During the COVID-19 pandemic, mobile phone location data became crucial for tracking population movements and evaluating control strategies for SARS-CoV-2. I began working with cellphone mobility data in 2020, first to forecast COVID-19 outbreaks on military bases for U.S. DoD, and later to analyze relationships between population mobility and healthcare-seeking behavior in South Africa and respiratory virus transmission in Seattle .
Collaborators: Seattle Flu Study investigators from University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle Children’s Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, and Institute for Disease Modeling
Mobility data have been used extensively to model SARS-CoV-2 dynamics, but relationships between mobility behavior and the transmission of endemic respiratory pathogens remain less understood. As a research scientist for the Seattle Flu Study , I investigated how mobility behavior and COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions influenced the transmission dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 and 17 endemic respiratory viruses in Seattle during pre- and post-pandemic years (Perofsky et al. 2024 Nat. Commun. ). Building on this work, we are using mechanistic transmission models to study the combined effects of waning immunity and decreased social distancing on the post-pandemic reemergence of RSV in Seattle (preprint ). I have also collaborated with Trevor Bedford’s group at Fred Hutch to link cellphone mobility patterns to the genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in Seattle-King County and Washington state .