Dr. is an assistant professor in the Department of . His research interests mainly lie in mathematical epidemiology, population ecology and differential equations. He earned his Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Miami in 2012 and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, San Francisco, pursing research on modeling and analyzing antibiotic resistance and mass drug administration for controlling trachoma. Before joining CSU, he was a professor at Shanghai Normal University in China.

Dr. Gao is interested in studying the effects of human movement and behavior change on disease spread. He has developed models for various infectious diseases such as COVID-19, malaria, Rift Valley fever, yellow fever, Chagas disease, Lyme disease, hand, foot, and mouth disease. So far, he has co-authored over 40 peer-reviewed publications, which have received more than 5,800 citations. Three of his papers in the journal were selected as SIAM Nuggets and reported by SIAM news. Their modeling study on Zika virus disease that included both mosquito-borne and sexual transmission modes attracted considerable media coverage. In addition, he co-edited two special issues on modeling COVID-19 and mathematical biology, respectively. He is an editorial board member of the journals Mathematical Biosciences, Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, and Infectious Disease Modelling.