My research aims to improve understanding of the epidemiological factors and population processes shaping infectious disease spread in human and animal populations. A key practical focus is the analysis and optimisation of intervention strategies aimed at reducing transmission or disease burden. Much of my work is applied, informing disease control policy-making by public and global health institutions.

With recent advances in data availability (both epidemiological and molecular) and affordable high-performance computing, mathematical models of infectious disease spread now offer the potential to provide predictive, quantitative analyses of alternative disease control and treatment strategies, as well as qualitative insight into the complex non-linear processes shaping pathogen replication and evolution. An important strand of my research program is therefore to develop the statistical and mathematical tools necessary for such increasingly sophisticated models to be rigorously tested and validated against epidemiological, molecular and experimental data. The breadth of my research interests reflects my belief that comparative analyses of different host-pathogen systems can provide powerful insights into the population processes common to many infectious diseases, while highlighting how key differences in disease biology, route of transmission or host population structure determine observed differences in patterns of infection.

Emerging infections
A major research interest throughout my career has been on developing mathematical models of the geographic spread of newly emergent pathogens - such as BSE/vCJD, foot and mouth disease, SARS and MERS, pandemic influenza, Ebola, ZIka and SARS-CoV-2  - to examine containment and mitigation strategies. Much of this work has been undertaken in collaboration with colleagues in my department and external institutions - most notably public health partners such as the World Health Organization [WHO], the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and UKHSA. These partnerships have been vital in facilitating the results of my work being used to inform policy. Building on our earlier work, I and my colleagues founded the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis (previously known as MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling) in 2008 to consolidate and enhance our work on emerging infections and its translation to public health policy-making. In 2019 the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA) was launched to further bring together global health researchers in the School of Public Health and drawing on Imperial’s expertise in data analytics, epidemiology and economics.

Mosquito-borne Infections
A second major current personal research interest is the epidemilogy and control of major mosquito-borne diseases, notably malaria (working with Azra Ghani) and 'flaviviruses' - a family of viruses which includes dengue, yellow fever and Zika. The work of my group on these viruses - dengue most notabley - includes assessment of disease burden, understanding how transmission intensity varies geographically and seasonally, and modelling the optimal use of current and novel interventions.