Noah Silva de Leonardi, PhD
Mission Statement
I strive to understand structured, heterogeneous, complex systems through mathematical modeling.
I am currently completing my PhD where I study disease systems in structured populations, and have created a model framework for better understanding superspreading in social populations.
Infectious disease dynamics offer a glimpse into the underlying structure of populations, as well as the mixing patterns and networks that underlie interaction in social organisms.
While I consider myself a disease ecologist, data exploration is my passion, and I love to find the story in what others might see as a collection of random numbers.
Some other things I am passionate about:
- Clean data workflows
- Public health
- Teaching undergraduate level students
- Food and the science around creating it
- Movies/books/TV shows and the stories they can effectively tell
Education
In progress – Ph.D. Integrative Biology: Oregon State University Sep 2017 – Present
Advisor: Dr. Benjamin Dalziel
Student Learning and Success Teamwork Award 2022
Graduate Certificate in College and University Teaching (GCCUT) - June 2019
Oregon State University
M.S. Biology: University of New Mexico Aug 2015 – Jul 2017
Advisor: Dr. Helen Wearing. Degree awarded Summer 2017
B.S. New Mexico State University, Biology Jan 2011 - May 2012
B.S. University of New Mexico, Applied Mathematics Aug 2006 - Dec 2010
Skills
- Creating and deploying analytical workflows for real and synthetic data
- Statistical analysis of datasets of various sizes, using both frequentist and bayesian approaches to parameter estimation
- Mathematical modeling of complex systems including non-linear processes
- Development and instruction of lectures and labs for undergraduate level biology
- Creating bioinformatics workflows for microbiome analysis
- Programming in R, Python, and familiarity with C++
Publications
- Robert MA, Christofferson RC, Silva NJ, Vasquez C, Mores CN, Wearing HJ. 2016. Modeling mosquito-borne disease spread in US urbanized areas: the case of dengue in Miami. PloS one 11(8):e0161365.
- Murphy C, Silva N, Fontaine MJ, Jackson B. 2020. Cold weather is independently associated with hypothermia in severely injured trauma patients. Trauma 24(1):51-60.
- Murphy C, Silva de Leonardi N. 2021. Re:The use of low-titer group O whole blood is independently associated with improved survival compared to component therapy in adults with severe traumatic hemorrhage. Transfusion 61(4):1341-2.
- Murphy C, Silva de Leonardi N. 2022. Better than ‘normal’: Describing the distribution of and outliers in RBC usage. Transfusion 62(4):817-25.
- Maryuma S, Silva de Leonardi N, Kirk N, Harjoe C, Kayes L. BI222/222H – Principles of Biology: Organisms Lab Manual. 2023.
- Kayes LJ, Hewitt KM, Harjoe C, Silva de Leonardi N, Rickborn A, Knorr E. Principles of Biology: Populations. Lab Manual for BI223 Principles of Biology/Honors BI223. 2023
Projects
"Why are there so many different kinds of animals?"
~ G. Evelyn Hutchinson