Marcela Ordorica Arango is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Princeton Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, co-advised by Professors Naomi Leonard, Simon Levin, and Bryan Grenfell. Her research focuses on how human behavior shapes the spread of epidemics and other contagion processes in networks of interacting populations. By developing and analyzing mathematical models, she studies how belief evolution and individual decision-making, such as masking and self-isolation, affect contagion dynamics. She is also interested in how factors such as vaccine distribution, misinformation, and other social determinants influence a population's health outcomes. She was awarded the HMEI-STEP Graduate Fellowship in 2025, which supports Ph.D. students in incorporating policy perspectives into their research. Before arriving at Princeton, Marcela earned a B.S. and an M.S. in Mathematics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)