Oliver Gatalo is an incoming second-year Ph.D. student in the Mishra Lab. He completed an Honours Bachelor of Science at the University of Toronto with a double major in math and physics. He then completed a Master of Public Health with a concentration in epidemiology at New York University. For his thesis, Mr. Gatalo looked at the impact of the Zika virus on New York City and contributed to the development of an agent-based model that modeled disease prevalence. Mr. Gatalo has worked at several public health and social service organizations. Prior to beginning his Ph.D., he worked for the Center of Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in Washington, DC (now One Health Trust). His work involved developing compartment models to predict the prevalence of infectious diseases and predicting the efficacy of intervention strategies. Initially, he was focused on nosocomial infections and antimicrobial-resistant pathogens but then moved over to COVID-19 as the pandemic began. He hopes to continue his research on the dynamics of COVID-19, in particular in settings with a higher risk of transmission, or hot spots.
Mishra Lab 