Dr. Paul Hurtado

Dr. Paul Hurtado is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics at the University of Nevada, Reno. Prior to joining the Department at the University of Nevada, he received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Cornell University and was a postdoctoral fellow at The Ohio State University. He has been rewarded the Westfall Scholar Mentor Award and has diverse experience modeling infectious diseases in a variety of organisms.

Dr. Hurtado's research interests have recently been dominated by questions in population ecology, and the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases. His research integrates techniques from the fields of dynamical systems, probability, stochastic processes and statistics to develop and analyze mathematical models to address those questions. He also pursues interesting mathematical questions that emerge from these applications. His research spans multiple biological systems: infectious diseases in wildlife; the interaction between pathogens and their host's immune system; small food webs that bring together classical predator-prey relationships with host-parasite relationships; and larger aquatic food webs and their physical environment.