Sally Blower, PhD, is a Professor in the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles. Recently she chose to leave the Biomathematics Department and has accepted a professorship in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behaviour in the Medical School. She is a biomathematician and evolutionary biologist whose research focuses on developing models of transmission dynamics. She uses these models as health policy tools: to design epidemic control strategies for a variety of infectious diseases, to understand and predict the emergence of antibiotic and antiviral drug resistance, and to develop vaccination strategies. The main focus of her research is to develop the study of infectious diseases into a predictive science. Recently her work has focused on HIV, Syphilis, Genital Herpes, Smallpox, MRSA, Tuberculosis, Leprosy, Trachoma, and Influenza. She has also pioneered the application of innovative uncertainty and sensitivity techniques (based upon Monte Carlo methods and Latin Hypercube Sampling) to the analysis of transmission models. These techniques enable transmission models to be used to predict the future with a degree of uncertainty and to identify which parameters are critical in determining which future outcome will actually occur.

Professor Blower is the Head of the Disease Modeling Group at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a member of the Advisory Board for the Program in Infectious Disease & Social Change at Harvard Medical School.

She is currently serving on the editoral/advisory boards of The Lancet Infectious Disease, BMC Medicine, BMC Biology, BMC Infectious Diseases, Human Vaccines, Journal of Molecular Epidemiology & Evolutionary Genetics and has served as a consultant to the Kaiser Family Foundation, CDC, WHO, RAND, EPA, Burroughs Wellcome, Glaxo Smith Kline, Aventis Pasteur, the Frankel Group, the Global HIV Prevention Working Group, and the International Partnership for Microbicides. Dr. Blower has also recently served as a member of the IOM Committe on Examining the Probable Consequences of Alternative Patterns of Widespread Antiretroviral Drug Use in Resource-Constrained Settings and contributed to the publication of Scaling Up Treatment for the Global AIDS Pandemic: Challenges and Opportunities, an IOM Report.

2007: Drs. Breban, Vardavas and Blower present a mean-field analysis of their flu epidemic model. [PDF]

2007: Emily Kajita, Dr. Blower, et al. have analyzed the CA-MRSA outbreak in the Los Angeles County Jail. [PDF][Press]

2007: Drs. Vardavas, Breban and Blower show that control strategies may make flu epidemics worse. Their study is published in PLoS Computational Biology and it is featured as an Editor's pick. [PDF][Press]

2007: Professor Blower is soon to become the Director of the Biomedical Modeling Center in the Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA.

2007: Drs. Vardavas and Blower have made predictions of when the WHO is likely to detect transmitted resistance of HIV in Botswana. Their findings have been published in PLoS ONE. Their conclusions have attracted the attention of the media. [Link][PDF][Supplemental Information][Press]

Dr. Sally Blower publishes with famous mathematician Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782) modeling smallpox! [PubMed Citation] [PDF]

E-mail: sblower@mednet.ucla.edu

Mailing Address:
Disease Modeling Group
Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior
University of California, Los Angeles
1100 Glendon Avenue, Penthouse 2
Los Angeles, CA 90024
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Office: (310) 794-8911
Lab: (310) 794-8650
Fax: (310) 794-8653

Dr. Blower and her lab members have recently done consulting for TV/Film crews on infectious disease modeling:

• Tuberculosis epidemic modeling consulting for Arcwelder Films' production of the miniseries Microkillers for National Geographic.

• Art direction and influenza epidemic modeling consulting for CBS crime investigation drama, NUMB3RS.

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