Lauren Childs appointed to Archana S. Sathaye Junior Faculty Fellowship in Mathematics
Lauren Childs, professor of mathematical biology in the College of Science at Virginia Tech, has been appointed to the Archana S. Sathaye Junior Faculty Fellowship in Mathematics.
The Archana S. Sathaye Junior Faculty Fellowship in Mathematics was established in 2024 with a generous gift from its namesake to enhance the national and international prominence of Virginia Tech’s Department of Mathematics. Sathaye established this fellowship to support the research, teaching, and service of a junior to mid-career faculty member in mathematics whose work raises the profile and character of the department.
Childs received a Ph.D. in applied mathematics in 2010 and held consecutive postdoctoral fellowships at Georgia Tech and at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health from 2010-15. The following year, she worked as a research scientist at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health and a visiting assistant professor at Williams College. In fall 2016, she joined the faculty at Virginia Tech as an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics.
Childs is a mathematical biologist who studies infectious diseases from perspectives originating in epidemiology, immunology, ecology, and human behavior. She uses tools from deterministic and stochastic dynamical systems and ordinary and partial differential equations to develop and analyze models of biological systems.
Her work advances our understanding of and response to infectious diseases, including her primary focus, malaria, as well as COVID-19, where it was used to decide policy at Virginia Tech as well as by the Canadian national government.
Supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Jeffress Trust, Childs’ research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature, Nature Communications, PLOS One, and PLOS Pathogens, among other prestigious journals.
Childs also makes significant contributions as a teacher, mentor, and in service to the department, university, and profession. In departmental and university service, she has taken on leadership roles, particularly advocating for activities and processes that will create and maintain an inclusive and productive department and larger mathematical community.
Childs received bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and chemistry from Duke University and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Cornell University.