Biography

Dr. Chowell-Puente is an assistant professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.  His theme of interest in the school is Biological, Social and Cultural Dimensions of Human Health; he specializes in Mathematical Epidemiology.

He received his Ph.D. in Biometry from Cornell University in 2005 under the supervision of Carlos Castillo-Chavez followed by a Director's Funded Postdoctoral Fellowship (Nov 2005 - Aug 2007) at Los Alamos National Laboratory where he worked closely with Mac Hyman and Nick Hengartner. He was awarded the National Prize for Youth by the Government of Mexico in 2002. Recently, he was selected by the financial magazine ‘Poder y Negocios’ as one of 100 professors who were born in Mexico and are now teaching and making waves in the United States.

Chowell's work lies at the interface of epidemiology, mathematics, modeling and statistics. For the last few years, his emphasis has been on the connection of models to data to estimate epidemiological parameters and test public health policy. More recently, his work has been focused on characterizing the transmission dynamics of seasonal and pandemic influenza, including the estimation of transmissibility of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic in several regions of the world. In his recent work spatial patterns of transmissibility and mortality in England and Wales during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic were studied. At present, he is currently working on the evaluation of potential vaccination strategies against pandemic influenza in Mexico. Chowell is currently affiliated to the Center for Population Dynamics at ASU and the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health.

His current research projects include Culture, Health and Environment in Urban South Phoenix and Influenza in Mexico. His CV is available here.