Open position (as of June 2026)

We currently have funding for a two-year postdoctoral associate position based in-person at Yale School of Public Health. We’re looking for someone with:

• A PhD in disease ecology or infectious disease epidemiology

• Strong skills with statistics, quantitative modeling, and geospatial data

• strongly preferred: Experience with epidemic modeling

• optional: Experience working with global climate data

We are looking for someone who can make focused and significant advances in three closely-connected areas of our lab’s work:

1. The development of statistical models relating ecological drivers to spillover risk, which can be used to develop end-to-end pandemic risk models over the 21st century. NOTE: This component of the project is supported by philanthropy, and will likely come with some specific deliverables expected within the term of the project.

2. The development of statistical models relating climate drivers to understudied zoonotic and vector-borne disease burdens (particularly parasitic diseases), which can inform new estimates of the total global burden of climate change.

3. The development of epidemiological models that can be used for end-to-end attribution of specific extreme epidemics to the partial contribution of climate change.

The position will be funded by a mix of federal and philanthropy sources, and will allow for substantial collaboration within our hyper-collaborative and interdisciplinary group. Although there will be ambitious goals associated with the funding for the project, you will also have extensive and concrete support to develop your own independent research program. Our lab’s culture has a strong emphasis on professional development, and you will also be engaged in a broader community within the Public Health Modeling Unit and more broadly across Yale. Unfortunately, this position is only available for in-person work.

To inquire about the position, reach out by email with (1) a brief description of how you fit the requirements for the position, (2) a short summary of your research interests, and (3) 1-2 of your favorite papers you have written (and why they’re your favorite!).

Independent funding

We’re always interested in talking to folks who have their own funding, or working with promising candidates to prepare fellowship applications that could bring them to Yale. If you’re thinking about the NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, the bad news is that this year’s RFP is exclusively focused on AI; the good news is that we’ve been applying AI/ML tools to biological problems for a decade. Some topics that could be a good fit: advanced species distribution modeling techniques; genomics-based prediction of viral reservoirs and vectors; applications of protein language models to understand microbial pathogenesis; use of natural language processing for literature synthesis and data extraction. Reach out!