Most people call me Nick.

I earned my bachelor’s degree in Human Evolutionary Biology from Harvard College, graduating magna cum laude. My undergraduate thesis on chimpanzee growth patterns—mentored by Zarin Machanda and Richard Wrangham—received Highest Honors and the Thomas T. Hoopes Prize. I then spent nine months in Uganda as a Fulbright Scholar with the Kibale Chimpanzee Project, studying the Kanyawara chimpanzee community.

I joined the University of North Carolina’s Medical Scientist Training Program (MD/PhD) and completed my PhD in Epidemiology at the Gillings School of Global Public Health. Working with Jonathan Juliano and the late Steven Meshnick in the IDEEL@UNC group, my dissertation focused on the molecular, spatial, and genetic epidemiology of malaria in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I also examined antimalarial drug resistance and malaria genetic relatedness. This work was supported by an NIH F30 fellowship.

In 2020, I joined Imperial College London as a research associate and member of the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team. My work centered on Bayesian re-estimation of the infection fatality ratio under the mentorship of Robert Verity, Lucy Okell, Azra Ghani, and Neil Ferguson.

During the 2024–2025 medical residency interview season, I also served as a part-time research consultant on a Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention initiative with TriCEM. There, I explored how contact-network structure shapes pandemic predictability and evaluated AI/ML-driven agent-based epidemiological modeling approaches under the mentorship of David Rasmussen, Charlie Nunn, and Michael Emch.

I completed the MD/PhD program in 2023 and began residency at Duke University Hospital in the Physician-Scientist Training Program in Internal Medicine with subspecialty training in Infectious Diseases. I started my Infectious Diseases fellowship in July 2025, and I will complete an Internal Medicine Chief Residency year from July 2026 to June 2027.

Long-term, I plan to build a career as a physician-scientist focused on infectious disease dynamics—within- and between-host modeling—paired with pathogen genomics with in interest in global health. I aim to integrate computational modeling, molecular epidemiology, and emerging ML/AI tools to improve patient care, advance mechanistic understanding of infections, and reduce clinical disease burden.

Outside of clinical work and research, I enjoy spending time with my family, hiking, and traveling. I am a former wrestler and still (try to) train occasionally. Most of my athletic energy now goes toward keeping up with my wife, Katelyn Rittenhouse—an exceptional global women’s health researcher whose work I highly recommend.