People

Mercedes Pascual

Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolution
The University of Chicago

Mercedes Pascual

Mercedes Pascual is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago. She is affiliated with the University of Michigan as a visiting Professor, and with the Santa Fe Institute as an external faculty. Dr. Pascual is a theoretical ecologist interested in the population dynamics of infectious diseases, their interplay with pathogen antigenic and genetic diversity, and the impact of changing environments including climate change and climate variability. She has conducted research on the population dynamics of vector-borne and water-borne infections, including cholera and malaria, and on the phylodynamics of influenza and rotavirus.  She is also interested in the structure and dynamics of the large networks of ecological interactions known as food webs. Dr. Pascual received her Ph.D. degree from the joint program of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  She was awarded a U.S. Department of Energy Alexander Hollaender Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship for studies at Princeton University, and a Centennial Fellowship in the area of Global and Complex Systems awarded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation for her research at UM.  She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the recipient of the 2014 R. MacArthur award of the Ecological Society of America.

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