Lydia Andreyevna Krasilnikova was an MEng student at MIT in Course 6-7 (Computer Science and Molecular Biology), a PhD candidate in Harvard’s department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and then a postdoctoral associate in the lab. She worked on pathogen identification and characterization through metagenomic and amplicon sequencing, which she used to study disease outbreaks, especially among vulnerable and underserved populations. Her MEng thesis work focused on co-detected infections during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. Her PhD thesis work focused on learning from SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks, especially the effect of vaccination on transmission, as well as cross-contamination detection and species identification from genomic sequencing data.
Outside of research, Lydia works on visual and written communication about math, science, and scientist culture. She has written for MIT Admissions and MIT Technology Review and has illustrated MIT outreach publications. You can follow her work at lakrasilnikova.home.blog.