Amber is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and the Institute for the Study of Host-Pathogen Systems at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. She is a mathematical biologist trained in both Applied Mathematics and Experimental Microbiology and Immunology. She received her Ph.D. from the Mathematical Biology program at the University of Utah under the mentorship of Dr. Fred Adler, and completed postdoctoral training in Biophysics and Theoretical Biology at the Los Alamos National Laboratory with Dr. Alan Perelson and in Infectious Diseases at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital with Dr. Jon McCullers.

Amanda holds a B.A. in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an M.S. in Infectious Disease and Microbiology from the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. Her graduate work focused on the cutaneous immune response to dengue virus. Before joining the lab in 2014, she worked as a lab manager and technician at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Vaccine Research, studying Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) and dengue virus immunology.

Sydney graduated from Augsburg University with a B.S. in mathematics with a focus on biological sciences. Her current research is on modeling respiratory syncytial virus dynamics in infants. Sydney is currently attending graduate school in Biostatistics at Emory.

Lubna joined the lab in 2018 after she earned a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Texas Christian University. Her research is on developing and analyzing mathematical models to better understand infection biology. She’s particularly interested in how viruses, like influenza, parainfluenza, respiratory syncytial virus, interact with a host during single infections and coinfections.

Before joining the Smith Lab, Ivan completed his Ph.D. in Mathematics at University of Pittsburgh in July 2020.  He also has a M.S. in Mathematics from East Tennessee State University and a B.S. in Mathematics from the Universidad de Costa Rica.  His research focuses on developing, calibrating, and using mathematical models to understand the role of energy production & consumption during pathogenic infections. He’s particularly interested in sepsis and whether poor energy availability and production is responsible for systemic inflammation.