METCALF LAB - Key Persons


Amy Winter

Job Titles:
  • Fellow
  • Member of the Lab
Amy is a former postdoctoral fellow in the Metcalf lab. Her research interests lie at the intersection of environment, human demography, infectious disease epidemiology, and health policy. Specifically, her dissertation explored rubella and measles disease dynamics, the effects of vaccine control programs, and potential novel data sources for informing key knowledge gaps. As a postdoc in the Metcalf lab she examined the influence that the environment (e.g., climate change) may have on population dynamics and behavior (e.g., migration patterns), and in turn how changes in population dynamics and behavior influence infectious disease dynamics.

Ayesha Mahmud

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Lab
Ayesha is a former graduate student in the Metcalf lab. Currently she is a fellow at Harvard University with the Planetary Health Alliance. She is broadly interested in using historical datasets and demographic and epidemiological models to understand the interplay between human demography and infectious disease dynamics.

Benjamin Dalziel

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Lab

Benjamin Rice

Job Titles:
  • Postdoctoral Fellow

C. Jessica Metcalf

Job Titles:
  • Principal Investigator
  • Associate Professor of Ecology, Evolutionary Biology & Public Affairs
Jessica Metcalf is a demographer with broad interests in evolutionary ecology, infectious disease dynamics and public policy. She completed her PhD at Imperial College on the evolutionary demography of monocarpic perennials. Her post-doctoral research was conducted at various institutions. She studied the evolution of senescence at the Max Planck Institute of Demographic Research, the inference of tree demographic parameters at Duke University, and infectious disease dynamics at Pennsylvania State University and Princeton University. The Metcalf lab is always interested in finding new students whose interests closely align with our research foci. If you are interested kindly forward your complete CV (please include references) to cmetcalf@princeton.edu

Ian Miller

Job Titles:
  • Fellow
Ian is broadly interested in the evolutionary and ecological processes that shape host-pathogen interactions. His aim is to develop theoretical models that incorporate the complexity and heterogeneity found in natural systems, to test the predictions of these models empirically, and to apply his findings to problems related to public health. Big questions that currently interest him include: How does host heterogeneity affect epidemic processes and the evolution of virulence? What are the patterns of variation in the efficacy of the immune system within and between populations? What trade-offs or biotic interactions limit virulence?

Joaquín Prada

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Lab
Joaquín is a former postdoctoral fellow in the Metcalf lab and now holds a position at the University of Warwick. He is a mathematical modeller interested in host-parasite interactions and modelling dynamic systems. Most recently his focus has been on improving measles control strategies and progress towards its elimination using predictive epidemiological models, as well as using serological data to improve measles incidence inference.

Justin Sheen

Job Titles:
  • Graduate Student

Keitly Mensah

Job Titles:
  • Research Associate
  • Public Health Physician
Keitly is a public health physician trained in France with a strong interest in infectious disease. She oriented her training in that direction during various rotations at the WHO, infectious disease control units and research units focused on infectious disease. One of her interests is the impact of healthcare services organization on infectious disease prevention and more specifically on vaccination, particularly in low and middle income countries. Her current research focuses on the impact of seasonality on measles vaccination in Madagascar.

Malavika Rajeev

Job Titles:
  • Fellow
  • Member of the Lab
Malavika received a dual BS/MS in Ecology at the University of Georgia in 2013. Her MS thesis focused on examining patterns of seroprevalence of zoonotic diseases in livestock across two ranching systems in Laikipia, Kenya. She is interested in studying the ecology of disease interventions with a focus on determining optimal strategies to control canine rabies in endemic settings.

Marjolein Bruijning

Job Titles:
  • Postdoctoral Research Associate

Micaela Martinez-Bakker

Job Titles:
  • Fellow
Micaela is a former postdoctoral fellow in the Metcalf Lab. She is now an assistant professor at Columbia University. As an infectious disease ecologist her primary interest is the seasonality of infectious diseases, although she is broadly interested in various aspects of disease and population ecology.

Rachel Baker

Job Titles:
  • Postdoctoral Research Associate

Saki Takahashi

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Lab
Saki was a former graduate fellow in the Metcalf lab. She is broadly interested in clarifying the spatial distribution as well as the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of viral infections and their control measures across epidemiological scales. She draws from relevant public health issues including spatial heterogeneity in susceptibility to vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles, and the emerging threat of antigenically diverse enteroviruses in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.