and animals. The dynamics of these diseases, such as malaria, dengue, Zika, and huanglongbing (citrus greening disease), are greatly influenced by extrinsic environmental factors, such as temperature. As climate changes over time, the distribution of both epidemic and endemic VBDs will likely change, presenting new challenges for control. Thus, a better understanding of how VBD dynamics depends on environmental factors, such as temperature, will be vital for understanding risk. Dr. Johnson’s research studies how understanding differences between individuals in a population result from external heterogeneity and stochasticity, and how this variability influences population level patterns, particularly in the context of infectious disease epidemiology, as well as in behavioral and population ecology. Her approach is to use theoretical models with statistical, often Bayesian, inference, to better understand how biological and ecological systems generally behave, while simultaneously seeking to confront and validate models using data, and then making predictions.