Director, Institute for Disease Modeling

Gates Foundation•Seattle, WA

About The Position

The Director of the Institute for Disease Modeling (IDM) provides the scientific and technical vision, strategic leadership, and organizational direction needed to advance IDM’s impact on global health and development. The Director sets IDM’s scientific agenda, shapes its capabilities, and ensures expertise in infectious disease modeling, quantitative science, data science, and analytics is applied to the foundation’s most consequential challenges. The role leads a research institute embedded within the Gates Foundation, connecting innovative science with real-world decision-making at scale. The Director is a trusted scientific and strategic partner to foundation leaders, providing independent scientific judgment and ensuring rigorous quantitative evidence informs strategies, investments, policies, and programmatic decisions. The Director identifies emerging opportunities, guides scientific priorities, and fosters collaboration across subject areas, programs, and geographies. As an external ambassador for IDM, the Director builds scientific partnerships, strengthens the institute’s reputation, and helps attract exceptional talent. Through the IDM leadership team, the Director develops a high-performing, collaborative, and innovative organization and is accountable for its scientific excellence, talent, culture, organizational effectiveness, and long-term impact. The role also anticipates advances in infectious disease modeling, computational science, data science, and AI, assessing their relevance to IDM and the foundation.

Requirements

Ph.D. in mathematics, epidemiology, statistics, computational science, computer science, or a closely related quantitative or scientific discipline.
Deep scientific expertise in mathematical and dynamical disease modeling, with substantial knowledge of infectious disease epidemiology, transmission dynamics, computational modeling, and related quantitative disciplines.
Significant senior leadership experience in a scientific, technical, research, computational, or global health environment.
Demonstrated ability to set scientific direction and lead through senior scientific and technical leaders.
Recognized scientific standing and credibility in infectious disease modeling, quantitative science, epidemiology, computational science, or a closely related field, with a record of contribution to the broader scientific community.
Demonstrated ability to establish priorities, evaluate competing opportunities, make difficult portfolio choices, and direct resources toward high-impact work using scientific and technical judgment.
Deep experience with global health data, including epidemiological, population, and genomic sequencing data.
Demonstrated experience translating modeling, quantitative evidence, and scientific insights into strategy, investment, policy, and programmatic decisions.
Demonstrated ability to work across organizational and disciplinary boundaries, advise and influence senior leaders, and identify opportunities to apply scientific and quantitative capabilities across diverse strategies and priorities.
Experience evaluating emerging or frontier technologies and their relevance for global health.

Responsibilities

Set IDM’s scientific and technical direction, agenda, priorities, and standards across dynamical disease modeling, quantitative science, data science, software, and analytics.
Maintain high standards for scientific rigor, innovation, relevance, and impact.
Prioritize IDM’s portfolio and capabilities, make difficult investment and resource choices, and stop or deprioritize work as foundation priorities and scientific opportunities change.
Integrate IDM’s modeling and analytical capabilities into strategy and decision-making across the foundation.
Partner with foundation leaders and program teams to frame critical questions, challenge assumptions, define data needs, evaluate emerging analytic technologies, assess interventions and investments, and translate quantitative evidence into strategic insight.
Develop and deepen partnerships with PSTs, functional teams, and regional and country offices.
Connect evidence, models, methods, and insights across strategies, disease areas, sectors, and geographies, and identify emerging opportunities, risks, and cross-program implications.
Integrate modeling, data science, software, and analytical capabilities around priority scientific and strategic questions, aligning approaches and resources to maximize impact.
Represent IDM externally and build relationships with researchers, institutions, governments, industry, and global health partners.
Position IDM as a trusted contributor to infectious disease modeling and quantitative science and strengthen its ability to attract, develop, and retain scientific and technical talent.
Anticipate developments in infectious disease modeling, computational science, data science, AI, and related fields; assess frontier methods and technologies and guide their relevance to IDM’s agenda and capabilities.
Lead, develop, and hold the IDM senior leadership team accountable, clarifying accountability across portfolios and aligning talent, capacity, and resources with priorities.
Foster a collaborative, inclusive, high-performing culture characterized by scientific excellence, intellectual independence, accountability, learning, and effective partnership.
Model and coach equitable decision-making and inclusive behaviors, and address critical issues in a timely manner.