Keynote Speaker

LAUREN GARDNER Watch Recording Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Systems Engineering Co-director, Center for Systems Science and Engineering Affiliated Faculty, Infectious Disease Dynamics Group – Bloomberg School of Public Health CSIRO Visiting Scientist

Lauren Gardner, associate professor in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering at Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, is the creator of the interactive web-based dashboard being used by public health authorities, researchers, and the general public around the globe to track the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The dashboard, which debuted on January 22, became the authoritative source of global COVID-19 epidemiological data for public health policy makers and many major news outlets worldwide. Because of her expertise, Gardner was one of six Johns Hopkins experts who briefed congressional staff about the outbreak during a Capitol Hill event in early March 2020.

Gardner is co-director of the Center for Systems Science and Engineering and affiliated faculty in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Prior to joining JHU in 2019, Gardner was a senior lecturer in civil engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, in Australia. Her research expertise is in integrated transport and epidemiological modeling. Gardner has previously led related interdisciplinary research projects which utilize network optimization and mathematical modeling to progress the state of the art in global epidemiological risk assessment. Beyond mobility, her work focuses more holistically on virus diffusion as a function of climate, land use, mobility, and other contributing risk factors. On these topics Gardner has received research funding from organizations including NIH, NSF, NASA, the Australian Government National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Australian Research Council (ARC), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Queensland Health Department, Transport for New South Wales and GoGet Car Share. Outcomes from her research projects have led to publications in leading interdisciplinary and infectious disease journals, presentations at international academic conferences, as well an invited seminars and keynote talks at Universities and various events. Gardner is also an invited member of multiple international professional committees, reviewer for top-tier journals and grant funding organizations, and invited participant of various Scientific Advisory Committees. She has also supervised more than 30 students and post-docs, and teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses on network modeling and transport systems.