Meet the Team

Lauren Ancel Meyers is a professor of biology and statistics at the University of Texas at Austin and the founding director of the UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium. She was trained at Harvard and Stanford and is internationally recognized for her work in network epidemiology and machine learning for viral threats, including COVID-19, pandemic influenza, Dengue, Zika, HIV, and Ebola.

She has built pandemic decision-support tools for the CDC, BARDA, DTRA, and state and local agencies. During COVID-19, she provided global leadership through her role as a member of the World Health Organization's COVID-19 Modeling Network and the U.S. COVID-19 Forecast Hub.

Lauren was named a top 100 global innovator by MIT Technology Review and is the recipient of the Joseph Lieberman Award for her contributions to public health.

Georgia Thomsen has extensive experience in launching and scaling organizations. She played a key role in launching The Acton School of Business and growing its MBA program. She has served as Chief Operations Officer at Capital Factory and Chief Programs Officer at Notley.

Georgia has significant experience as a fundraiser for philanthropic organizations including March of Dimes, Philanthropitch, DivInc, and Habitat for Humanity. Her background in fundraising and organizational development has been instrumental in building sustainable business models.

She holds a BA in Eastern European History from Texas Tech University and an MA in Russian History from Texas State University.