About

Ana Bento is an assistant professor at Cornell University Vet School, leading a transdisciplinary research team focused on integrative studies of infectious diseases through data-driven modeling. Her work aims to understand the eco-evolutionary, demographic, and environmental drivers of pathogen emergence, persistence, and spread, with a particular emphasis on the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases in humans and animals. Her research leverages mathematical and computational modeling, machine learning, and data science to develop coupled models that incorporate epidemiological, economic, and evolutionary processes, enabling quantitative predictions and confrontation with real-world data. Bento's background includes a Ph.D. in Ecology & Evolution from Imperial College London, a postdoctoral fellowship at Imperial College's Infectious Diseases Epidemiology Department, and a subsequent postdoctoral position at the Odum School of Ecology at UGA, where she studied vaccine-preventable childhood diseases. She has also held faculty positions at IU SPH and served as Director of Science at the Rockefeller Foundation. Her research themes encompass pathogen evolution, seasonal disease transmission, anthropogenic effects such as vaccination, and adaptive behavior, with ongoing projects on diseases like pertussis, measles, COVID-19, and schistosomiasis. She is committed to developing theoretical models, validating them with data, and making predictions to inform public health policies, particularly regarding vaccination and disease control strategies.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Virology
• Geography
• Biology
• Demography

Frequent coauthors

• Maureen Cropper

  Resources For The Future

  102 shared

• Katja Vinha

  102 shared

• Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak

  Yale University

  102 shared

• Kevin Roth

  The University of Texas at Austin

  56 shared

• Kenneth Gillingham

  31 shared

• Noah Miller

  25 shared

• Ravi Kanbur

  20 shared

• Daniel Kaffine

  University of Colorado Boulder

  19 shared

Labs

• Ana Bento LabPI

Education

• PhD, Ecology

  Imperial College London

  2012

Awards & honors

• Scientific Committee Member, One Sustainable Health Forum (2…
• Steering Committee member, MIDAS (2023)
• Director of Science, The Rockefeller Foundation (2022–2023)
• Chair of Disease Ecology Section, Ecological Society of Amer…
• Vice-Chair of Disease Ecology Section, Ecological Society of…

Similar researchers at Cornell University

• Edward Bucklerh-182
• Robert Sternbergh-168
• John P. Mooreh-153
• Olivier Elementoh-150
• Andy Clarkh-142