Leadership
Principal Investigator
Maia Majumder (she/they) is an Assistant Professor in the Computational Health Informatics Program at Harvard Medical School & Boston Children's Hospital. Her research applies artificial intelligence & machine learning methods to public health problems, with a focus on infectious disease surveillance using search query, mobile phone, and news+social media data. Since January 2020, she and her team have been actively responding to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Milind Tambe, PhD
Co-PI
Milind Tambe (he/him) is Director of the Center for Research on Computation Society at Harvard University. His work focuses on advancing AI and multiagent systems for public health, conservation & public safety, with a track record of building pioneering AI systems for social impact. He is recipient of the IJCAI John McCarthy Award, AAMAS ACM Autonomous Agents Research Award, AAAI Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture Award, and he is a fellow of AAAI and ACM.
Angel Desai, MD, MPH
Co-PI
Angel Desai (she/her) is an infectious diseases physician and Assistant Professor at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on leveraging novel data sources to discern epidemiological trends in emerging diseases and outbreaks, particularly among displaced and other vulnerable populations. Her other interests include global infection prevention and control measures in resource-limited settings, and health communication.
Brooke Foucault Welles (she/her) is an Associate Professor and Interim Chair of the department of Communication Studies, core faculty of the Network Science Institute, and director of the Communication Media and Marginalization (CoMM) Lab at Northeastern University. Combining the methods of network science with theories from the social sciences, Foucault Welles studies power and amplification in online communication networks, with particular emphasis on how these networks mitigate and exacerbate marginalization.
Co-PI
Fei Fang (she/her) is Leonardo Assistant Professor at the Institute for Software Research in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research lies in the field of artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems, focusing on integrating machine learning with game theory. Her work has been motivated by and applied to security, sustainability, and mobility domains, contributing to the theme of AI for Social Good. She is the recipient of the 2022 Sloan Research Fellowship and IJCAI-21 Computers and Thought Award.
Our Team
Kathryn Schaber, PhD
Trainee
Kathryn Schaber (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School. She uses her background in mathematics and ecology to research the socioeconomic and behavioral factors driving infectious disease dynamics using a combination of data and theory. She is particularly interested in understanding which infectious disease models are most helpful at the onset of an epidemic when data is scarce.
Paula Rodriguez Diaz
Trainee
Paula Rodriguez Diaz (she/her) is a PhD Student in Computer Science at Harvard University. She is part of the Teamcore lab lead by Prof. Milind Tambe where she works on socially impactful applications of artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems.
Sagar Kumar
Trainee
Sagar Kumar (he/they) is a PhD Student under Dr. Brooke Foucault Welles at the Network Science Institute working at the intersection of Communication and Statistical Physics to study distributed intelligence and the construction of social phenomena. Sagar is a trainee on the PIPP team focused on aspects of the pandemic which relate to social media, misinformation, and information spreading in general.
Sonja Neumeister, MPH
Trainee
Sonja Neumeister (she/her) is a Research Assistant at UC Davis Health. She has been working on clinical research trials with the UC Davis Infectious Disease Research department since 2020. Her research interests include infectious disease epidemiology, global health, and one health.
Zhicheng Zhang
Trainee
Zhicheng Zhang (he/him) is a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Prof. Fei Fang. His research interests lie in the intersection of (multi-agent) Reinforcement Learning and its practical applications in the real world, like the public health domain.
Nilufar Qahorova, MHA
Program Manager
Nilufar Qahorova (she/her) is a program manager at Boston Children's Hospital and is experienced in strategic business planning in healthcare, safety risk, and health care improvements. Over the last 15+ years, Nilufar has been participated in several development projects focusing on Primary Care Improvement and Health Care Quality initiatives.
Collaborating Institutions
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