About Varun
Dr. Varun Rao is an infectious disease modeler who is working on designing surveillance strategies for the Feral Swine Program. Recently, he finished his PhD at Indiana University (IU), double majoring in the Complex Networks Systems track in Informatics and Epidemiology, specializing in modeling the spread of infectious disease using networks of interactions. Before that, he studied at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) receiving his BS in Computer Engineering/Computer Science and a MS in Computer Science.
Working with Dr. Zaid Abdo and Dr. Kim Pepin, he is working on designing different surveillance strategies for feral swine if an outbreak of African Swine Fever is detected in the US. He will also be working on creating a nationwide surveillance model and analyzing how the likelihood of disease introduction is affected by location.