In this episode, we discuss the basis for the PREPARE project, the cool research that brought the dynamic duo of Madhav Marathe and Simon Levin into this project, and how the end deliverable is nothing short of changing the world.

Dr. Madhav Marathe is an endowed Distinguished Professor in Biocomplexity, Director of the Network Systems Science and Advanced Computing (NSSAC) Division, Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative, and a tenured Professor of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. Dr. Marathe is a passionate advocate and practitioner of transdisciplinary team science. During his 25-year professional career, he has established and led a number of large transdisciplinary projects and groups. His areas of expertise are network science, artificial intelligence, high performance computing, computational epidemiology, biological and socially coupled systems, and data analytics. You can read his full bio here: https://biocomplexity.virginia.edu/person/madhav-marathe

Dr. Simon Levin is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Director of the Center for BioComplexity at Princeton University. He retains an Adjunct Professorship at Cornell, where he still has many valued colleagues, was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at UC Irvine from 2007-2016, and recently became a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Arizona State University. His research interests are in understanding how macroscopic patterns and processes are maintained at the level of ecosystems and the biosphere, in terms of ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that operate primarily at the level of organisms; in infectious diseases; and in the interface between basic and applied ecology. You can read his full bio here: https://slevin.princeton.edu/