About

Natalia Komarova holds an MS in Theoretical Physics from Moscow State University and a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Arizona. She has held positions including a Member at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton from 1999 to 2003, Assistant Professor at the Department of Mathematics at Rutgers, and worked at UC Irvine from 2004 until 2024, when she joined UCSD. Her research interests are centered on Applied Mathematics, with particular focus on Mathematical Biology, evolution, and the modeling of complex social phenomena. She has been recognized with several honors, including being named an AAAS Fellow in 2024, serving as a UCI Chancellor’s Professor from 2017 to 2023, and receiving awards such as the UCI Senate Distinguished Mid-Career Faculty Award for Research and the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Genetics
• Geography
• Medicine
• Mathematics
• Econometrics
• Biology
• Demography
• Economics
• Statistics
• Law
• Immunology
• Virology
• Cancer research
• Endocrinology
• Bioinformatics
• Pathology
• Oncology
• Internal medicine
• Economic geography

Selected publications

• When minor issues matter: symmetries, pluralism, and polarization in similarity-based opinion dynamics

  ArXiv.org · 2026-03-05

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Polarization is a problem in modern society. Understanding how opinions evolve through social interactions is crucial for addressing conditions that lead to polarization, consensus, or opinion diversity. Classical opinion dynamics models have explored bounded confidence and homophily, but most assume equal issue importance and purely attractive forces. We extend these frameworks by developing a stochastic agent-based model where individuals hold binary opinions on multiple issues of heterogeneous weights and interact through both attraction (with similar others) and repulsion (from dissimilar others). Our model reveals that the similarity threshold determining friend-or-foe interactions fundamentally shapes outcomes, which in this model can be of three types: consensus, polarization, and persistent pluralism, where each opinion combination occurs in the population. Low thresholds promote consensus, while high thresholds lead to polarization or persistent pluralism. Surprisingly, introducing even a single issue of arbitrarily small weight can destabilize stable states, thus changing the solution type and increasing convergence times by orders of magnitude. To explain these phenomena, we derive a deterministic system of ordinary differential equations and analyze equilibrium symmetries. For up to five-issue systems, we provide a complete characterization: all weight configurations fall into a number of cases, each exhibiting distinct symmetry cascades as the threshold varies. Our analysis shows polarization risk increases when importance concentrates on few issues. This suggests mitigation strategies: fostering cross-cutting social ties, broadening discourse beyond core issues, and introducing new topics to disrupt polarization. The symmetry-based framework reveals how issue salience and social tolerance jointly shape collective opinion evolution.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Superspreaders increase deleterious mutant burden and can accelerate the evolution of complex traits in pathogens

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2026-04-28

  article

  Degree heterogeneity in contact networks is known to accelerate the spread of infectious diseases through the presence of superspreaders, but its evolutionary consequences remain less understood. Here we study how network heterogeneity shapes the fate of competing pathogen strains in a stochastic susceptible–infected–susceptible framework. We show that heterogeneous networks act as strong suppressors of selection: both advantageous and disadvantageous mutants exhibit fixation probabilities close to neutral expectations, in stark contrast to well-mixed populations. We derive an analytical theory that captures this effect through a single suppression factor determined by network structure and infection dynamics, and validate it against simulations on synthetic and empirical contact networks. Mechanistically, suppression arises because most transmission events are effectively neutral, while selection acts only in rare configurations. As a consequence, heterogeneous networks substantially increase the persistence of deleterious mutants and elevate mutation–selection balance, but they can either accelerate or decelerate multi-step evolutionary processes such as fitness valley crossing. Our results reveal a fundamental trade-off induced by superspreaders: while they enhance epidemic spread, they weaken selective pressures and thereby promote evolutionary diversification.

  PublisherDOI

• When minor issues matter: symmetries, pluralism, and polarization in similarity-based opinion dynamics

  Open MIND · 2026-03-05

  preprintSenior author

  Polarization is a problem in modern society. Understanding how opinions evolve through social interactions is crucial for addressing conditions that lead to polarization, consensus, or opinion diversity. Classical opinion dynamics models have explored bounded confidence and homophily, but most assume equal issue importance and purely attractive forces. We extend these frameworks by developing a stochastic agent-based model where individuals hold binary opinions on multiple issues of heterogeneous weights and interact through both attraction (with similar others) and repulsion (from dissimilar others). Our model reveals that the similarity threshold determining friend-or-foe interactions fundamentally shapes outcomes, which in this model can be of three types: consensus, polarization, and persistent pluralism, where each opinion combination occurs in the population. Low thresholds promote consensus, while high thresholds lead to polarization or persistent pluralism. Surprisingly, introducing even a single issue of arbitrarily small weight can destabilize stable states, thus changing the solution type and increasing convergence times by orders of magnitude. To explain these phenomena, we derive a deterministic system of ordinary differential equations and analyze equilibrium symmetries. For up to five-issue systems, we provide a complete characterization: all weight configurations fall into a number of cases, each exhibiting distinct symmetry cascades as the threshold varies. Our analysis shows polarization risk increases when importance concentrates on few issues. This suggests mitigation strategies: fostering cross-cutting social ties, broadening discourse beyond core issues, and introducing new topics to disrupt polarization. The symmetry-based framework reveals how issue salience and social tolerance jointly shape collective opinion evolution.

  DOI

• Efficient mathematical methodology to determine multistep mutant burden in spatially growing cell populations

  PNAS Nexus · 2025-08-30 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The accurate computational prediction of mutant burden in spatially structured growing cell populations is a major goal both for basic evolutionary science, such as interpreting bacterial evolution studies, and for clinical applications, such as predicting the timing of drug resistance-induced cancer relapse for individual patients. Yet, this is currently not feasible for biologically realistic parameters, due to the inefficiency of computationally simulating stochastic mutant dynamics in large populations. Here, we fill this gap by deriving universal scaling laws that allow the straightforward prediction of the number of single-hit, double-hit, and multihit mutants as a function of wild-type population size in spatially expanding populations, in different spatial geometries, without the need to perform lengthy computer simulations. We demonstrate the applicability of this approach by reconciling different results from experimental evolution studies in bacteria that examine the role of gene amplifications for the rate of evolution.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Population structure reverses selection of variants with proportionally scaled birth and death rates

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-02-02

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract A frequently observed phenomenon across the kingdom of life is that a higher reproduction rate can be accompanied by higher mortality. During tumor progression, variants emerge that both reproduce and die faster; faster replicating viruses can be characterized by a faster decay rate; and more frequent pregnancy can be accompanied by a higher chance to die due to predation in ecological systems. Variants with proportionally scaled birth and death rates have been called quasi-neutral mutants. Although life-time reproductive success is not changed, such variants are characterized by fixation probabilities that are somewhat lower (higher) than expected for neutral mutants if birth and death rates are proportionally larger (smaller). Studies were performed in the context of well-mixed populations, and despite the deviation from neutrality, quasi-neutral mutants do not have characteristics of disadvantageous or advantageous mutants, as their fixation probabilities still scale with their initial fractions. Here, we report that in deme-or spatially structured populations, variants with proportionally increased (decreased) birth and death rates become truly disadvantageous (advantageous), and calculate their effective fitness. Furthermore, if mutants have a higher life-time reproductive output than the wild-types and are thus advantageous, a proportional increase of birth and death rates can render them strongly disadvantageous, and vice versa. This changes our understanding of how life-time reproductive success correlates with selection, and has implications for evolutionary dynamics across a range of biological systems.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Pros and cons of group averaging in studies of stochastic rodent locomotion

  Chaos Solitons & Fractals · 2025-10-15 · 2 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Population structure reverses selection of variants with proportionally scaled birth and death rates

  Nature Communications · 2025-12-27

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A widespread biological phenomenon is that higher reproduction rates are often accompanied by higher mortality. During tumor progression, variants can both reproduce and die faster; rapidly replicating viruses decay more quickly; arthropods with faster reproduction have shorter lifespans; and in ecological systems, more frequent reproduction can increase predation risk. Variants with proportionally scaled birth and death rates are termed quasi-neutral mutants. Although their lifetime reproductive success is unchanged, such mutants have fixation probabilities slightly lower (or higher) than neutral mutants if birth and death rates are proportionally larger (or smaller). Previous studies, limited to well-mixed populations, showed that quasi-neutral mutants deviate from neutrality but still exhibit fixation probabilities scaling with their initial frequencies. Here, we show that in deme- or spatially structured populations, variants with proportionally increased (decreased) birth and death rates become genuinely disadvantageous (advantageous). We calculate their effective fitness and further demonstrate that even when mutants have higher lifetime reproductive output, proportional increases in both birth and death rates can render them strongly disadvantageous-and vice versa. This effect intensifies in larger populations. These findings revise the relationship between lifetime reproductive success and selection, with implications for evolutionary dynamics across biological systems.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Author Correction: Barcoded HIV-1 reveals viral persistence driven by clonal proliferation and distinct epigenetic patterns

  Nature Communications · 2025-10-27 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Asymmetric interactions and feast–famine cycles drive chaos in microbialpopulations

  Research Square · 2025-11-18

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Two modes in the absolute velocity statistics in cautious walks of laboratory rodents

  Biophysical Journal · 2025-07-15 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Mutant evolution in spatially structured, hierarchical populations

  NSF · $255k · 2022–2024

• NIH Grant R01CA129286

  NIH · $1.5M · 2014

• Collaborative Research: Infection Multiplicity and Virus Evolution, from Experiments to Large Scale Multi-Population Stochastic Computations

  NSF · $406k · 2017–2021

• Evolutionary Game Theoretic Investigations into Color Category Evolution

  NSF · $445k · 2007–2011

Frequent coauthors

• Dominik Wodarz

  University of California, San Diego

  202 shared

• Martin A. Nowak

  Harvard University

  78 shared

• Anirvan M. Sengupta

  51 shared

• Bert Vogelstein

  Howard Hughes Medical Institute

  50 shared

• Christoph Lengauer

  Blueprint Medicines (United States)

  50 shared

• Ie‐Ming Shih

  49 shared

• Prasad V. Jallepalli

  Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

  49 shared

• Ignacio A. Rodriguez-Brenes

  30 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Mathematics

  University of California, San Diego

  2000

• M.S., Mathematics

  University of California, San Diego

  1996

• B.S., Mathematics

  University of California, San Diego

  1994

Awards & honors

• AAAS Fellow (2024)
• UCI Chancellor’s Professor (2017-2023)
• UCI Senate Distinguished Mid-Career Faculty Award for Resear…
• UCI Senate Distinguished Assistant Professor Award for Resea…
• Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2005-07)