Navid Ghaffarzadegan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. He applies simulation techniques to study complex social systems and policy problems, the main application areas being health and science policy. His research has been supported by several competitive grants from NIH, NSF, and DOD. His COVID-19 studies appeared in various leading journals in health policy such as Health Affairs, BioScience, Lancet Planetary Health, and PLoS Computational Biology and received media coverage by Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, and Le Monde. He is an Associate Editor of the System Dynamics Review. He is the recipient of the College of Engineering’s Excellence Award for outstanding new Assistant Professors. He has a PhD in Public Policy with a concentration of System Dynamics modeling from the State University of New York at Albany, and an MBA, and BSc in Mechanical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology. Prior to joining Virginia Tech, Navid was a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, Engineering Systems Division.