As part of the MIDAS Webinar Series, infectious disease ecologist Micaela Martinez of Columbia University discusses the remaining gaps in our understanding of COVID-19 immunity to ask: What are potential pathways by which severe COVID-19 is triggered by the immune system? She will also discuss how the modeling community may use this information for projecting severe COVID-19 disease and mortality.

As part of the MIDAS Webinar Series, infectious disease ecologist Micaela Martinez of Columbia University discusses the remaining gaps in our understanding of COVID-19 immunity to ask: What are potential pathways by which severe COVID-19 is triggered by the immune system? She will also discuss how the modeling community may use this information for projecting severe COVID-19 disease and mortality.

Register now! via ZOOM

ABSTRACT

The rapid spread of COVID-19 has resulted in a global health crisis, affecting millions of people worldwide. Despite intensive research efforts, little is still known about the underlying immune dynamics in COVID-19, which confers protection in some individuals, but leads to severe disease and mortality in others. Understanding the ways in which the immune response shapes COVID-19 pathology and protection is thus one of the most pressing questions in the world today.

I have been recently involved in a collaborative effort to synthesize the current data on COVID-19 immunopathology and characterize the immune responses induced during the course of infection. In this presentation, I will discuss the remaining gaps in our understanding of COVID-19 immunity and ask: what are potential pathways by which severe COVID-19 is triggered by the immune system? I will also discuss how the modeling community may use this information for projecting severe COVID-19 disease and mortality.

MICAELA MARTINEZ, SPEAKER

Micaela Martinez is an infectious disease ecologist and assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University. Her primary focus is understanding the drivers that shape seasonality in infectious disease systems, with particular interest in the impact of biological rhythms (i.e., circadian and circannual rhythms) on disease. Her current projects aim to inform vaccination policy by revealing how demographic, physiological, and environmental factors intersect in epidemic-prone disease systems, including poliomyelitis, measles, and chickenpox.

Martinez also conducts research on maternal immunity in infants and is building a statistical inference pipeline for studying vaccine modes of action. She utilizes cutting-edge statistical inference techniques and mathematical models to couple disease incidence data with clinical data to gain insight into the transmission dynamics of disease. Her lab is currently researching the immunity, transmission, and racial inequalities in COVID-19. 

She completed undergraduate training in mathematics and biology at the University of Alaska Southeast, and a PhD in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan.

The MIDAS Webinar Series features research by MIDAS members, and is open to the public.