Susan Cassels

Susan Cassels is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) and Director of the Broom Center for Demography. Her research focuses on health geography, demography, and infectious disease epidemiology with an emphasis on migration and HIV transmission dynamics. She holds a Ph.D. in Demography from Princeton University and an MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Washington.

Key research themes include analyzing how geographic mobility influences sexual health behaviors and HIV spread across populations, particularly among migrant communities. She employs mathematical modeling to explore intervention strategies and has studied populations in Ghana, Los Angeles, and other global contexts.

Her work bridges demographic theory with public health practice, addressing topics like social determinants of health, sexual networks, and policy implications for HIV prevention. Cassels has advised four graduate students and collaborates with interdisciplinary teams on projects funded by NIH and other agencies.

Notable contributions include studies on mobility's role in HIV transmission among Latinx men who have sex with men and the use of location-based surveys to map health hotspots. She also advocates for incorporating historical and structural factors into epidemic modeling to address racial disparities in infectious disease outcomes.