Steve Bellan, MPH, PhD Candidate

Contact Information

steve (dot) bellan (at) gmail (dot) com Steve Bellan on dune
Phone: 510-643-1227
Mailing address: 137 Mulford Hall #3114 University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-3114
MPH. Public Health, University of California, Berkeley 2008
B.A. Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University 2006
Curriculum Vitae

Research Interests

Jackal Drawing on a lifelong enthusiasm for animal behavior, I conducted my undergraduate thesis on male mate choice in a fiddler crab in Panama. From this behavioral background, I grew fascinated with how infectious diseases affect wildlife and human communities. As a PhD student in Wayne Getz’s lab at UC Berkeley, I study the dynamics of infectious diseases in wildlife and in humans from a system’s perspective. I integrate empirical and theoretical tools from ecology and epidemiology to observe, understand, and manage they dynamics of pathogens. I am particularly interested in the use of hierarchical statistical models and dynamic mathematical models to yield more insight from public health and wildlife disease data as well as drive the development of empirical studies.

My dissertation research focuses on developing empirical and analytical methods to integrate multiple data sets from several spatiotemporal scales with the intention of estimating anthrax incidence in zebra and other herbivores of Etosha National Park, Namibia. Estimating incidence explicitly in space and time will allow longterm mortality data sets to be used to assess the potential causes and community-wide consequences of this disease. I also study interactions between anthrax with scavengers specifically exploring how anthrax outbreaks affect black-backed jackal movement, foraging decisions, and subsequent implications for rabies virus and canine distemper virus epidemiology in carnivores.

Concurrent with my PhD program, I completed a Masters in Public Health in Epidemiology, focusing on mathematical models of mosquito-borne disease dynamics and their implications the management of malaria, dengue, and chikungunya. Mosquito control interventions may fail because the relationship between mosquito population dynamics and human disease burden is complex and variable between different ecosystems and species. In particular, most current Aedes mosquito control interventions, which aim to reduce dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever disease burdens, have been considered unsuccessful, unsustainable, or both. I am interested in using mathematical models as frameworks in which to examine empirical data on vector control interventions.

Teaching and Training

I am interested in training in public health, epidemiology, conservation biology and biomathematics. I am an organizer and mentor of the Meaningful Modeling of Epidemiological Data Clinic held annually at the African Institute of Mathematical Scienes (AIMS) in South Africa.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Bellan, SE, JRC Pulliam, JC Scott, J Dushoff and the MMED Organizing Committee (2012). How to make epidemiological training infectious. PLoS Biology 10(4): e1001295.

Bellan, SE, CA Cizauskas, J Miyen, K Ebersohn, KC Prager, CT Sabeta, M van Vuren, WM Getz (2012). Black-backed jackal exposure to rabies virus, canine distemper virus, and Bacillus anthracis , in Etosha National Park, Namibia. Journal of Wildlife Diseases 48:371-81.

Beyer, W, SE Bellan, G Eberle, HH Ganz, WM Getz, R Haumacher, KA Hilss, W Kilian, J Lazak, PCB Turnbull, WC Turner (2012). Distribution and molecular evolution of Bacillus anthracis genotypes in Namibia. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 6: e1534.

Tambling, CT, SD Laurence, SE Bellan, EZ Cameron, JT du Toit, WM Getz (2011). Estimating carnivoran diets using a combination of carcass observations and scats from GPS clusters . Journal of Zoology.

Bellan, SE (2010). The importance of age dependent mortality and the extrinsic incubation period in models of mosquito-borne disease transmission and control. PLoS ONE 5: e10165.

Manuscripts in Review

Bellan, SE, O Gimenez, R Choquet, WM Getz. Extending distance sampling methods for mortality surveillance with opportunistic effort and temporally varying sighting cues. Biometrics.

Manuscripts in Preparation

Bellan, SE, K Fiorella, D Melesse, BG Williams, J Dushoff. Inferring the source of HIV infection in married couples from the Demograhic Health Survey Data.

Bellan, SE, PCB Turnbull, E Blaschke, W Beyer, WM Getz. The effects of experimental exclusion of vertebrate scavengers on Bacillus anthracis spore density at anthrax carcasses.

Bellan, SE, O Gimenez, R Choquet, O Spiegel, M Trinkel, R Nathan, WM Getz. Finding carcasses using multispecies movement data and surveillance effort in a mark-recapture framework.

Non-Peer Reviewed Publications

Bellan, SE (2011). Counting wildlife carcasses: Anthrax surveillance in Etosha National Park, Namibia. South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis Quarterly (3).

Bellan, SE, JRC Pulliam, J Hargrove, B Williams, F Roberts, J Dushoff (2010). Building Capacity for Meaningful Epidemiological Modeling. South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis Quarterly (2).

Pulliam, JRC, SE Bellan, J Hargrove, B Williams, F Roberts, J Dushoff (2010). Building Capacity for Meaningful Modeling: A first step. Society for Mathematical Biology Newsletter 23(1): 6-7.

Pulliam, JRC, SE Bellan, J Hargrove, B Williams, F Roberts, J Dushoff (2010). Training clinic builds capacity for meaningful modeling in Africa. SIAM News 43(1).

Lecture Materials

Please contact me if you have questions about the slides.

Introduction to Likelihood

Study Design and Analysis in Epidemiology

Fitting Dynamic Models to Data

Introduction to Disease Ecology

Disease Ecology Methods

Camera Trap Videos

PLEASE DOWNLOAD MOVIES WITH RIGHT-CLICKING AND SAVE AS MOVIES WILL NOT STREAM!

Movie of lion, jackal, vulture & marabou stork scavenging an anthrax confirmed zebra carcass