Lauren Ancel Meyers with her family. Credit: Sloan Breedan

Join NCJW Austin Sept. 8, 7-8:30 p.m., for an informative discussion about COVID-19 and its effects on the educational system. Lauren Ancel Myers will be the special guest and there will be time for questions and answers. The discussion will take place on Zoom and the link will be sent the day before the event to all registrants. Register at event.akubo.com/v2/main.php?id=AFtD.

Meyers is the Cooley Centennial Professor of Integrative Biology and Statistics and Data Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin and a member of the Santa Fe Institute External Faculty. She was trained as a mathematical biologist at Harvard and Stanford Universities and has been a pioneer in the field of network epidemiology and the application of machine learning to improve outbreak detection, forecasting and control. 

Meyers leads an interdisciplinary team of scientists, engineers and public health experts in uncovering the social and biological drivers of epidemics and building practical tools for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other global health agencies to track and mitigate emerging viral threats, including COVID-19, pandemic influenza, Ebola, HIV and Zika. Her research has been published in more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in major journals and covered by the popular press, including The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN and the BBC. 

Meyers was named as one of the top 100 global innovators under age 35 by the MIT Technology Review in 2004 and received the Joseph Lieberman Award for Significant Contributions to Science in 2017. ■