Dr. Stephen Beckett is a computational ecologist who works as a Research Scientist. Stephen received a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Exeter in 2015, an MRes in Mathematics in the Living Environment from the University of York in 2011 and a BSc in Geography and Mathematics from the University of Leeds in 2010. In 2015 Stephen moved to the School of Biological Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology to take up a position as Postdoctoral Fellow, and was later promoted to Research Scientist I (2019) and Research Scientist II (2022). Stephen’s research into marine microbial ecology, network science and infectious disease dynamics is driven through the development and use of mathematical models, simulations, computational methods and software development.
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Harris MJ, Arani A, Goel T, Zhang K, Beckett SJ, Lo NC, Dushoff J, Weitz JS. (2026). Interpreting Breakthrough Infections Given Assortative Mixing of Partially Vaccinated Populations. medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences
Dey R, Coenen AR, Solonenko NE, Burris MN, Mackey AI, Galasso J, Sun CL, Demory D, Muratore D, Beckett SJ, Sullivan MB, Weitz JS. (2026). Density-dependent feedback and higher-order interactions enable coexistence in phage-bacteria community dynamics. The ISME journal
Sinclair AH, Taylor MK, Beckett SJ, Chande AT, Weitz JS, Samanez-Larkin GR. (2026). Personalized feedback about immunity corrects risk misestimation and motivates vaccination. PNAS nexus, 5(7)
Dey R, Beach R, Hambrick KM, Sgouralis I, Frémont P, Demory D, Carr E, Beckett SJ, Weitz JS, Talmy D. (2026). Microbial Primer: Bayesian learning of traits from microbial time series data. Microbiology (Reading, England), 172(8)
Frémont P, Beckett SJ, Demory D, Carr E, Follett CL, Lindell D, Talmy D, Dutkiewicz S, Weitz JS. (2026). Coexistence of Photosynthetic Marine Microorganisms, Viruses and Grazers: Towards Integration in Ocean Ecosystem Models. Environmental microbiology, 28(4)
Goel T, Beckett SJ, Weitz JS. (2025). Eco-evolutionary dynamics of temperate phages in periodic environments. Virus evolution, 11(1)
Cornfeld O, Niu K, Neeman O, Roswell M, Steinbach G, Beckett SJ, Wardi Y, Weitz JS, Yashiv E. (2025). Integrating macroeconomic and public health impacts in social planning policies for pandemic response. Epidemics, (53)
Harris JD, Gallmeier E, Dushoff J, Beckett SJ, Weitz JS. (2025). Infections are not alike: the effects of covariation between individual susceptibility and transmissibility on epidemic dynamics. Journal of theoretical biology
Beckett SJ, Demory D, Coenen AR, Casey JR, Dugenne M, Follett CL, Connell P, Carlson MCG, Hu SK, Wilson ST, Muratore D, Rodriguez-Gonzalez RA, Peng S, Becker KW, Mende DR, Armbrust EV, Caron DA, Lindell D, White AE, Ribalet F, Weitz JS. (2024). Disentangling top-down drivers of mortality underlying diel population dynamics of Prochlorococcus in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Nature communications, 15(1)
Sinclair AH, Taylor MK, Davidson A, Weitz JS, Beckett SJ, Samanez-Larkin GR. (2024). Scenario-Based Messages on Social Media Motivate COVID-19 Information Seeking. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 13(1)
Stephen J. Beckett, Freyja A. Brandel-Tanis, Quan Nguyen, Aroon T. Chande, Lavanya Rishishwar, Clio Andris, and Joshua, S. Weitz. (2023). localcovid19now: processing and mapping COVID-19 case data at subnational scales. Journal of Open Source Software, 8(81)
Sinclair AH, Taylor MK, Weitz JS, Beckett SJ, Samanez-Larkin GR. (2023). Reasons for Receiving or Not Receiving Bivalent COVID-19 Booster Vaccinations Among Adults - United States, November 1-December 10, 2022. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 72(3)
Sinclair AH, Taylor MK, Brandel-Tanis F, Davidson A, Chande AT, Rishishwar L, Andris C, Adcock RA, Weitz JS, Samanez-Larkin GR, Beckett SJ. (2023). Communicating COVID-19 exposure risk with an interactive website counteracts risk misestimation. PloS one, 18(10)
Muratore D, Boysen AK, Harke MJ, Becker KW, Casey JR, Coesel SN, Mende DR, Wilson ST, Aylward FO, Eppley JM, Vislova A, Peng S, Rodriguez-Gonzalez RA, Beckett SJ, Virginia Armbrust E, DeLong EF, Karl DM, White AE, Zehr JP, Van Mooy BAS, Dyhrman ST, Ingalls AE, Weitz JS. (2022). Complex marine microbial communities partition metabolism of scarce resources over the diel cycle. Nature ecology & evolution
Lopman BA, Shioda K, Nguyen Q, Beckett SJ, Siegler AJ, Sullivan PS, Weitz JS. (2021). A framework for monitoring population immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Annals of epidemiology
Gibson G, Weitz JS, Shannon MP, Holton B, Bryksin A, Liu B, Sieglinger M, Coenen AR, Zhao C, Beckett SJ, Bramblett S, Williamson J, Farrell M, Ortiz A, Abdallah CT, García AJ. (2022). Surveillance-to-Diagnostic Testing Program for Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infections on a Large, Urban Campus in Fall 2020. Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.), 33(2)
Chande A, Lee S, Harris M, Nguyen Q, Beckett SJ, Hilley T, Andris C, Weitz JS. (2020). Real-time, interactive website for US-county-level COVID-19 event risk assessment. Nature human behaviour, 4(12)
Weitz JS, Beckett SJ, Coenen AR, Demory D, Dominguez-Mirazo M, Dushoff J, Leung CY, Li G, Măgălie A, Park SW, Rodriguez-Gonzalez R, Shivam S, Zhao CY. (2020). Modeling shield immunity to reduce COVID-19 epidemic spread. Nature medicine, 26(6)
Mruwat N, Carlson MCG, Goldin S, Ribalet F, Kirzner S, Hulata Y, Beckett SJ, Shitrit D, Weitz JS, Armbrust EV, Lindell D. (2020). A single-cell polony method reveals low levels of infected Prochlorococcus in oligotrophic waters despite high cyanophage abundances. The ISME journal
Weitz JS, Beckett SJ, Coenen AR, Demory D, Dominguez-Mirazo M, Dushoff J, Leung CY, Li G, Măgălie A, Park SW, Rodriguez-Gonzalez R, Shivam S, Zhao C. (2020). Intervention Serology and Interaction Substitution: Modeling the Role of 'Shield Immunity' in Reducing COVID-19 Epidemic Spread. medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences
Benedetto B., Coenen A.R., Beckett S.J., McGillicuddy Jr. D.J., Weitz J.S., Karl D.M. (2019). The ecological and biogeochemical state of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is linked to sea surface height. Journal of Marine Research, (77)
Talmy D., Beckett S.J., Zhang A.B., Taniguchi D.A.A., Weitz J.S., Follows M.J.. (2019). Contrasting Controls on Microzooplankton Grazing and Viral Infection of Microbial Prey. frontiers in Marine Science
Talmy D, Beckett SJ, Taniguchi DAA, Brussaard CPD, Weitz JS, Follows MJ. (2019). An empirical model of carbon flow through marine viruses and microzooplankton grazers. Environmental microbiology, 21(6)
Beckett SJ, Weitz JS. (2018). The Effect of Strain Level Diversity on Robust Inference of Virus-Induced Mortality of Phytoplankton. Frontiers in microbiology, (9)
Weitz JS, Beckett SJ, Brum JR, Cael BB, Dushoff J. (2017). Lysis, lysogeny and virus-microbe ratios. Nature, 549(7672)
Beckett SJ. (2016). Improved community detection in weighted bipartite networks. Royal Society Open Science, 3(1)
Cowley L.A., Beckett S.J., Chase-Topping M., Perry N., Dallman T.J., Gally D.L., Jenkins C.. (2015). Analysis of whole genome sequencing for the Escherichia coli O157:H7 typing phages. BMC Genomics, 16(271)
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