Transmission bottlenecks, with implications for disease severity (ID Epi Seminar Series)

This hybrid in-person/virtual seminar will be presented by Katia Koelle, Professor of Biology at Emory University. The in-person portion will be held in Kresge G3 and does not require registration. Register for the seminar here.

Katia Koelle is Professor of Biology at Emory University. She received her PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Michigan (advisor Mercedes Pascual) and was a post-doctoral researcher at Penn State’s Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics (advisor Bryan Grenfell). Her research focuses on the development of mathematical models to improve understanding of RNA virus evolution and disease dynamics at the within-host, between-host, and population level scales. She is further interested in the development and application of statistical approaches to characterize disease spread from viral sequence data. Her research applications focus primarily on influenza, SARS-CoV-2, and norovirus.

Recommended readings

• Zwart and Elena (2015). Matters of Size: Genetic Bottlenecks in Virus Infection and Their Potential Impact on Evolution.
• Koelle et al. (2022). Masks Do No More Than Prevent Transmission: Theory and Data Undermine the Variolation Hypothesis.