Kirsten E. Wiens, PhD

With deep experience in both laboratory science and sophisticated geospatial modeling techniques, Dr. Kirsten Wiens, PhD (she/her) is dedicated to bringing diverse data sources and methods to bear in the global effort to combat infectious diseases.

Dr. Wiens’s current work at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is focused on designing studies that utilize clinical and serological data in epidemiological models to improve surveillance and guide interventions for cholera and SARS-CoV-2.

Mapping geographic variation in childhood diarrhea

As the primary modeler for this project, Dr. Wiens used big data including covariates related to child and environmental health in geostatistical models to estimate childhood diarrhea burden in low- and middle-income countries.

Tracking disparities in diarrhea treatment with ORS

Dr. Wiens led work that compared diarrhea mortality patterns to similarly-estimated patterns in oral rehydration salts (ORS), identifying vulnerable locations in countries such as Colombia where diarrhea mortality is high and ORS coverage is low.

Mapping TB bacterial strains

Dr. Wiens assembled a multi-disciplinary team to carry out a comprehensive synthesis of population-representative data on TB bacterial strain diversity, and found associations between TB strains (or genotypes) and risk of transmission clusters.

Immune responses to TB strains

Dr. Wiens developed a novel approach to compare immune responses to bacterial strains that may cause different outcomes in TB, which led to the discovery that the strains have evolved distinct mechanisms for interacting with host cells.

Outreach: writing on the link between TB and diabetes

Dr. Wiens wrote an analytical blog article for Think Global Health on how diabetes and TB are linked in surprising, complicated, and costly ways.

Kirsten E. Wiens

she/her