Rachel Oidtman
She/Her
I am queer and I am an infectious disease modeler.//
I am an infectious disease modeler with training in natural resources, disease ecology, and statistics. I investigate pathogen transmission dynamics by confronting dynamical models with data, with a general interested aimed at gaining a better understanding of complex epidemic dynamics that occur across scales. I am currently a postdoctoral scholar at University of Chicago and am working on individual-level dynamical modeling of longitudinal data to understand the development of immune protection to influenza. During my PhD at University of Notre Dame I worked with health agencies and nonprofit organizations to apply mechanistic and statistical models to investigate questions regarding drivers of epidemics, fallouts from misdiagnosis during epidemics, and methods to improve applied epidemic response.
Outside of research, I am interested in increasing access to STEM fields and working toward a more equitable reward system in academia. I also enjoy baking, running, reading, and hiking!