Michael Mina earned his PhD from Emory University (Atlanta, GA) and his A.B from Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH). His PhD was rooted in the fields of infectious disease ecology, epidemiology and immunology. After completing his PhD, he completed post-doctoral work at Princeton University with Bryan Grenfell in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (of Infectious Diseases). More recently, he has returned back to Emory to complete his final year of medical school.
Michael studies the interactions between infectious disease causing pathogens, the vaccines and antibiotics used to combat them, how these interact with the human immune system, and what the implications are at the population level.
He states:
"I also study how these interactions between pathogens within the body effect the larger dynamics of diseases across populations. I am particularly interested in how vaccines introduced into populations alter these complex within-host and population level systems."
Michael is also passionate about statistics, predictive modeling, and incorporating predictive tools into the medical arena. To this end, he develops mathematical and predictive models for the trauma surgery setting. He then makes these algorithms useful in the clinical setting by making them sufficiently portable (ie: with mobile phone applications) to help clinicians predict the need for surgical and blood bank driven interventions in the trauma setting at the bedside. Some of the tools he has developed are currently in clinical trials at Grady Memorial Hospital - a high volume level 1 trauma hospital in Atlanta, GA.
Finally, Michael has worked for many years in highly rural under-resourced countries to help improve public health infrastructure. In particular, through his non-profit organization "Grassroot Health", he consults with and assists communities to develop creative and community driven projects to improve the quality of drinking water in highly rural regions. He says "I particularly enjoy teaching communities to produce chlorine using solar panels, table salt and water that they can then use to purify their own drinking water, most commonly drawn from the nearest river."
In his spare time, he rock climbs around the Southeast, runs, and longs for the days when he threw pottery and rowed on beautiful rivers.