COVID-19 Genomic Epidemiology Toolkit Developer: Nancy Chow, PhD

Data and Quality Team Lead

Mycotic Diseases Branch
Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases
National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases

Nancy Chow, PhD, helped conceptualize the COVID-19 Genomic Epidemiology Toolkit as a training platform for epidemiologists to better utilize SARS-CoV-2 sequencing for strain surveillance and outbreak investigations. She has worked with partners at state health departments and non-profit medical research institutes to develop relevant case studies.

Dr. Chow is the Data and Quality Team Lead in CDC’s Mycotic Diseases Branch, Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases. She trained as a Molecular Epidemiology Fellow in 2017, where she used genomic epidemiology for invasive fungal disease surveillance and outbreak investigations. Dr. Chow completed her PhD and BA in Biological Sciences at Harvard University and MSc in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is most passionate about public health work at the intersection of epidemiology and laboratory science.

“Executing genomic epidemiology in public health takes everyone—laboratorians, bioinformaticians, epidemiologists, informaticians, and program managers. We worked to create something that will give public health officials the tools they need to use SARS-CoV-2 sequencing for public health action in the fight against COVID-19.”