Martha Nelson, Ph.D.

Martha Nelson is a computational biologist studying pathogen evolution in the Division of Intramural Research at the National Institutes of Health and an adjunct associate professor of global health at Georgetown University.

Background

Dr. Nelson has led the Virus Evolution Lab at the National Institutes of Health (opens in a new tab) (NIH) since January 2026. She is a Stadtman Tenure-Track Investigator in the Division of Intramural Research at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), located on the NIH main campus in Bethesda, Maryland.

She has a joint appointment at the Laboratory of Viral Diseases in the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Dr. Nelson also is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Georgetown University (opens in a new tab), in the Global Infectious Diseases graduate program.

Prior to joining NLM/NIAID, Dr. Nelson was a co-leader of the MISMS influenza research network at the Fogarty International Center, which trained hundreds of scientists around the world in methods of phylodynamic analysis of pathogen genome data.

Dr. Nelson remains an active collaborator in NIAID’s extramurally funded Centers of Excellence in Influenza Research and Response (opens in a new tab) (CEIRR) network, an international influenza research network that has studied pandemic risks for over 20 years.

She received her Ph.D. in biology from Penn State University’s Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics (CIDD) and B.A. in biology from Amherst College.