Jobs / Science and research / 19-1041.00
Epidemiologists
Investigate and describe the determinants and distribution of disease, disability, or health outcomes. May develop the means for prevention and control.
- US jobs
- 12,090
- Median wage
- $87,220 a year
- Job family
- Science and research
Can agents do the work of epidemiologists?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Science and research:
- Task levelPartialThin evidence. CORE-Bench asks agents to reproduce the results of published papers in computer science, social science, and medicine from the authors' code and data. Princeton's HAL team declared it solved in December 2025: Claude Code with Claude Opus 4.5 scored 95.5% after manual regrading. No benchmark in our collection tests new experiments or lab work.
- Project levelNot yetThin evidence. On PaperBench, where agents replicate machine learning papers from scratch, the best official result is 26.0% (o1, April 2025). On a small subset, ML PhDs scored 41.4% against o1's 26.6%. No newer official results exist, and no benchmark tests research projects in other sciences.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in science and research, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 95.5%Claude Code + Claude Opus 4.5 (after manual regrading) · 3 Dec 2025Solved
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Communicate research findings on various types of diseases to health practitioners, policy makers, and the public.
- Oversee public health programs, including statistical analysis, health care planning, surveillance systems, and public health improvement.
- Investigate diseases or parasites to determine cause and risk factors, progress, life cycle, or mode of transmission.
- Educate healthcare workers, patients, and the public about infectious and communicable diseases, including disease transmission and prevention.
- Monitor and report incidents of infectious diseases to local and state health agencies.
- Plan and direct studies to investigate human or animal disease, preventive methods, and treatments for disease.
- Provide expertise in the design, management and evaluation of study protocols and health status questionnaires, sample selection, and analysis.
- Write articles for publication in professional journals.
- Identify and analyze public health issues related to foodborne parasitic diseases and their impact on public policies, scientific studies, or surveys.
- Write grant applications to fund epidemiologic research.
- Plan, administer and evaluate health safety standards and programs to improve public health, conferring with health department, industry personnel, physicians, and others.
- Conduct research to develop methodologies, instrumentation, and procedures for medical application, analyzing data and presenting findings.
Other job titles for this occupation (29)
Chronic Disease Epidemiologist · Communicable Diseases Specialist · Environmental Epidemiologist · Epidemiologist · Epidemiology Investigator · Infection Control Practitioner (ICP) · Nurse Epidemiologist · Public Health Epidemiologist · Research Epidemiologist · State Epidemiologist · Clinical Epidemiologist · Clinical Lab Scientist (Clinical Laboratory Scientist) · Clinical Researcher · Epidemiologist Researcher · Epidemiology Analyst · Epidemiology Research Doctor · Histopathologist · Infection Control Coordinator · Infection Control Manager · Infection Control Nurse (ICN) · Infection Control Preventionist · Infection Control Specialist · Infection Prevention Coordinator · Infection Prevention Specialist · Infection Preventionist (IP) · Infectious Disease Specialist · Malariologist · Medical Epidemiologist · Pharmacoepidemiologist