Skip to main content
Department of Mathematics College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Malachi Vaughn

PhD Student in Mathematics at the University of Florida

Malachi Vaughn in Buenos Aires

About Me

I am a PhD student in Mathematics at the University of Florida. My main interests are in applied mathematics and mathematical biology, especially using mathematical and computational models to study infectious diseases!

I graduated from Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University in 2025 with a B.S. in Computational Mathematical Sciences, where I worked with Taylor Hines and Joan Ponce. I was also an undergraduate researcher in the Quantitative Research in the Life and Social Sciences Program (QRLSSP) in 2023.

In 2024, I conducted research abroad for my honors thesis in collaboration with Dr. Ilaria Dorigatti at Imperial College London and Dr. Mercedes Millán at the University of Buenos Aires. That work focused on epidemic modeling in urban transportation systems and developed my interest in applying disease model to real world systems.

Current Research

At UF, I am part of an interdisciplinary T32 training program where I work on problems connecting mathematics, epidemiology, and biomedical science. My current project focuses on mathematical modeling of malaria transmission and transmission-blocking vaccination.

I am particularly interested in how processes at different biological scales fit together. For malaria, this includes within-host infection dynamics, human infectiousness, mosquito transmission, immunity, and the effects of vaccination.

I am also continuing work on spatial epidemic models involving human movement and transportation networks. In particular, I am interested in models where time spent traveling is treated explicitly rather than simply being absorbed into movement between geographic patches.

Research Interests

  • Mathematical Biology
  • Infectious Disease Modeling
  • Malaria Transmission Dynamics
  • Spatial and Multi-Patch Epidemic Models
  • Within-Host and Multiscale Modeling
  • Computational Modeling

Background

My parents are originally from the Houston area, but I spent the first fifteen years of my life living in several cities in eastern China before moving to the Phoenix area in 2019. Living in different countries growing up is a big part of why I am interested in international research and would like to continue working abroad throughout my career!

Contact

Email: malachi.vaughn@ufl.edu
Phone: (480) 679-0726
Office: Little Hall, University of Florida