Ben Ridenhour
Associate Professor · Department of Mathematics and Statistical Science · University of Idaho
I develop and apply quantitative methods to understand the evolutionary ecology of communities, with a focus on human health.
Biomathematics, biostatistics, and computation are at the core of my work. I have worked on predator–prey coevolution, the spatiotemporal dynamics and prevention of influenza, and microbial community dynamics. In recent years I have focused on two areas: (1) the interactions that occur within microbiomes and their consequences for health, and (2) epidemiological modeling of infectious diseases to improve public health strategies.
Before joining the University of Idaho, I worked at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of Notre Dame. At Idaho, I am a member of the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology program, the Initiative for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies (IBEST) within the Institute for Interdisciplinary Data Sciences (IIDS), and the Center for Modeling Complex Interactions.
Join the lab
I am always interested in hearing from undergraduates, prospective graduate students, and postdocs. Preference goes to people with quantitative or computational skills, or a strong interest in developing them. Graduate students can join through the Mathematics and Statistical Science or Bioinformatics and Computational Biology graduate programs.
Email me with a short description of your interests and a CV.
Research areas
Microbiome dynamics
Mathematical and statistical models of interacting microbial communities and what they mean for health.
Infectious disease & public health
Forecasting, risk modeling, and evaluating interventions for COVID-19, influenza, and other diseases.
Plasmids & antibiotic resistance
How mobile genetic elements persist and spread through bacterial communities.
Recent publications
- IQC: A novel criterion for assessing feature selection stability in high-dimensional analyses.Preprint
- An aging risk-factor scale: Biomarkers of renal disease and anemia are primary predictors of three-year survival in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus).Preprint
- Using geographically weighted random forests to analyze county-level diabetes prevalence in the USA.
- Predictive spatial modeling of sociodemographic risk for COVID-19 mortality.
- Precision of Hi-C-based metagenome-assembled genome reconstruction across binning pipelines.