We’re excited to welcome Brian O’Meara as interim director of NIMBioS. A longtime member of the NIMBioS community, Brian brings expertise in mathematical biology, mentorship, and interdisciplinary research.
We also extend our sincere thanks to Nina Fefferman for her outstanding leadership over the past four years. Her dedication helped guide NIMBioS through a pivotal chapter, strengthening our programs and expanding the institute’s impact.
Over summer and early fall 2025, we are considering what our future should be. We are grateful for ongoing support from the College of Arts & Sciences and throughout the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, more generally, as well as our many local, state, federal, and international partners, funders, and collaborators.
As we begin this new phase, we’ll be reaching out for ideas and input—and we’d love to hear from you. Reach us anytime at contact@nimbios.org.
Outgoing Director
It has been my great honor and privilege to have served as Director of NIMBioS for the past four years. I am so grateful to the Institute’s associate directors and all of the researchers, students, educators, stakeholders, and funders from across academia, industry, foundations, and government, who came together to enable, support, and participate in our transition from a visionary NSF Synthesis Center to an integrative and thriving home for Modeling Biological Systems.
I am also grateful to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, leadership who entrusted me with guiding this stage of our Institute’s development – it has been a worthy challenge and a source of great personal pride to look back on what we have accomplished over these past four years. I am especially grateful to the amazing NIMBioS staff – no academic institute could hope for a more committed and effective team.
Lastly, I am grateful to Professor Brian O’Meara for undertaking this leadership role. I am excited to see how he will lead our community to develop a vision for the future over the next several months and to work to support him, our Institute, and our community under his leadership in enacting that vision. It means a lot to me to know I am leaving NIMBioS in excellent hands.
Nina Fefferman, Outgoing Director
Interim Director
NIMBioS has been at the intersection of modeling, math, and biology since its inception in 2008, resulting in connections for thousands of researchers, over a thousand papers, workshops, training, tens of millions of dollars of funding for research, and robust scientific evaluation (leading to a successful spinoff). This has continued under Professor Nina Fefferman’s leadership, including extending the institute in important directions leading to the new APPEX center for pandemic preparedness.
NIMBioS has evolved into a vibrant center for research, with dozens of supported staff on internal and external funding, sustained work to make math and science more welcoming to all, support for others with our computing and remote sensing tools, and ongoing basic and applied research.
NIMBioS continues to benefit from support from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, from UT’s College of Arts and Sciences, from our collaborations with educators, mathematicians, and scientists around the world, and from our many funding partners. Over the next three months, our community will develop our plan for the next stage of NIMBioS. We do face challenges, but we also have many opportunities. I am especially focused on building on our expertise in creating a place that can break down domain-specific silos to launch impactful research, leveraging our flexible and welcoming computational infrastructure, and deepening our strong connections across society.
On a personal note, I feel privileged to be able to help NIMBioS in its next phase. I was hired at UT as an assistant professor to fill one of the faculty lines UT used to enhance its math-bio strengths when first creating NIMBioS; I have mentored many postdocs, participated in working groups, and taught at tutorials all sponsored or facilitated by NIMBioS, and I served as an associate director for postdocs for NIMBioS. NIMBioS has had both a global impact and also a very real positive influence on my career – I am happy to be in a position to partially reciprocate by supporting its fantastic staff and mission.
Importantly, I am interim director for the next year. One benefit of being interim is that it sends an honest signal that there is a possibility for a new director with their own, better vision to step up into a leadership role. If you have ideas of how NIMBioS should develop in the future, please reach out to our team at contact@nimbios.org. NIMBioS has been a powerful force for good training, outreach, science, and math in our community – let’s have this continue.
Brian O’Meara, Interim Director