My research focuses on the three E’s: Epidemiology, Evolution and Ecology. I am particularly interested in how spatial structure, heterogeneities and stochasticity affect the emergent population-level dynamics; as such my work uses a wide range of modelling tools and concepts. While large-scale simulations do play a substantial role in my work, I’m also very keen to develop simple modelling techniques that can capture the important dynamics of a system. The lists below give a flavour of my interests:
Epidemiology: Optimal control of infection, cost-effective vaccination, policy-relevant prediction, within-host immunological dynamics. Disease include: Foot-and-mouth disease, Avian influenza, and Bovine tuberculosis in livestock; and Measles, Whooping Cough, (seasonal and pandemic) Influenza, Pneumococcal infection and Neglected Tropical Diseases in humans.
Evolution: Disease evolution, host response to infection
Ecology: Bacteria-phage interactions, spatial habit-use, sea-grass dynamics, quantifying process from pattern..
Development of novel techniques: Pair-wise correlation models, Moment-closure approximations, Meta-population models, Kolmorgorov Forward Equations, Vector dynamics.