Recent graduate Natalie Exner Dean is working on a Phase III trial evaluating the efficacy of the rVSV Ebola vaccine. The trial takes place in Guinea and uses a novel trial design modeled after the outbreak containment strategy of ring vaccination that helped to eradicate small pox in the 1970s. Natalie was the data analyst for an interim analysis from the trial published in the Lancet reporting an estimated vaccine efficacy of 100%.
Natalie graduated from the Department of Biostatistics in 2014 after completing her thesis with Prof. Marcello Pagano. She lives in Gainesville, FL, with her husband and works as a postdoctoral associate for Prof. Ira Longini in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Florida. Her postdoc research is on vaccine trial design and infectious disease modeling. She also works on HIV drug resistance surveillance as an external statistical consultant for the WHO.
