I am a theoretical ecologist interested in the temporal and spatio-temporal dynamics of ecological systems, from populations experiencing the spread of pathogens to large communities of interacting species in ecosystems. With an itinerant undergraduate and graduate trajectory that took me back and forth between biology and mathematics, I am deeply interested in the intersection of numbers and nature. I study ‘complex systems’ in Ecology and Epidemiology, to understand and predict patterns of variability and their connection to structure and scale. Biological systems in general with their diversity and interactions at different levels of organization represent this century’s challenge for quantitative approaches, including dynamical modeling, statistical inference and informatics. Ecological systems, including the Ecology and Evolution of infectious diseases, pose some of the most urgent and challenging problems today.