Summary
Primary interests: Systems Biology, Evolutionary Biology, Epidemiology, Computational Biology
Secondary interests: Evolutionary Medicine, Global Health, Health Equity, STEM education
C. Brandon Ogbunu is a research associate with dual appointments in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. His broader research program takes place at the crossroads between computational biology, evolutionary genetics, and epidemiology, all towards better approaches for treating and preventing infectious diseases. His research addresses questions spanning theoretical and practical spaces including (but not limited to):
- How can we responsibly invoke evolutionary theory towards better treatments for certain infectious diseases?
- What characteristics of pathogens promote their emergence in new settings?
- What defines the constraints and bounds of evolution (Darwinian or other)?
- What are the fundamental components of an evolvable system (biological or artificial)?
In addition, Brandon carries secondary interests in global health, ethics, health inequities, and STEM education. He has served as a consultant with UNICEF country offices in Laos and Angola in the area of early childhood development (ECD) policy.
He is also centrally involved in the STEM education space on multiple fronts: developing conceptual and software tools for teaching advanced topics in mathematical modeling and molecular evolution, and consulting with companies, universities and research institutes on STEM curriculum development, scientific communication, and diversity. Most recently, he's been involved in a collaboration with Dr. Sean Robinson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the Open Modeling Research Group, which is dedicated to designing tools for exploring and teaching mathematical modeling.
Brandon is a health justice activist, espresso lover, sportswriter (boxing and baseball) and qunioa enthusiast. You can follow him on twitter: @Big_data_kane
Selected Publications
Ogbunugafor CB and Eppstein MJ. Competition along trajectories governs adaptation rates towards antimicrobial resistance. Nature Ecology & Evolution 1, Article number: 0007 (2016)
Ogbunugafor CB, Hartl DL (2016). A New Take on John Maynard Smith's Concept of Protein Space for Understanding Molecular Evolution. PLoS Computational Biology 12(10): e1005046. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005046
Eppstein MJ and Ogbunugafor CB (2016). Quantifying Deception: A Case Study in the Evolution of
Antimicrobial Resistance, Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation
Conference (GECCO-2016), July 2016. (Winner, Best Paper Award, Complex Systems track)
Ogbunugafor CB, Robinson SP (2016) OFFl Models: Novel Schema for Dynamical Modeling of Biological Systems. PLoS ONE 11(6): e0156844
Ogbunugafor CB, Wylie CS, Diakite I,Weinreich DM, and Hartl DL (2016). Adaptive landscape by environment interactions dictate evolutionary dynamics in models of drug resistance PLoS Computational Biology. 12(1): e1004710
Ogbunugafor CB and Hartl DL. A pivot mutation impedes reverse evolution across an adaptive landscape for drug resistance in Plasmodium vivax. Malaria Journal (2016). Jan 25;15(1):40
Wasik BR, Bhushan A, Ogbunugafor CB, and Turner PE. Prolonged transmission selects for increased survival of vesicular stomatitis virus. Evolution (2014). Oct 14.
Ogbunugafor CB, Alto BW, Overton TM, Bhushan A, Morales NM, and Turner PE. Evolution of increased survival in RNA viruses specialized on cancer-derived cells. American Naturalist (2013). May;181(5):585-95
Ogbunugafor CB, Pease JB, and Turner PE. On the possible role of robustness in the evolution
of infectious diseases, Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science (2010). 20, 026108
Ogbunugafor CB, Basu S, Morales NM, and Turner PE. Combining mathematics and empirical data to predict emergence of RNA viruses that differ in reservoir use, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B (2010). Jun 27;365(1548):1919-30
Ogbunugafor CB, McBride RC, Turner PE. Predicting virus evolution: the relationship between genetic robustness and evolvability of thermotolerance, Cold Spring Harbor Annual Symposium Volume 74, Evolution: The Molecular Landscape (2009). 74: 109-118
Contact: ogbunugafor AT OEB DOT harvard DOT edu
