I am a Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor at Georgetown University's Department of Biology. Before joining Georgetown University in 2012, I completed a RAPIDD postdoctoral fellowship at the CIDD at Penn State University and the Fogarty International Center at NIH, under the mentorship of Professor Bryan Grenfell and Dr. Ellis McKenzie. I completed my Ph.D in 2008 in network modeling and infectious disease ecology at the University of Texas at Austin and was advised by Professor Lauren Ancel Meyers. I was a NASA-Jenkins Fellow during this time.

I received a Masters degree in 2004 in Computational and Applied Mathematics (now known as the CSEM Program) from UT Austin, and a bachelors degree in 2002 in Mathematics and Computer Science from Santa Clara University.

My name is pronounced Shway-ta Bun-sel (like Bunsen).