In this episode we invite Dr. Achla Marathe and Dr. Mark Orr to discuss how human behavior and economics interact during pandemics. In addition to describing how their research has contributed to understanding this aspect of COVID-19, they talk about the personal and professional challenges they have navigated during the pandemic.  

Dr. Achla Marathe is a professor at the Biocomplexity Institute and at the Department of Public Health Sciences, School of Medicine, at the University of Virginia. Marathe is also a member of the Network Systems Science and Advanced Computing division at the Biocomplexity Institute. Her research interests include health economics, data driven modeling of socially coupled systems, disaster economics, and energy markets. Full bio at https://biocomplexity.virginia.edu/person/achla-marathe

Dr. Mark Orr is a research associate professor in the Network Systems Science and Advanced Computing division. Orr was originally trained as a cognitive psychologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Orr received augmentation to this training with postdoctoral fellowships in computational modeling (Carnegie Mellon), neuroscience (Albert Einstein College of Medicine), and epidemiology/complex systems (Columbia University). Over the past decade, he has become heavily involved in understanding dynamic processes and drivers of risky behavior and decision making, primarily in a public health context, at the scale of the individual and populations. Full bio at https://biocomplexity.virginia.edu/person/mark-orr