Samuel Jenness, PhD
Associate Professor
Department of Epidemiology
Rollins School of Public Health
Emory University
I am an infectious disease epidemiologist specializing in mathematical and computational approaches for infectious disease dynamics through the framework of network science.
As an Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health of Emory University, I lead the EpiModel Research Lab and also collaborate on many projects in both methods and applications for infectious disease epidemiology. I teach courses in infectious disease epidemiology and modeling methods, and I am the faculty director of our Infectious Disease Epidemiology Certificate program.
Research Interests
My methodological research focuses on the development of an open-source software platform for epidemic modeling, EpiModel, which allows users to build, simulate, and analyze complex mechanistic models for infectious disease systems. EpiModel provides a powerful toolkit for modeling dynamic contact networks that are fundamental for representing transmission of diseases requiring direct contact. EpiModel has been used in over 125 scientific publications by our group and infectious disease modeling researchers around the world.
My applied research focuses on the epidemiology of sexually transmitted and respiratory infectious diseases. I am interested in how we can use mechanistic modeling and network science frameworks to understand the drivers of these diseases, and to design and evaluate effective prevention strategies. Recent applications have used models to investigate the co-circulation of multiple pathogens within the same population where the risk for acquiring one disease depends on the epidemic dynamics of other infections transmitted along the same contact network.
More broadly, the work of my EpiModel Research Lab involves addressing these questions with research in the following domains:
- Infectious disease epidemiology
- Mechanistic and mathematical modeling of infectious disease
- Network science
- Survey research design and analysis
- Computational epidemiology and scientific software development
I actively support and mentor PhD students, postdocs, and research staff who work with me in the EpiModel Research Lab.
Latest News
- Apr 2026 New paper (Gandhi): Casual Contact in Drug-Resistant TB Transmission
- Apr 2026 New paper (Traeger): Long-Acting Injectable Cabotegravir PrEP in Practice
- Mar 2026 New paper (Anderson): Predicting High One-Time Partnership Rate Among MSM
- Feb 2026 New Merck-funded study on monthly HIV PrEP
- Jan 2026 New paper (Harrington): Social Network Analysis of University COVID-19 Contact Tracing
Featured Publications
- Nelson KN, Kiti MC, Shiiba M, et al. Characterizing Social Behavior Relevant for Infectious Disease Transmission in Four Low- and Middle-Income Countries, 2021–2023. Nature Communications. PubMed · DOI
- Traeger MW, Leyden WA, Volk JE, et al. Doxycycline Postexposure Prophylaxis and Bacterial Sexually Transmitted Infections Among Individuals Using HIV Preexposure Prophylaxis. JAMA Internal Medicine. PubMed · DOI
- Jenness SM, Wallrafen-Sam K, Schneider I, et al. Dynamic Contact Networks of Residents of an Urban Jail in the Era of SARS-CoV-2. Epidemics. PubMed · DOI
- Klumb C, Morris M, Goodreau SM, et al. Improving and Extending STERGM Approximations Based on Cross-Sectional Data and Tie Durations. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics. PubMed · DOI