DrDaniel Laydon

I am an Advanced Research Fellow at the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, based at Imperial's Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology. My research has focussed on the transmission, prevention and alleviation of infectious disease. I use a combination of mathematical, statistical and computational models to study a variety of diseases and viruses, particularly dengue, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and in recent years COVID-19. Since the pandemic, I have been especially interested in pandemic preparedness and emerging threats to human health. 

In 2025 I worked at the Centre for Health Economics and Policy Innovation (CHEPI), within the Department of Economics & Public Policy, where I developed individual-based models to address the impact of various policies on the incidence and mortality of non-communicable diseases.

My PhD was at the Department for Immunology, studying the within-host dynamics and viral persistence of Human T-Lymphotropic Virus type-1 (HTLV-1), where I also worked on novel approaches to estimate immunological and microbiological diversity.

My background is in pure mathematics and computational biology. I am interested in spatiotemporal modelling, individual-based modelling and more generally stochastic modelling, as well as Bayesian statistics and the analysis of clinical trial data. More recently, I have become interested in the application of artificial intelligence to address previously intractable problems, at the interface of within-host viral evolution and between-host viral transmission. Where possible, I like my work to have practical implications for policy, for example in the deployment of vaccines or interventions for infection control.