Lauren A. White, PhD

Lauren A. White, PhD

Infectious Disease Modeler ⋅ Data Scientist ⋅ Disease Ecologist

About me

I am a public health professional, disease ecologist, and data scientist with research, lab, and field experience spanning the dimensions of One Health (wildlife, livestock, human, and environmental health):

  • Strong research and science communication experience including 35+ peer-reviewed publications, over $300,000 in grant funding, and engaging with decision makers and public audiences through policy briefs, presentations, and accessible writing.
  • Expertise in advanced modeling, statistical, and analytical approaches including individual-based, network, machine learning, time series, and ordinary differential equation modeling.
  • Over ten years of programming experience with fluency in R, version control, reproducibility, and high-performance computing.

I am currently working as a Statistician Modeler in the COVID Modeling Team at the California Department of Public Health. Prior to that, I served as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at USAID Office of HIV/AIDS (2020-2021). I was a post-doctoral research fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) from 2018-2020. I finished my Ph.D. in July of 2018 at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Ecology, Evolution & Behavior where I worked in the Craft and Forester lab groups as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. I completed my B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and B.A. in Spanish in 2012 at the University of Virginia.

I started my journey with science working in various veterinary hospitals as a veterinary assistant. Since then, I have performed research in a molecular biomechanical laboratory as a biomedical engineer, implemented surveys on clinical trial registration and compliance practices with the Pan American Health Organization, and combed prairie dogs for potentially plague-laden fleas. Now, as a quantitative disease ecologist, I think about how we can improve disease modeling predictions by better understanding individual differences in physiology and behavior, particularly individual movement.