C. Jessica E. Metcalf

About

C. Jessica E. Metcalf is a professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. She serves as the Director of Graduate Studies in the EEB department. Her research interests encompass evolutionary ecology and infectious disease dynamics, with a focus on how changing human demography influences the incidence and spread of infectious diseases. She investigates the dynamics of rubella and malaria, exploring their spatial and temporal patterns and implications for vaccine control and disease management. Additionally, her work examines reproductive strategies in plants, such as Arabidopsis thaliana, and the lifespan of trees to understand carbon turnover and forest pathogen recovery. Her lab develops methods to bridge the gap between within-host and between-host disease dynamics, aiming to understand how pathogen population growth, spread, and clearance within bodies shape disease ecology and evolution. Her research integrates basic ecological principles with applications relevant to public health, emphasizing the importance of cross-scale demography and disease dynamics from individual hosts to global populations.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Virology
• Environmental health
• Biology
• Geography
• Computer Science
• Immunology
• Political Science
• Business
• Data science

Selected publications

• Infectious disease in an era of global change

  Nature Reviews Microbiology · 2021 · 1915 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• The impact of COVID-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions on the future dynamics of endemic infections

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 599 citations

  Nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have been employed to reduce the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), yet these measures are already having similar effects on other directly transmitted, endemic diseases. Disruptions to the seasonal transmission patterns of these diseases may have consequences for the timing and severity of future outbreaks. Here we consider the implications of SARS-CoV-2 NPIs for two endemic infections circulating in the United St…

  DOI

• Aggregated mobility data could help fight COVID-19

  Science · 2020 · 460 citations

  Introduction to the article: As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic worsens, understanding the effectiveness of public messaging and large-scale social distancing interventions is critical. The research and public health response communities can and should use population mobility data collected by private companies, with appropriate legal, organizational, and computational safeguards in place. When aggregated, these data can help refine interventions by providing near real-time info…

  DOI

• Susceptible supply limits the role of climate in the early SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

  Science · 2020 · 337 citations

  Preliminary evidence suggests that climate may modulate the transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Yet it remains unclear whether seasonal and geographic variations in climate can substantially alter the pandemic trajectory, given that high susceptibility is a core driver. Here, we use a climate-dependent epidemic model to simulate the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic by probing different scenarios based on known coronavirus biology. We find that although variations in…

  DOI

• Immune life history, vaccination, and the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 over the next 5 years

  Science · 2020 · 328 citations

  The future trajectory of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic hinges on the dynamics of adaptive immunity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2); however, salient features of the immune response elicited by natural infection or vaccination are still uncertain. We use simple epidemiological models to explore estimates for the magnitude and timing of future COVID-19 cases, given different assumptions regarding the protective efficacy and duration of the ad…

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Bryan T. Grenfell

  Princeton Public Schools

  467 shared

• Ottar N. Bjørnstad

  Pennsylvania State University

  98 shared

• Jeremy Farrar

  Wellcome Trust

  90 shared

• Andrew J. Tatem

  University of Southampton

  86 shared

• Justin Lessler

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  85 shared

• Michael J. Mina

  83 shared

• Rachel E. Baker

  Brown University

  65 shared

• Daniel C. Douek

  National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

  63 shared

Similar researchers at Princeton University

• David Wilcoveh-85
• Jonathan Levineh-75
• Lars Hedinh-74