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Lydia Bourouiba first began thinking about how pathogens travel during the global SARS outbreak that began in November 2002. SARS, a close viral cousin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing the current COVID-19 pandemic, leapt from person to person via contaminated surfaces, but even then there was discussion among epidemiologists that airborne transmission may be an understudied mechanism contributing to the spread of the virus. As a physical mathematician with an interest in fluid dynamics and public health, Bourouiba knew that pathogens exist in fluids—in the body, in water, or in air—and she also knew a bit about how fluids move through the world. Despite what she calls the “many gaps in our understanding” of how diseases pass from person to person, these two points made her curious enough to pivot from a career in mathematics and physics to one in epidemiology.
Now, as director of the ...
