I’m Joshua Weitz, a physicist-turned-quantitative bioscientist, researcher, and author.
I am a Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park in the Department of Biology where I hold an affiliate appointment at the University of Maryland Institute for Health Computing in North Bethesda. Our team of graduate students and scientists explores how viruses transform human and environmental health. Since starting as faculty in 2007, we have published over 150 scientific articles and continue to collaborate with experimental and field-based colleagues worldwide.
I am equally committed to supporting the next-generation of quantitatively trained scientists working to understand living systems across scales from molecules to ecosystems. I have written an award-winning graduate monograph on Quantitative Viral Ecology, an upper division undergraduate/1st year graduate textbook on ‘Quantitative Biosciences’ (including companions in R, Python, and MATLAB), and founded the Interdisciplinary Quantitative Biosciences Graduate Program at Georgia Tech (where I led a group from 2007-2023). More recently, I wrote a synthesis of how asymptomatic infections drove catastrophic outcomes for COVID-19 and ways to prepare for pandemics to come (‘Asymptomatic’ - Johns Hopkins U Press, 2024).
Why Subscribe?
Science impacts more than scientists. There is power in what we do. Power to discover, transform, build, and serve the public. But power can also do other things: instill fear, generate anger, and become a target for attacks. This substack will provide a perspective on what I perceive as the intentional and credible threats to the future of America’s leadership in science and innovation and why and how that will reverberate. If that interests you, then stick around for more.
