John Ayers PhD, MA

John W. Ayers, Ph.D., MA, is a CSU Bakersfield, Johns Hopkins, and Harvard-trained computational epidemiologist who uses big data to yield rapid and novel insights with measurable public health impacts. He is the Vice Chief of Innovation in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health, Associate Professor of Medicine, and Affiliate Scientist at the Qualcomm Institute all at UC San Diego.

Together with Ben Althouse, Mark Dredze, and Eric Leas, he has yielded many actionable insights including the discovery of seasonal patterns across mental illness, the discovery of circaseptan (day-of-the-week) patterns in health behaviors, the first replicable evaluation strategy for discrete awareness campaigns, a major overhaul of infectious disease forecasting algorithms, how Netflix's 13 Reasons Why increased suicides, and a data-driven strategy to passively discover the public's health concerns. Nate Silver's Five Thirty-Eight called him a "brave scientist" for his work on controversial issues like gun violence prevention. He was awarded the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Innovator in regulatory science award.