Evolutionary biologist and epidemiologist Nina Fefferman uses mathematical models to chart how individual choices ripple outward to affect whole groups, helping create strategies to save populations from endangered tortoises to human communities stricken by disease. Fascinated by science from an early age, Fefferman audited chemistry classes at Princeton University while still in middle school. She went on to earn a BS in mathematics from Princeton in 1999, an MS in math from Rutgers in 2001, and a PhD in biology from Tufts in 2004, with a thesis on using mathematical models in evolutionary biology and epidemiology. She then began teaching at Rutgers University and in 2008 became principal investigator of the Fefferman Lab, where she works on issues of how individual behaviors can impact whole populations. Her interests run the gamut from investigating how honeybees communicate about foraging for resources to how public health strategies can better combat epidemics. In this work, Fefferman partners with fieldworkers to create mathematical and computer models to predict behavior.