Lauren Gardner is the Alton and Sandra Cleveland Professor in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering at Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering, holds a joint appointment In the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and is Director of the Center for Systems Science and Engineering. She is the creator of the interactive web-based dashboard being used by public health authorities, researchers, and the general public around the globe to track the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Because of her expertise and leadership, Gardner was one of six Johns Hopkins experts who briefed congressional staff about the outbreak during a Capitol Hill event in early March 2020. She was awarded the 2022 Lasker~Bloomberg Public Service Award, America’s top medical research prize, for creating the COVID-19 dashboard that became the world’s most trusted source for reliable, real-time data about the pandemic, as well as named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020; was included on BBC’s 100 Women List 2020: Women who led change; was named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business for 2020. Her research expertise is in integrated transport and epidemiological modeling. Gardner has previously led related interdisciplinary research projects which utilize network optimization and mathematical modeling to progress the state of the art in global epidemiological risk assessment. Beyond mobility, her work focuses more holistically on virus diffusion as a function of climate, land use, mobility, and other contributing risk factors. On these topics Gardner has received research funding from organizations including NIH, NSF, NASA, and the CDC. Outcomes from her research projects have led to publications in leading interdisciplinary and infectious disease journals, presentations at international academic conferences, as well invited seminars and keynote talks at Universities and various events. Gardner is also an invited member of multiple international professional committees, reviewer for top-tier journals and grant funding organizations, and invited participant of various Scientific Advisory Committees. She has also supervised more than 30 graduate students and post-docs, and teaches courses on network science and systems engineering. For more information please see the CSSE website: https://systems.jhu.edu/lauren_gardner/