Caroline Wagner

Unresolved challenges related to global health have major impacts on the international community. The emergence of novel pathogen strains as well as the modification of the range and transmission patterns of a number of important directly-transmitted and vector-borne disease due to climate change necessitates the ability to accurately model population-level transmission dynamics, as well as elucidate the biological aspects of within-host pathogenesis in order to develop testing and treatment methods.

The laboratory’s research program focusses on understanding the interaction between pathogens and biological fluids, and modeling the effect of such interactions on population-level disease dynamics. We do so by characterizing the effect of mucin barriers on the transport and infectivity of respiratory pathogens and by developing pathogen-specific cross-scale disease models that account for the physicochemical properties of the host environment. In the long term, the laboratory’s research program will work towards the development of novel biomaterials for altering disease transmission at the population level.