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Our research


1. Genetics-based strategies to control mosquito-borne diseases:

​Malaria, dengue, Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases pose a major global health burden throughout much of the world. Over 600,000 people die each year from malaria, most of whom are children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa, and over 50,000,000 people are infected with dengue each year, ~10,000 of whom die from the disease. For malaria, recent declines in transmission have been seen following wide-scale distribution of bed nets and antimalarial drugs; however, these tools are not expected to be sufficient to eliminate malaria from highly-endemic areas. For dengue, there is no cure or vaccine available that is effective against all four serotypes. Consequently, there is interest in novel strategies to control these diseases, including genetics-based approaches.
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​Genetics-based control strategies can be grouped into two general categories - self-limiting and self-propagating strategies. In self-limiting strategies, introduced transgenes are eliminated from the population over time. The best example of this is a release of genetically sterile males. By mating with wild females after a release, these mosquitoes produce no viable offspring, thus suppressing the mosquito population and hence disease transmission for a sustained period of time. In self-propagating strategies, a gene drive system (a genetic element that biases inheritance in its favor) is used to spread a disease-refractory gene or fitness load into the mosquito population. With the advent of CRISPR-based gene editing, these systems have become much easier to engineer. Proof-of-principle systems have recently been engineered that could: a) spread malaria-refractory genes into mosquito populations, rendering them unable to transmit the disease to humans; and b) disrupt a gene required for female fertility as they spread, potentially eliminating the mosquito vector entirely.

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Understanding how these gene drive systems spread through populations of mosquitoes requires mathematical models and knowledge of the ecology and environment into which they could be introduced. Our research in this area therefore falls at the interface between molecular biology and ecology. We work with molecular biologists - Professor Omar Akbari and Professor Ethan Bier at UC San Diego, and Professor Anthony James at UC Irvine - to determine how the constructs they engineer in the lab could be expected to behave in the wild. We also work with vector ecologists at the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Australia, and the Environmental Health Institute/National Environment Agency in Singapore to better understand the dispersal patterns of mosquitoes, their genetic variation, seasonal changes in their abundance, and other aspects of their population biology. 

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Our goal is to move this field forward in a way that allows the burden of mosquito-borne diseases to be reduced in a safe and socially responsible way. We provide modeling support for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's mosquito genetic control portfolio, developing target product profiles and surveillance protocols for these technologies. We are also a key collaborator of the Akbari Lab, which is developing novel genetics-based versions of the sterile insect technique to control Anopheles gambiae, the main African malaria vector, and Aedes aegypti, the main mosquito vector of dengue, chikungunya and Zika virus. We serve as modeling lead for the UC Malaria Initiative to develop CRISPR-based gene drive systems to control Anopheles gambiae, the main African malaria vector, and work with Berkeley's Innovative Genomics Institute to explore the application of CRISPR technology to insect genetic control. We have developed several modeling frameworks, MGDrivE (Mosquito Gene Drive Explorer), MGDrivE 2 and MGSurvE (Mosquito Gene Surveillance), to address research questions related to these projects. As the technology moves closer to field application, our research interests are shifting to ecological characterization of mosquito populations, field trial design, and implications for human disease transmission.


2. Landscape genomics to quantify mosquito movement:

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The safety and efficacy of mosquito genetic control strategies are critically dependent on an accurate understanding of mosquito movement patterns. To advance our understanding of the fine-scale movement patterns of mosquitoes, we are exploring the application of landscape genomic methods with Dr. Gordana Rašić of QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Australia. The particular methods we are interested in - close-kin mark-recapture - involve intensive landscape sampling efforts and subsequent genetic sequencing to the extent required to infer close familial relationships (parent-offspring, full sibling, half sibling, etc.). Observations of pairs of closely-related individuals then provide information on displacement on the timescale of a generation, which collectively may be used to parameterize a predictive model of mosquito movement. The same studies can also be used to infer other demographic parameters, such as population size, and adult and larval mortality rates, as well as the impact of interventions on these parameters. Quantifying demographic and dispersal parameters of mosquito populations has been an enduring challenge, and these methods promise to provide a complementary approach of relevance to better understanding their ecology and control.


3. Mathematical modeling to support malaria elimination:

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Models play an important role in exploring the expected impact of different interventions against malaria, with simpler models providing general insights, and more complex models serving as planning tools. We are particularly interested in mosquito vector control, and are developing a modeling framework, VCOM (Vector Control Optimization Model), in collaboration with Dr. Samson Kiware of the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania, to explore the potential of a range of new and forthcoming technologies at suppressing mosquito populations. Despite recent successes in reducing malaria transmission with insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying with insecticides, the protective effect of these interventions is limited because they target mosquitoes solely indoors, while mosquito vectors increasingly feed on humans outdoors and also feed on non-human hosts such as cattle. Novel vector control tools are now becoming available that target mosquitoes both indoors and outdoors and at different stages of their life cycle. VCOM is a population-based model that enables us to explore the impact of these interventions by modeling the entire mosquito life cycle and adult feeding cycle and the point at which each intervention has its impact. We also collaborate with the Malaria Elimination Initiative at UC San Francisco and the malaria modeling group at Imperial College London on projects related to malaria elimination.


4. Ethical, social, cultural and regulatory aspects of our work:

We have an active interest in contributing to the ongoing discussion on the ethical, social, cultural and regulatory implications of our work. We advocate for the safe and responsible use of technology to reduce the human disease burden, while respecting the wishes of communities and nation states, the environment, and national and international law. We have explored the application of the Cartagena Protocol, the fundamental regulatory document of the United Nations on the international movement of transgenic organisms, to gene-edited mosquitoes, and have conducted surveys of public attitudes on transgenic approaches to mosquito control in sub-Saharan Africa.

Lab news

  • 4/25/2025: Lab presents at the Bay Area World Malaria Day Forum hosted by the Malaria Elimination Initiative at UCSF.
  • 4/21/2025: Welcome to Godrick Oketch who is joining the lab as a postdoc working on statistical aspects of field trial design for gene drive systems in malaria vectors.
  • 4/18/2025: Paper published in Malaria Journal describing the potential impact of surveillance test-and-treat posts to reduce malaria in border regions in sub-Saharan Africa.
  • 3/25/2025: Pre-print published on bioRxiv describing mosquito dispersal in the context of heterogeneous resource distribution throughout a landscape.
  • 1/28/2025: Lab receives grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to provide modeling support for field trial design and risk assessment of genetic strategies for malaria vector control.
  • 12/4/2024: Paper published in Science Advances describing a biopesticide that kills insecticide-resistant Anopheles mosquitoes.
  • 11/19/2024: John Marshall presents on modeling mosquito elimination on islands at the Island Health and Sustainability conference in Moorea, French Polynesia.
  • 11/17/2024: Paper published in Nature Communications describing a self-eliminating allelic-drive in Drosophila that reverses insecticide resistance.
  • 10/31/2024: Pre-print published in Scientific African on building capacity to implement precision-guided sterile insect technique for malaria control in west Africa.
  • 10/2/2024: Victor Mero presents on the potential for malaria resurgence after transiently effective gene drive interventions at the IDM Annual Symposium in Seattle, Washington.
  • 10/1/2024: Welcome to Prateek Verma who is joining the lab as a project scientist working on field trial design for gene drive systems in malaria vectors.
  • 8/26/2024: John Marshall presents on modeling to support target product profiles for mosquito gene drives at the 27th International Congress of Entomology in Kyoto, Japan.
  • 8/19/2024: Pre-print published on medRxiv describing a model-informed target product profile for population modification gene drives for malaria control.
  • 8/9/2024: Huge congratulations and thank you to Dr. Agastya Mondal who has worked with us as a graduate researcher for the last four years and has now graduated from UC Berkeley with a PhD in Epidemiology. Agastya's dissertation is entitled "Modeling genetic control of vector-borne infectious diseases: Mechanistic and machine learning approaches". He pioneered incorporation of the Imperial College malaria model into our MGDrivE framework, and led formulation of a target product profile for population modification gene drives, alongside contributing to many collaborative projects. He will be very much missed!​
  • 7/29/2024: Victor Mero gives training session on infectious disease modeling at the Ifakara Health Institute in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
  • 6/25/2024: Paper published in PNAS describing a novel CRISPR-based version of the sterile insect technique to suppress the malaria vector, Anopheles gambiae.
  • 6/12/2024: John Marshall presents on modeling approaches for mosquito surveillance at workshop on post-release monitoring of gene drive-modified mosquitoes in Reston, Virginia.
  • 5/28/2024: Paper published in PLoS Computational Biology describing our MGDrivE 3 modeling framework for epidemiological simulation of mosquito genetic control tools and their surveillance.
  • 5/22/2024: John Marshall presents on close-kin mark-recapture methods to estimate demographic parameters of mosquitoes at the Genetic Biocontrol Gordon Research Conference in Barcelona, Spain.
  • 5/11/2024: Congratulations to Shuyi Yang who has earned an MA in Biostatistics from UC Berkeley. Shuyi's dissertation describes robust variance estimators for mosquito population parameters using close-kin mark-recapture.
  • 5/11/2024: Congratulations to Emma Lonstrup who has graduated from UC Berkeley with an MPH. Emma's dissertation investigates the effect of heavy rainfall on mosquito abundance in Hawai'i using mixed effects models.
  • 5/7/2024: Lab-affiliated Mozeroa 2030 consortium receives award to support innovative vector control in Huahine Island, French Polynesia.
  • 5/6/2024: Paper published in PLoS Computational Biology describing our MGSurvE modeling framework to optimize trap placement for genetic surveillance of mosquito populations. 
  • 3/19/2024: Victor Mero and John Marshall represent lab at the Gene Drive Research Forum in Marina del Rey, California. Lab presents on modeling needs for gene drive mosquito projects.
  • 3/3/2024: Pre-print published on bioRxiv describing divergent sequences on Aedes aegypti sex chromosomes.
  • 2/13/2024: Lab presents at meeting with the Environmental Health Institute, National Environment Agency in Singapore.​
  • 1/31/2024: John Marshall presents on close-kin mark-recapture methods to estimate demographic parameters of mosquitoes at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand.
  • 1/30/2024: Paper published in eLife describing a novel CRISPR-based version of the sterile insect technique targeting sex determination to suppress Aedes aegypti populations.
  • 1/10/2024: Nature Climate Change paper on the potential impact of near-term climate change on Wolbachia-based population replacement strategies highlighted in journal's Year in Review: "Wolbachia still works when it's warm".
  • 10/26/2023: Paper published in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology describing a risk assessment of population replacement gene drive mosquitoes for malaria control.
  • 10/21/2023: Shuyi Yang presents on close-kin mark-recapture methods to estimate demographic parameters of mosquitoes  at the 72nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Chicago, Illinois.
  • 10/19/2023: Héctor Sánchez and Rodrigo Corder present on MGSurvE and modeling and analytics to support gene drive mosquito projects at the 72nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Chicago, Illinois.
  • 9/21/2023: Victor Mero represents lab at a side-meeting on gene drive field trial modeling at the 9th Annual Conference of the Pan-African Mosquito Control Association in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
  • 9/20/2023: Paper published in SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics on optimizing release schemes for genetic biocontrol tools using mathematical programming.
  • 9/18/2023: Paper published in Annual Review of Genetics reviewing approaches to engineering wild populations using CRISPR.
  • 9/12/2023: Héctor Sánchez and Agastya Mondal present the 2nd annual MGDrivE webinar on running simulations of genetic control systems for malaria (MGDrivE 3) and optimizing trap placement for genetic surveillance of mosquitoes (MGSurvE). See MGSurvE materials available on GitHub and recording available on YouTube.
  • 9/12/2023: John Marshall quoted in CNN story on mosquito control.
  • 8/14/2023: Welcome to Victor Mero who is joining the lab as an Epidemiology PhD student working on models of mosquito-borne disease transmission.
  • 8/11/2023: Huge congratulations and thank you to Dr. Váleri Vásquez who has worked with us as a graduate researcher for the last five years and has now graduated from UC Berkeley with a PhD in Energy & Resources and a designated emphasis in Computational Data Science & Engineering. Váleri's dissertation is entitled "Modeling and optimization for climate-aware genetic biocontrol in public health". Her work has pioneered incorporation of climate change into models of genetic biocontrol, and significantly contributed to optimization problems. She will be very much missed!​
  • 8/3/2023: Paper published in Nature Climate Change describing the potential impact of near-term climate change on Wolbachia-based population replacement strategies for dengue control. See Nature Climate Change commentary here: "Susceptibility of Wolbachia mosquito control to temperature shifts".​
  • 7/22/2023: Paper published in eBioMedicine describing mechanical transmission of dengue virus by Aedes aegypti and exploring its potential impact on disease transmission dynamics during outbreaks.
  • 7/22/2023: Pre-print published on bioRxiv exploring the cost-effectiveness of precision-guided SIT for malaria vector control in Upper River region, The Gambia.
  • 7/10/2023: Paper published in PNAS describing a new population replacement gene drive system linked to an antimalarial effector gene in two key African malaria vector species, Anopheles gambiae and Anopheles coluzzii.
  • 7/5/2023: Paper published in Science Advances describing a novel female-lethal population suppression system, Ifegenia, engineered in the malaria vector, Anopheles gambiae. See UCSD news story here: "New genetic technology developed to halt malaria-spreading mosquitoes".
  • 6/27/2023: Our new modeling framework, MGSurvE, is now available as a Python package on PyPI.
  • 3/27/2023: Lab presents at the annual meeting of the UC Malaria Initiative at UC Irvine.​
  • 2/23/2023: Book chapter published in Mosquito Gene Drives and the Malaria Eradication Agenda on modeling priorities as gene drive mosquito projects transition from lab to field.
  • 2/16/2023: Héctor Sánchez presents on machine learning techniques applied to mosquito gene drive emulators at the fifth Bay Area Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease meeting.
  • 2/2/2023: Paper published in Malaria Journal describing mobility patterns of forest-goers in southern Lao PDR of relevance to malaria transmission.
  • 1/12/2023: Paper published in Nature Communications describing conversion of a split-drive into a linked gene drive system, providing a pathway for phased gene drive research and development. See Innovative Genomics Institute news story here: "Researchers create new system for safer gene drive testing and development".
  • 1/10/2023: Welcome to Shuyi Yang who is joining the lab as a Biostatistics MA student working on statistical aspects of the close-kin mark-recapture project to estimate mosquito demographic parameters.
  • 12/15/2022: Paper published in Nature Biotechnology exploring the value of a global gene drive project registry. See UCSD news story here: "Experts from 14 nations discuss global gene drive project registry".
  • 12/12/2022: Paper published in PLoS Computational Biology describing close-kin mark-recapture methods to estimate population size, mortality rates and juvenile development times for mosquitoes.​
  • 10/27/2022: Rodrigo Corder presents on quantifying and preventing Plasmodium vivax recurrences in primaquine-untreated pregnant women at the 20th International Congress for Tropical Medicine and Malaria in Bangkok, Thailand.
  • 10/14/2022: John Marshall presents on modeling priorities as gene drive mosquito projects transition from lab to field at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute.
  • 9/22/2022: John Marshall presents on monitoring needs for gene drive field releases at a pre-meeting to the 8th Annual Conference of the Pan-African Mosquito Control Association in Kigali, Rwanda.
  • 9/8/2022: Héctor Sánchez and Agastya Mondal present the 1st annual MGDrivE webinar on running simulations of genetic control systems for mosquitoes. See webinar materials available on GitHub and recording available on YouTube.
  • 8/18/2022: Paper published in GEN Biotechnology describing a CRISPR-based version of the sterile insect technique developed in Drosophila suzukii, an invasive crop pest. See Innovative Genomics Institute news story here: "CRISPR-based technology targets global crop pest".
  • 8/18/2022: Váleri Vásquez presents on Wolbachia-based interventions under climate change at the Annual Meeting for the Ecological Society of America in Montréal, Canada.
  • 8/17/2022: Paper published in Frontiers in Tropical Diseases proposing metrics for simulation-based evaluation of vector control tools in the presence of seasonality and environmental change.
  • 6/13/2022: Welcome to Alan Hu who is joining the lab as an undergrad researcher working on the close-kin mark-recapture project to characterize demographic and dispersal parameters of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.
  • 6/1/2022: Lab receives sub-award to contribute to a cost-effectiveness analysis of pgSIT technology to suppress malaria transmission in peri-urban areas of Africa.
  • 5/25/2022: Paper published in Malaria Journal describing recommendations for environmental risk assessment of gene drive applications for malaria control.
  • 5/14/2022: Congratulations and thank you to Natasha Harrison who worked with us as a graduate researcher for the last two years and has now graduated from UC Berkeley with an MPH. Natasha's dissertation is on environmental predictors of malaria incidence in São Tomé and Príncipe.
  • 5/14/2022: Congratulations and thank you to Darpa Anireddy who worked with us as an undergrad researcher for the last two years and has now graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA degree in Public Health.
  • 5/9/2022: Paper published in PLoS Global Public Health describing a predictive statistical model for dengue outbreak size in Bangladesh.
  • 3/1/2022: Paper published in Frontiers in Tropical Diseases describing the role of models in informing target product profiles for gene drive mosquitoes, with lessons from other malaria and vector control tools.
  • 2/26/2022: Héctor Sánchez presents on MGSurvE, a Python package to optimize surveillance of gene drive-modified mosquitoes, at the virtual fourth Bay Area Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease meeting.
  • 2/8/2022: John Marshall presents on modeling novel genetics-based vector control strategies at the 90th Annual Conference of the Mosquito and Vector Control Association of California.
  • 1/12/2022: Paper published in Nature Communications describing an allelic-drive system for reversing insecticide resistance with proof-of-concept in Drosophila melanogaster. See UCSD news story here: "Genetic strategy reverses insecticide resistance".
  • 1/6/2022: Paper published in Frontiers in Genetics describing monitoring needs for gene drive mosquito projects, based on experiences with invasive species and field trials of Wolbachia and sterile male mosquitoes. 
  • 1/1/2022: Book chapter published in Genetically Modified and other Innovative Vector Control Technologies on considerations for field trials of gene drive mosquitoes, focusing on confinement and reversibility criteria.
  • 12/10/2021: Paper published in Nature Communications describing engineering of Cas9 on the Y chromosome of Drosophila, with modeling of its implications for mosquito gene drives. 
  • 12/1/2021: Agastya Mondal presents on "Target product profile modeling for mosquito gene drive systems" at Epidemics 8, the virtual 8th International Conference on Infectious Disease Dynamics.
  • 11/19/2021: Rodrigo Corder presents on the contribution of low-density and asymptomatic infections to Plasmodium vivax transmission in the Amazon at the virtual 70th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
  • 10/26/2021: Lab presents on modeling of gene drives in Aedes aegypti at virtual DARPA Safe Genes Transition Meeting.
  • 10/24/2021: Váleri Vásquez presents on optimizing release schemes for genetics-based mosquito control programs at the annual meeting of INFORMS in Anaheim.
  • 10/21/2021: Book chapter published in Advances in Computational Intelligence: MICAI 2021 on machine learning algorithms applied to US mosquito count data.
  • 10/21/2021: Agastya Mondal presents on modeling to inform target product profiles for gene drive mosquitoes at the Center for Computational Biology Retreat at UC Berkeley.
  • 9/15/2021: Welcome to Lillian Weng, Xingli Yu, Joanna Yoo and Ayden Salazar who are joining the lab as undergrad researchers through the Data Science Discovery Program working on the mosquito gene drive machine learning library.
  • 9/10/2021: Paper published in Nature Communications describing a CRISPR-based version of the sterile insect technique developed in Aedes aegypti, with elimination of Ae. aegypti modeled in Tetiaroa, French Polynesia. See Innovative Genomics Institute news story here: "New technology designed to genetically control disease-spreading mosquitoes".
  • 9/7/2021: Paper published in Parasites & Vectors describing household-level risk factors for Aedes aegypti pupal density in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
  • 8/30/2021: Welcome to Reine Ngnonsse and Kendall Dimson who are joining the lab as undergrad researchers working on datasets and analysis pipelines to better understand malaria and arbovirus transmission at potential field sites.
  • 8/22/2021: Pre-print published on bioRxiv describing insights from genomics and modeling regarding the potential elimination of Aedes aegypti from its southern margin in Australia.
  • 8/13/2021: Huge congratulations and thank you to Dr. Jared Bennett who has worked with us as a graduate researcher for the last four years and has now graduated from UC Berkeley with a PhD in Biophysics and a designated emphasis in Computational Biology. Jared's dissertation is entitled "In silico exploration and analysis of gene drive efficacy". His work has transformed our approach to gene drive modeling and close-kin simulation and he will be very much missed!
  • 7/26/2021: Paper published in Evolutionary Applications reviewing gene drive strategies for agricultural pest control.
  • 7/26/2021: Lab receives sub-award to model the potential use of genetically sterile male mosquitoes to control mosquito-borne diseases in Hawai'i. See EPA news story here: "EPA awards $750,000 to UC San Diego to help safely develop biotechnology used against mosquito-borne disease".
  • 7/22/2021: Welcome to Eileen Jeffrey Gutiérrez who is joining the lab as a postdoc working on monitoring and surveillance modeling of mosquito vectors of malaria and dengue fever.
  • 7/20/2021: Paper published in Nature Scientific Reports describing population size estimation of seasonal forest-going populations of relevance to malaria transmission in southern Laos.
  • 7/19/2021: Paper published in Nature Communications reviewing Wolbachia and genetic engineering-based approaches to control mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue and malaria.
  • 7/15/2021: Welcome to Rodrigo Corder who is joining the lab as a postdoc working on gene drive modeling and malaria transmission in São Tomé and Príncipe.
  • 7/11/2021: Lab research featured in Daily Cal: "Part of 'master plan': Researchers receive grant to fund research on malaria".
  • 7/1/2021: Lab receives grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop target product profiles and monitoring and surveillance protocols for genetic strategies for malaria vector control. See news story here: "Marshall Lab receives Gates grant for genetics-based malaria mosquito control".
  • 6/20/2021: Paper published in BioEssays describing the resilience of population modification strategies for malaria vector control to observed levels of gene drive resistance alleles.
  • 6/2021: John Marshall presents on "Modeling priorities as gene drive mosquito projects transition from lab to field" at the virtual 2021 Annual Meeting of the Society for Mathematical Biology and the virtual Interdisciplinary Workshop on Synthetic Gene Drives.
  • 6/13/2021: Congratulations to Dr. Francois Rerolle who has worked with us for the last five years and has now graduated from UCSF with a PhD in Epidemiology & Biostatistics. Francois' dissertation is entitled "Importance, size and mobility of forest-going populations for malaria elimination in Lao People’s Democratic Republic".
  • 6/11/2021: Welcome to Elijah Bartolome who is joining the lab as a recent UC Berkeley graduate working on machine learning regression and classification models for mosquito gene drive datasets.
  • 6/2/2021: Paper published in Nature Communications describing a synthetic underdominant system for reversible population replacement. See UCSD news story here: "Synthetic SPECIES developed for use as a confinable gene drive".
  • 5/25/2021: Lab presents on modeling gene editing innovations for vector control at virtual DARPA Safe Genes Program Review.
  • 5/21/2021: Paper published in PLoS Computational Biology describing our MGDrivE 2 modeling framework for the spread of gene drives incorporating seasonality and epidemiological dynamics.
  • 5/15/2021: Congratulations and thank you to Ashley Zhang and Chris De Leon who worked with us as undergrad researchers for the last year and have now graduated from UC Berkeley with BS degrees in Computer Science and Statistics.
  • 3/30/2021: John Marshall presents on the current status of genetic strategies for mosquito-borne disease control at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health Brown Bag Series.
  • 3/17/2021: Paper published in Malaria Journal modeling the potential impact of attractive targeted sugar baits (ATSBs) on malaria transmission in African settings based on a recent entomological field trial conducted in Mali.
  • 3/9/2021: Paper published in eLife exploring the associations between deforestation and malaria incidence in Laos.
  • 3/5/2021: Paper published in Nature Communications describing a variety of split-drive designs in Drosophila that limit or extend drive potential and confinability. See UCSD news story here: "New split-drive system puts scientists in the (gene) driver seat".
  • 3/5/2021: Paper published in eLife describing a home-and-rescue gene drive design to spread desirable genes into populations while limiting accumulation of resistance alleles.
  • 3/3/2021: Yogita Sharma presents on stochastic reaction-diffusion models of gene drive spread at the Computational and Genomic Biology Retreat at UC Berkeley.
  • 2/27/2021: Paper published in Parasites & Vectors describing the role of a new genotype of dengue virus in driving a large outbreak in Guangzhou, China.
  • 2/2/2021: Lab presents at the virtual annual meeting of the UCI Malaria Initiative.
  • 1/26/2021: Congratulations to Váleri Vásquez who has been awarded a Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship to support her work on optimization of mosquito genetic control tools.
  • 12/21/2020: Paper published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene describing the relation-based model as a framework for engagement for field trials of genetically modified mosquito vectors.
  • 12/21/2020: Pre-print published on bioRxiv describing a new agent-based simulation algorithm for epidemiological models.
  • 12/18/2020: Paper published in Science describing core commitments for field trials of gene drive organisms. See UCSD news story here: "Scientists set a path for field trials of gene drive organisms".
  • 12/18/2020: Huge congratulations and thank you to Dr. Sean Wu who has worked with us as a graduate researcher for the last five years and has now graduated from UC Berkeley with a PhD in Epidemiology and a designated emphasis in Computational Biology. Sean's dissertation is entitled "Stochastic models for the control of mosquito-borne pathogens". His work has been central to the development of modeling frameworks in our lab and he will be very much missed!
  • 12/17/2020: Congratulations to Váleri Vásquez and colleagues who have been awarded a Career Development Network Seed Grant to support the creation of design-conscious content for sharing the best practice of data science.
  • 11/18/2020: Tomás León and John Marshall present on modeling Anopheles gambiae movement and Aedes aegypti genetic control strategies at the virtual 69th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
  • 11/16/2020: Héctor Sánchez presents on modeling release scenarios for gene drive mosquitoes on islands at the virtual 69th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
  • 11/12/2020: Váleri Vásquez presents on optimizing genetics-based public health interventions at the virtual annual meeting of INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences).
  • 11/11/2020: Lab research featured in Daily Cal: "Research team led by UC Berkeley professor receives $1.7M grant for mosquito migration study".
  • 11/3/2020: Paper published in Nature Communications describing a gene drive system with a novel "recoded" architecture engineered in Anopheles stephensi, the main urban malaria vector in India. See UCI news story here: "UC researchers pioneer more effective method of blocking malaria transmission in mosquitoes".
  • 10/24/2020: Our new modeling framework, MGDrivE 2, is published on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) and is available as an R package on GitHub.
  • 9/21/2020: Lab receives R01 award from the National Institutes of Health to develop novel landscape genomics-based methods to study the fine-scale movement patterns of Aedes aegypti mosquito disease vectors. See news story here: "NIH grant to support research on mosquito movement and control".
  • 9/21/2020: Lab receives sub-award to work on National Institutes of Health R01 project on public engagement for gene drive technology led by Professor Cinnamon Bloss. 
  • 9/18/2020: Paper published in Molecular Cell describing a variety of genetic systems - ERACRs and e-CHACRs - for remediating gene drives from the environment. See UCSD news story here: "Biologists create new genetic systems to neutralize gene drives".
  • 8/31/2020: Welcome to Ameek Bindra and Daniel López who are joining the lab as undergrad researchers working on analyzing mosquito ecology and gene drive datasets for the MGDrivE project.
  • 8/19/2020: Welcome to Agastya Mondal who is joining the lab as an Epidemiology PhD student working on models of mosquito-borne disease transmission.
  • 8/19/2020: Welcome to Darpa Anireddy, Chris De Leon, Ashley Zhang and Priscilla Zhang who are joining the lab as undergrad researchers working on tracking malaria cases and machine learning algorithms for the MGDrivE project.
  • ​8/4/2020: Welcome to Natasha Harrison who is joining the lab as an Epidemiology & Biostatistics MPH student working on statistical analyses of malaria surveillance data from São Tomé and Príncipe.
  • 8/3/2020:  Váleri Vásquez presents on novel genetic constructs and their sensitivity to environmental change at the virtual annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America.
  • 7/29/2020:  Váleri Vásquez presents on disease vector dynamics under environmental change at JuliaCon 2020.
  • 7/27/2020: Lab presents at virtual annual DARPA PI meeting on gene editing innovation for vector control.
  • 6/26/2020: Paper published in Global Public Health on translating gene drive science from English to Spanish to promote linguistic diversity in community and stakeholder engagement.
  • 6/10/2020: Lab participates in #ShutDownSTEM and condemns racism and all forms of white supremacy including police brutality.
  • 6/5/2020: The UC Berkeley School of Public Health publishes a free online course on "Managing the COVID-19 Pandemic" with a module on mathematical modeling presented by John Marshall.
  • 5/20/2020: Welcome to Hao Wang who is joining the lab as a Graduate Student Researcher working on monitoring and surveillance needs for genetics-based mosquito control trials.
  • 5/16/2020: Congratulations and thank you to Thien-An Ha who worked with us as a graduate researcher for the last year and has now graduated from UC Berkeley with an MPH. Thien-An's dissertation is on household risk factors for Aedes aegypti mosquito proliferation in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
  • 5/16/2020: Congratulations and thank you to Maya Shen and Gillian Chu who worked with us as undergrad researchers for the last two years and have now graduated from UC Berkeley with BS degrees in Computer Science and Bioengineering.
  • 5/12/2020: Paper published in BMC Biology modeling the introduction of two threshold-dependent gene drive systems into a structured Aedes aegypti population that could satisfy the requirements of field trials in terms of confinement and reversibility.​
  • 4/27/2020: Váleri Vásquez is a panelist for the Berkeley Conversations event, "Climate change and COVID-19: Can this crisis shift the paradigm?"​
  • 4/22/2020: Paper published in PLoS Computational Biology describing  MBITES (Mosquito Bout-based Individual-based Transmission Ecology Simulator), a new individual-based framework for modeling for mosquito-borne disease.
  • 3/9/2020: Paper published in Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases on efficacy and safety criteria for advancing gene drive-modified mosquitoes to field testing.
  • 2/29/2020: Yogita Sharma and Tomás León present at the second Bay Area Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease meeting at UC Berkeley.
  • 2/17/2020: Paper published in Issues in Science and Technology on the need for policy-makers and regulators to respond to the latest developments in gene drive research.
  • 2/7/2020: Paper published in Journal of Experimental Biology reviewing recent developments in engineering gene drives for population control.
  • 1/29/2020: Lab presents at the annual meeting of the UCI Malaria Initiative at UC Irvine.
  • 1/21/2020: Paper published in eLife describing the first split-gene drive system engineered in Aedes aegypti, the primary vector of dengue, Zika and chikungunya viruses. 
  • 1/17/2020: Paper published in Nature Communications describing a transcomplementing gene drive system designed for safe laboratory study, with potential benefits for field deployment.
  • 1/8/2020: Our collaborators with the UC Irvine Malaria Initiative and Tata Institute for Genetics and Society are profiled in a New York Times Magazine feature story.
  • 1/8/2020: Yogita Sharma's work is listed in a Nature news story reading list!
  • 1/1/2020: Congratulations to Héctor Sánchez who was accepted into the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (National System of Researchers) in Mexico today!
  • 12/20/2019: Congratulations and thank you to Sarafina Smith who worked with us as an undergrad researcher for two years and has now graduated from UC Berkeley with a BS in Computer Science.
  • 12/19/2019: Paper published in PLoS Genetics describing cage experiments of a CRISPR-based gene drive system in Anopheles stephensi, the main urban malaria vector in India.
  • 12/15/2019: Thien-An Ha receives scholarship to attend the Clinic on Dynamical Approaches to Infectious Disease Data in Stellenbosch, South Africa.
  • 12/10/2019: John Marshall presents on mathematical modeling of malaria at the University of São Tomé in São Tomé and Príncipe.
  • 12/4/2019: Tomás León presents on modeling of Aedes aegypti and Anopheles gambiae mosquito ecology at the 7th International Conference on Infectious Disease Dynamics in Charleston, SC.
  • 11/27/2019: Paper published in BMC Infectious Diseases describing the incidence and distribution of dengue cases in Guangzhou, China, the dengue epicenter in mainland China.
  • 11/21/2019: Sean Wu presents on the MBITES malaria modeling framework at the 68th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in National Harbor, MD.
  • 11/4/2019: Héctor Sánchez presents at the annual symposium of the Tata Institute for Genetics and Society at UC San Diego.
  • 11/1/2019: John Marshall presents on "Data sharing in gene drive research: Experiences of a mathematical modeler" at the Gene Drive Research Forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
  • 10/30/2019: Paper published in Frontiers in Genetics reviewing strategies to minimize evolution of pathogens in response to anti-pathogen effector genes in vector population replacement strategies.
  • 10/28/2019: Congratulations to Váleri Vásquez who passed her PhD qualifying exam today!
  • 10/25/2019: Yogita Sharma and Jared Bennett present their work on close-kin mark-recapture and modeling of gene drive laboratory experiments at the Computational and Genomic Biology Retreat at UC Berkeley.
  • 10/18/2019: Thien-An Ha presents her summer project on mosquito biting rates near cemeteries in Borbón, Ecuador at the Global Health Annual Fellows Symposium at UC Berkeley.
  • 10/16/2019: Paper published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution describing our MGDrivE modeling framework for the spread of gene drives through spatially-explicit mosquito populations.
  • 10/12/2019: Váleri Vásquez receives an NSF scholarship to attend the International Conference on Mathematical Modeling and Analysis of Populations in Biological Systems at Arizona State University, AZ.
  • 10/11/2019: Congratulations to Sean Wu who passed his PhD qualifying exam today!
  • 10/10/2019: Welcome to Rodrigo Careaga, a Masters student at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico, who is visiting the lab as part of our CITRIS project to develop machine learning algorithms to predict mosquito densities.
  • 9/24/2019: Héctor Sánchez and Sean Wu represent lab at meeting of the Malaria Modeling Consortium in Seattle, WA.
  • 9/6/2019: Lab research featured in UCSF News video discussing the prospects for global malaria eradication by 2050.
  • 9/2/2019: Response published in Nature Communications describing application of a novel CRISPR-based version of the sterile insect technique to suppression of Aedes aegypti populations.
  • 8/21/2019: Welcome to Joshua Yeung and Yunwen Ji who are joining the lab as undergrad researchers working on analyzing mosquito datasets for the MGDrivE project.
  • 8/14/2019: Tomás León gives talk on a maximum likelihood method for analyzing Aedes aegypti mark-release-recapture data at the Annual Meeting for the Ecological Society of America in Louisville, KY.
  • 7/29/2019: Jared Bennett and Héctor Sánchez represent lab at DARPA enhanced data sharing meeting in Arlington, VA.
  • 7/22/2019: Sean Wu attends meeting of the Modular Analysis and Simulation for Health (MASH) project at IBM Research in Nairobi, Kenya.
  • 7/16/2019: Lab presents research on mosquito population dynamics and control at INSPI (Instituto Nacional de Investigación en Salud Pública) in Quito, Ecuador.
  • 7/12/2019: Our modeling framework, the Mosquito Gene Drive Explorer (MGDrivE), is published on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN).
  • 6/19/2019: John Marshall gives talk on mathematical insights into CRISPR-based gene drive at the Arthropod-borne Diseases Symposium at the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco.
  • 6/11/2019: Váleri Vásquez and John Marshall present at the Gene Drive Modeling Conference held by the ILSI Research Foundation in Washington, DC.
  • 6/5/2019: Welcome to Sanjay Lamba who is joining the lab as a postdoc working on gene drive modeling projects in collaboration with the Tata Institute for Genetics and Society.
  • 5/24/2019: Jared Bennett presents on "Simulation of genetics-based strategies for mosquito control and implications of density-dependence" at the Conference on Computational and Mathematical Population Dynamics in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
  • 5/21/2019: Congratulations and thank you to Biyonka Liang who worked with us as an undergrad researcher for two and a half years and has now graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Statistics.
  • 5/20/2019: Váleri Vásquez presents on "Informing Risk Assessment with the Mosquito Gene Drive Explorer (MGDrivE)" for the International Life Sciences Institute Gene Drive Modeling Webimar Series.
  • 5/8/2019: John Marshall and Héctor Sánchez represent inter-UC DARPA Safe Genes team at the Phase 2 Kick-off Meeting in Bethesda, MD.
  • 5/6/2019: Héctor Sánchez presents on threshold-dependent drives at the Safe Genes Data Needs Meeting in Bethesda, MD.
  • 5/6/2019: Tomás León  and John Marshall represent the UCI Malaria Initiative at the Data Needs for Decision Making on Gene Drive-Modified Mosquitoes Workshop in Newport Beach, CA.
  • 4/27/2019: Váleri Vásquez is a panelist at the second annual Latinxs and the Environment Summit at UC Berkeley.
  • 4/24/2019: John Marshall represents the UCI Malaria Initiative at the at the Gene Drive Mosquito Monitoring and Surveillance Workshop in Washington, DC.
  • 4/13/2019: Lab presents research on gene-edited mosquitoes at Cal Day at UC Berkeley.
  • 4/1/2019: Congratulations to Thien-An Ha who has been awarded a Center for Global Public Health Fellowship to characterize mosquito habitat and dengue transmission in Ecuador this summer.
  • 3/12/2019: Paper published in BMC Genomics describing the population genetic structure of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in California, with implications for their invasion of the state.
  • 3/12/2019: John Marshall gives talk on the ability of CRISPR-based gene drive to control mosquito-borne diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
  • 3/4/2019: Welcome to Sejal Mohata who is joining the lab as an undergrad researcher working on machine learning approaches to identifying landscape features relevant to potential field trials of genetics-based mosquito interventions.
  • 3/2/2019: Tomás León presents at the first Bay Area Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease meeting at Stanford.
  • 2/25/2019: John Marshall represents the UCI Malaria Initiative at the at the Target Product Profile Workshop for Gene Drive Mosquitoes in London, UK.
  • 2/12/2019: Sean Wu and Héctor Sánchez present at meeting of the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP) and Modular Analysis and Simulation for Health (MASH) projects in Miami, FL.
  • 1/2019: John Marshall gives talk on the ability of CRISPR-based gene drive to control mosquito-borne diseases at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and the UC Berkeley/UCSF Innovative Genomics Institute.
  • 1/31/2019: Lab presents at the annual meeting of the UCI Malaria Initiative at UC Irvine.
  • ​1/23/2019: Welcome to Maya Shen who is joining the lab as an undergrad researcher working on target product profiles for gene drive systems intended for malaria control.
  • 1/16/2019: Welcome to Thien-An Ha who is joining the lab as an Epidemiology & Biostatistics MPH student working on predicting mosquito density in Ecuador as a function of environmental covariates.
  • 1/14/2019: Héctor Sánchez represents lab at meeting of the Malaria Modeling Consortium in Basel, Switzerland.
  • 1/8/2019: Paper published in Nature Communications describing a novel CRISPR-based version of the sterile insect technique that mathematical modeling predicts will be highly efficient at Aedes aegypti population suppression. See news story here: "New CRISPR-based technology developed to control pests with precision-guided genetics".
  • 12/28/2018: Lab receives NVIDIA GPU Grant to support the development of machine learning algorithms to predict mosquito densities using data from the California Vector-Borne Disease Surveillance System.
  • 12/12/2018: Lab research showcased in 75th Anniversary Issue of Berkeley Health: "To think like a mosquito: Berkeley researchers battle diseases from malaria to Zika".
  • 11/12/2018: Paper published in PLoS NTDs proposing a new metric for elimination potential of parasitic diseases, such as Schistosomiasis, subjected to mass drug administration.
  • 11/11/2018: John Marshall presents on "MGDrivE: A simulation framework for gene drive in spatially-explicit mosquito populations" at the Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America in Vancouver, Canada.
  • 11/10/2018: Sean Wu, Héctor Sánchez and Jared Bennett present on "Spatio-temporal force of infection modeling" and "MGDrivE: The original trilogy" at the UC Berkeley Computational and Genomic Biology Retreat in Point Reyes.
  • 11/7/2018: Lab receives CITRIS-ITESM Seed Funding, in collaboration with Prof. Edgar Emmanuel Vallejo of Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico, to develop machine learning algorithms to predict mosquito densities and vector-borne disease incidence in Ecuador and Paraguay.
  • 11/6/2018: Sean Wu presents on "Spatio-temporal force of infection modeling" at the Second SMBE Satellite Workshop on Genome Evolution in Pathogen Transmission and Disease in Kyoto, Japan.
  • 10/31/2018: Héctor Sánchez and Tomás León present on "MGDrivE: A simulation framework for gene drive in spatially-explicit mosquito populations and its application to threshold-dependent systems​" at the 67th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in New Orleans, LA.
  • 10/15/2018: Welcome to Victor Ferman who is joining the lab as a postdoc working on our gene drive modeling framework and statistical and machine learning methods to inform mosquito habitat distribution.
  • 10/6/2018: Héctor Sánchez and Jared Bennett present on "MGDrivE: Its application to release optimization, and confinement in an Australian setting" and "Complete models of disease-transmitting insects" at the Northern California Computational Biology Symposium at UCSF.
  • 9/27/2018: John Marshall gives a talk entitled "Fighting mosquito-borne diseases with genomics, machine learning and likelihood functions" at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health Brown Bag Series.
  • 9/20/2018: Congratulations to Jared Bennett who passed his PhD qualifying exam today!
  • 9/17/2018: Welcome to Gillian Chu who is joining the lab as an undergrad researcher working on landscape analysis and clustering algorithms.
  • 9/12/2018: Lab represents inter-UC DARPA Safe Genes team at the Gene Drive Research Forum in Montréal, Canada.
  • 9/4/2018: Welcome to Graham Northrup who is joining the lab as a Computational Biology PhD student working on the design of confineable homing-based gene drive systems.
  • 9/3/2018: Héctor Sánchez and Sean Wu present on "MGDrivE: A simulation framework for gene drive releases in spatially explicit mosquito populations" and "MICRO: An eco-epidemiological agent based framework for the modeling of mosquito-borne pathogens" at IDDconf 2018, Cumbria, UK.
  • 8/31/2018: Welcome to Tomás León who is joining the lab as a postdoc working on improving the environmental and climatic realism of our modeling frameworks.
  • 8/2018: Váleri Vásquez presents on dynamic programming related to the MGDrivE modeling framework at the International HPC Summer School in Ostrava, Czech Republic and the Supercomputer Center Summer Institute in San Diego.
  • 7/31/2018: Henry Stewart Talk published on lab research: "Gene drive: What is possible at the population level with currently-available molecular components?"
  • 7/13/2018: John Marshall gives a talk entitled "Can malaria, dengue and Zika be controlled by CRISPR-based gene drive?" at QIMR Berghofer in Brisbane, Australia.
  • 7/10/2018: John Marshall presents on "MGDrivE: A simulation framework for gene drive in spatially-explicit mosquito populations" at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Society for Mathematical Biology at the University of Sydney, Australia.
  • 6/19/2018: Our modeling framework, the Mosquito Gene Drive Explorer (MGDrivE), is now available as an R package on GitHub.
  • 6/1/2018: Welcome to Yi Li who is joining the lab as a visiting undergrad researcher from Ohio State University working on statistical approaches to infer mosquito movement patterns based on kinship data.
  • 6/1/2018: Welcome to Váleri Vásquez who is joining the lab as an Energy and Resources Group PhD student working on the application of dynamic programming to optimal release strategies.
  • 5/29/2018: Paper published in PNAS describing a CRISPR-Cas9-based gene drive system that interferes with the sex determination pathway in Drosophila and could be adapted as a population suppression system for the medfly.​
  • 5/29/2018: Lab presents at the first annual meeting of the Tata Institute for Genetics and Society at UC San Diego.​
  • 5/23/2018: Welcome to Benjamín Valdés Aguirre, teaching faculty at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico, who is visiting the lab to explore collaborative opportunities regarding model visualization.
  • 5/22/2018: Lab represents the UCI Malaria Initiative at the PIVOT Science Fair in Long Island, New York.
  • 5/21/2018: Paper published in Epidemiology & Infection describing an ARIMAX model for dengue incidence in Guangzhou, China showing that imported cases and minimum temperature are key determinants of local transmission.
  • 5/16/2018: Paper published in Nature Scientific Reports describing the application of gravity and radiation models for movement patterns of relevance to malaria transmission in sub-Saharan Africa.
  • 5/4/2018: John Marshall presents on "CRISPR-Cas9-based gene drive architecture for control of agricultural pests" at the 2018 Plant Genome Engineering Symposium at UC Berkeley.
  • 4/25/2018: Lab presents at the World Malaria Day research symposium at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.
  • 4/21/2018: Sean Wu presents on "Student perspectives on public health research at Berkeley" and John Marshall on "Designing safe strategies to eliminate mosquito-borne diseases using gene editing" at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health 75th Anniversary Research Showcase.
  • 4/17/2018: Paper published in PNAS describing the first synthetic gene drive element engineered in a major worldwide crop pest, Drosophila suzukii. See news story here: "Researchers develop first gene drive targeting worldwide crop pest".
  • 4/16/2018: Welcome to Yogita Sharma who is joining the lab as a postdoc working on analytic approaches to modeling threshold-dependent gene drive systems with a special interest in applications to agriculture.
  • ​4/2/2018: Paper published in ACS Synthetic Biology describing synthetic reciprocal translocations engineered in Drosophila with the potential for confinable and reversible population replacement.
  • 3/2018: John Marshall gives talk on the ability of CRISPR-based gene drive to control mosquito-borne diseases at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
  • 3/1/2018: Welcome to Gordana Rašić who is joining the lab as a collaborating postdoc based at QIMR Berghofer, Australia working on methods to infer mosquito dispersal based on genetic data.
  • 1/25/2018: Paper published in ACS Chemical Biology discussing the latest developments in CRISPR-based gene drives and whether they can be confined in the wild.
  • 1/18/2018: Lab receives sub-award to continue work on individual-based models of malaria transmission, control and elimination with Professor David Smith at the University of Washington.
  • 1/16/2018: Welcome to Shaina Desai, Sabrina Wong and Sarafina Smith who are joining the lab as undergrad researchers working on inference of mosquito movement patterns and network implementations for modeling them.
  • 12/2017: John Marshall gives talk on dengue, malaria and CRISPR-based gene drive at the National Health Research Institutes, Taiwan and the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, China.
  • 12/1/2017: Paper published in PLoS ONE on the Vector Control Optimization Model (VCOM) for malaria elimination incorporating the full range of novel vector control tools.
  • 11/28/2017: John Marshall gives talk on gene drive at LAVIPAC workshop on innovative vector control strategies in the Pacific in Moorea, French Polynesia.
  • 11/18/2017: Héctor Sánchez, Sean Wu and Jared Bennett present their work on the MICRO and MGDrivE modeling frameworks at the UC Berkeley Computational and Genomic Biology Retreat in Petaluma.
  • 11/16/2017: John Marshall quoted in New York Times article on gene drive.
  • 11/3/2017: Sean Wu and Héctor Sánchez present their work on the MASH modeling framework to the Malaria Modeling Consortium in Baltimore, MD.
  • 10/31/2017: Lab receives award from the UC Berkeley Innovative Genomics Institute to model the use of CRISPR-Cas9-based gene drive systems for the control of agricultural pests.
  • 10/28/2017: Pre-print published on bioRxiv discussing the effects of three Aedes aegypti control strategies on the mosquito-contact network structure in a heterogeneous landscape.
  • 10/27/2017: John Marshall presents on "CRISPR-Cas9-based gene drive architecture for control of agricultural pests" at the UC Berkeley Innovative Genomics Institute Open House.
  • 10/17/2017: Paper published in Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases on recommendations for laboratory confinement and management of gene drive systems.
  • 10/11/2017: Jared Bennett is awarded a scholarship to present at a workshop on "Assessing the security implications of genome editing technology" in Hanover, Germany.
  • 10/7/2017: Sean Wu and Héctor Sánchez present on "MICRO: An agent-based framework for modeling mosquito-borne pathogens" and "MGDrivE: Mosquito gene drive explorer" at the Northern California Computational Biology Student Symposium in Santa Cruz.
  • 9/18/2017: John Marshall presents on mathematical models of gene drive systems at a Predator Free 2050 workshop at the University of Otago, New Zealand.
  • 8/16/2017: Welcome to Tomás León who is joining the lab as a Graduate Student Researcher working on environmental determinants of mosquito population sizes and rates of mosquito movement between populations.
  • 8/14/2017: Welcome to Aiden Baek who is joining the lab as an undergrad researcher working on mosquito co-infections and their potential role in blocking mosquito-borne disease transmission to humans.
  • 8/8/2017: Paper published in Nature Biotechnology on guidelines for the governance of gene drive systems in insect disease vectors and pest species.
  • 7/19/2017: Lab receives award to work on safe, genetics-based approaches to control Aedes aegypti, the mosquito vector of dengue, Zika and chikungunya, as part of a DARPA Safe Genes project led by Professor Omar Akbari. See Berkeley News story here: "Defense department pours $65 million into making CRISPR safer".
  • 7/3/2017: Paper published in Malaria Journal on the potential role of outdoor attractive toxic sugar baits in controlling residual malaria transmission.
  • 7/1/2017: Welcome to Héctor Sánchez who is joining the lab as a postdoc working on modeling aspects of the UCI Malaria Initiative to control malaria using sustainable, genetics-based approaches.
  • 7/1/2017: Welcome to Jared Bennett who is joining the lab as a Biophysics PhD student working on genomic and population genetic aspects of resistance to CRISPR-Cas9-based gene drive systems in mosquitoes.
  • 6/26/2017: Lab research featured as lead story on Berkeley News: "New gene-editing technique could drive out mosquito-borne disease".
  • 6/22/2017: Paper published in PLoS NTDs on the interplay of climate, interventions and imported cases in determining the size of the 2014 dengue outbreak in Guangzhou, China.
  • 6/19/2017: Paper published in Nature Scientific Reports on the role that multiplexing of guide RNAs could play in enabling homing-based gene drive systems to suppress disease-transmitting mosquito populations on a potentially global scale. Corresponding molecular work outlines successful multiplexing in Drosophila.
  • 5/15/2017: Lab receives sub-award to work on sustainable, genetics-based approaches to control malaria transmission by the vector mosquito, Anopheles gambiae as part of the UCI Malaria Initiative led by Professor Tony James. See UCI News story here: "UCI establishes Malaria Initiative to fight deadly disease in Africa".
  • 5/13/2017: Welcome to Suzanne Dufault and Partow Imani who are joining the lab as Graduate Student Researchers working on mathematical models of mosquito dispersal and site selection considerations for potential trials of genetically modified mosquitoes.
  • 5/1/2017: Welcome to Jared Bennett who is joining the lab as a Biophysics rotation student for the summer working on evolutionary considerations related to the use of CRISPR-Cas9-based homing systems for gene drive in mosquitoes.
  • 4/26/2017: Series of three papers published in BMJ Global Health on the role of novel mosquito control strategies that go beyond bed nets and insecticide spraying of walls to suppress mosquito populations and potentially eliminate malaria.
  • 4/26/2017: Congratulations to Héctor Sánchez who has just graduated with his PhD in computer science working on individual-based models of mosquito population dynamics and control!
  • 4/21/2017: Lab receives funds to contribute to the development of mathematical models of schistosomiasis transmission as part of an NSF Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases grant awarded to Professor Justin Remais at UC Berkeley.
  • 4/18/2017: Welcome to Francois Rerolle, a PhD student with the Malaria Elimination Initiative at UCSF, who is collaborating with our lab to estimate the effect size of insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying in Zambia using malaria surveillance and survey data.
  • 4/7/2017: Lab receives sub-award to work on individual-based models of malaria transmission, control and elimination with Professor David Smith at the University of Washington.
  • 3/21/2017: John Marshall gives talk at Lorentz Center workshop on “Challenges for the Regulation of Gene Drive Technology” in Leiden, the Netherlands.
  • 2/2/2017: Welcome to Biyonka Liang who is joining the lab as an undergrad researcher working with Sean Wu on an individual-based model of mosquito-borne disease transmission.
  • 1/26/2017: John Marshall gives invited talk at Stanford Biomedical Data Science workshop on parameter estimation in infectious disease epidemiology.
  • 1/23/2017: Welcome to Qinlong Jing, vice section chief at Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who is joining the lab as a visiting PhD student working on analysis of surveillance data from a recent dengue outbreak in Guangzhou, China.
  • 12/15/2016: John Marshall gives invited talk at the Joint Genome Institute, US Department of Energy on “Gene drive: What is possible at the population level with currently available molecular components?”
  • 11/14/2016: Samson Kiware, Sean Wu and John Marshall present at the 65th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Atlanta, GA.
  • 10/1/2016: Commentary published in Trends in Parasitology describing how to most effectively control malaria transmission in the context of human movement patterns.
  • 9/25/2016: John Marshall gives invited talk on "Gene drive: What is possible at the population level with currently-available molecular components?" at the 25th International Congress of Entomology in Orlando, FL.
  • 8/4/2016: Welcome to Chloe Tarrasch who is joining the lab as an undergrad researcher working on a mathematical model of novel mosquito control methods for a project sponsored by the Parker Foundation.
  • 5/1/2016: UC Davis collaborator, Yoosook Lee, is awarded Vector-Borne Disease Pilot Grant working towards the eradication of Aedes aegypti in California (John Marshall is co-investigator).
  • 4/12/2016: Paper published in Malaria Journal on the results of a survey of human movement patterns in Mali, Burkina Faso, Zambia and Tanzania highlighting women traveling with children and seasonal youth workers as key traveler groups.
  • 3/13/2016: Welcome to Samson Kiware who is visiting the lab as part of his Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship to develop mathematical models for mosquito ecology and control.
  • 3/8/2016: John Marshall gives invited talk, “Designing disease control strategies using models and data from multiple sources", at the ENAR Spring Meeting in Austin, TX.
  • 3/7/2016: John Marshall gives invited talk, “Zika virus: Insights from mathematical models,” at UCSF Preparedness for Zika Symposium.
  • 3/1/2016: Welcome to Héctor Sánchez who is visiting the lab as a PhD student working on optimal mosquito-borne disease control strategies funded by a UC MEXUS Collaborative Research Grant.
  • 2/29/2016: Congratulations to Sean Wu who has just been admitted to the PhD program in epidemiology at UC Berkeley to work in our lab!
  • 2/10/2016: Paper published in PLoS NTDs on determinants of a large dengue outbreak in Guanzhou, China in 2014, based on results of a mathematical model.
  • 12/8/2015: Paper published in Malaria Journal on an individual-based model of mosquito ecology investigating the use of attractive toxic sugar baits (ATSBs) on malaria control.
  • 10/25/2015: John Marshall presents on "Risk maps to decision maps for malaria elimination" at the 64th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Philadelphia, PA.
  • 10/15/2015: Book chapter published in Genetic Control of Dengue and Malaria entitled “Gene drive systems in mosquitoes” exploring the full range of homing-based, toxin-antidote-based and other gene drive systems.​
  • 9/18/2015: John Marshall gives invited colloquium on mathematical modeling as a tool in the fight against malaria at the University of Maryland, College Park.
  • 9/14/2015: Welcome to Sean Wu who is joining the lab as a Graduate Student Researcher working on a mathematical model of mosquito swarm spraying and other novel mosquito control interventions for a project sponsored by the Parker Foundation.
  • 7/22/2015: Two book chapters on biosafety issues related to the use of GM mosquitoes published in WHO biosafety training manual: Chapter 9 on the Cartagena Protocol and releases of transgenic mosquitoes, and Chapter 11 on measuring public attitudes to releases of transgenic mosquitoes.
  • 7/1/2015: John Marshall joins DisARM team at UCSF to lead development of mathematical models to convert malaria risk maps to intervention decision maps to support malaria elimination activities in Swaziland and Zimbabwe.
  • 7/1/2015: UC Davis collaborator, Yoosook Lee, is awarded Signature Research in Genomics Program Award to develop genomic tools for estimating dispersal of African malaria vectors (John Marshall is co-investigator).
  • 6/26/2015: Lab receives UC MEXUS Collaborative Research Grant in collaboration with Prof. Edgar Emmanuel Vallejo of Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico to determine optimal strategies for the control of mosquito-borne diseases in Mexico and the US.
  • 6/26/2015: Congratulations to Samson Kiware on being awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship to develop an informatics system and mathematical models for mosquito ecology and control.
  • 6/17/2015: John Marshall joins vector control team at UCSF to lead development of mathematical models for a Parker Foundation grant to investigate the role of innovative mosquito control strategies to achieve malaria elimination.
  • 5/21/2015: Welcome to Raira Marotta who is joining the lab as a summer research student working on mathematical models of violence and violence prevention sponsored by the International Institute of Education, Brazil.
  • 4/24/2015: John Marshall gives invited talk, “Mathematical modeling in a new era of malaria elimination,” at the Bay Area World Malaria Day Symposium.
  • 3/11/2015: Welcome to Hannah Sumiko Daly who is joining the lab as an undergraduate researcher looking into costs of malaria interventions and delivery strategies.
  • ​2/10/2015: John Marshall gives invited talk at the House of Lords, London, UK on “The current policy situation regarding GM insects for disease control”.
  • 2/5/2015: Paper published in Malaria Journal on an individual-based model of mosquito ecology investigating the impact of sugar resources on mosquito survival.
  • 1/5/2015: Lab opens doors.
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