Lisa Fauci, Ph.D.

Lisa Fauci is the Pendergraft Nola Lee Haynes Professor of Mathematics at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. She grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and received her BS in Mathematics at Pace University in New York, NY and her Ph.D. from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University in 1986. She joined the faculty of Tulane University in that same year. Her research focuses on biological fluid dynamics, with an emphasis on using modeling and simulation to study the basic biophysics of organismal locomotion and reproductive mechanics. Lisa served as president of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in 2019-2020. She is a fellow of SIAM, the American Physical Society (APS), the American Mathematical Society (AMS), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM). In 2023 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Lisa Fauci’s research contributions have been in numerical methods, mathematical biology, and fluid mechanics. In particular, she uses computational methods to model biological systems where flexible, elastic structures interact with a fluid. Lisa has worked on understanding the fluid dynamics of sperm motility in the female reproductive tract, phytoplankton dynamics in the ocean, bacterial penetration of mucosal tissues, as well as the role of sensory feedback in restoring functional locomotion in fish with spinal chord injuries. Most of this work is in close collaboration with experimental biologists.