Welcome! My name is Tomás León. I’m currently the Modeling and Advanced Analytics Team Lead (working primarily on the COVID response) at the California Department of Public Health, and a GIS lecturer in the UC-Berkeley Online MPH program. I was formerly a postdoc at UC-Berkeley in the Marshall Lab focused on disease ecology, specifically the fine-scale movement of Aedes aegypti and Anopheles gambiae s.l. mosquitoes and the impacts of the environment on their population dynamics. I worked with the MGDrivE team on incorporating seasonality and ecological considerations into that model for field sites with the UC-Irvine Malaria Initiative.
Previously, I did my PhD in Environmental Health Sciences under Robert C. Spear, who spent most of his recent career on schistosomiasis. I adapted and expanded his environmental determinants of transmission approach to the cases of opisthorchiasis (liver flukes) in northeast Thailand and clonorchiasis in southeast China, incorporating hydrologic models into infectious disease transmission models. In the course of this research, I spent a memorable year in Thailand for a Fulbright looking at the impacts of local aquaculture on parasite transmission.
My academic background
- Ph.D. Environmental Health Sciences, UC-Berkeley, 2018
- Designated Emphasis in Development Engineering
- M.S. Global Health & Environment, UC-Berkeley, 2014
- B.S. Environmental Engineering, Georgia Tech, 2012
- Minor in Sociology
Feel free to email me for more information. A copy of my resume is available here.