After listening to his friend talk about plans to study industrial engineering and pursue a job scheduling air travel, Malloy decided that the discipline was a great combination of his own interests in engineering, math, business and economics. The son and sibling of Purdue graduates, he enrolled in Purdue’s Honors College and chose to major in industrial engineering while satisfying his love of music as a member of Purdue’s jazz band. By the spring of Malloy’s freshman year in college — early by many standards — he was engaged in undergraduate research with IE Professor Mario Ventresca. The two created a project for Malloy that focused on analyzing and modeling disease spread and public policy. They settled on studying the Ebola virus in West Africa, a topic that required Malloy to spend a lot of time learning about computation, models for disease spread, and epidemiology.

“Modeling disease spread is interesting to me, because infectious diseases require systemic thinking about how individuals in society interact with each other, the disease and culture of the people and what they will respond to, and the cultural implications of policy. It™s both computational and personal,” he says.

The goal of Malloy‘s research is to provide policymakers with information on which public health policies might be effective if there is a future outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. His research aggregated existing policies and created economic analyses detailing the cost of strategies, number of cases prevented, and suggested intervention plans for health policy decision makers. Malloy and Ventresca plan to submit the work to a journal, which means the undergraduate had a rare opportunity to be part of a research experience from conception to publication.

As Malloy‘s senior year winds down, the formerly science-shy student has surprised even himself. He is headed to Stanford University in the fall for a doctorate in management science and engineering. He will specialize in health policy, infectious disease modeling and policy recommendation related to disease.

“My place in medicine is public health and mathematical and computational modeling. I can make an impact without being in a lab or ever seeing a virus,” he says. “It is an important problem, because overlooked tropical diseases occur in countries that don’t have great health infrastructures. There are things we can do to help prevent the spread of disease, policies that can prevent diseases from becoming epidemic, pandemic and then endemic.”

With experience including a position as a summer research assistant at Harvard University’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and a DAAD-RiSE research intern at Jacobs University in Bremen, the recipient of numerous academic scholarships, a student government senator for the Honors College, an officer with the Purdue College Republicans, work on campus as an agent of social and political change, and a trumpeter and vocalist with Purdue jazz bands, Malloy has enjoyed a full undergraduate life.

Clearly one who likes being busy and challenged, Malloy explains that he is drawn to infectious diseases because they are unpredictable and provide an exciting field of study. Diseases like Ebola, Zika and the Spanish flu present a huge problem very quickly, he says, and require researchers to respond and understand a disease in a short period of time. “You are always preparing yourself for the unpredictable, for a disease that you don’t even know exists,” he says.

Malloy‘s research, then, is not too different from his life as a jazz musician — both activities involve improvisation, flexibility and quick thinking. Music has also given him another language and taught him how to communicate in another dimension, he says.

“In improv, you have to really listen to each other and communicate without talking. This provides a perspective when thinking about engineering problems. You have a better idea of the impact of an idea beyond the actual product,” he says. “Music has helped me think beyond myself and engineering.”