Kat Rock wins the Maths Institute Giving to Warwick prize for her outstanding contribution to teaching within the department, particularly Analysis classes and Introduction to Systems Biology course.

On Thursday 10th October the BBC regional news program Midlands Today aired an interview between Dr. David Gregory-Kumar (science correspondent for the BBC) and both Samik Datta and Matt Keeling, on their recent work with Jim Bull on modelling the spread of disease in honeybees. In particular, the results of the recent paper "Modelling the spread of American foulbrood in honeybees" were discussed, investigating a disease outbreak on the island of Jersey in 2010. The YouTube link for the interview is here.

Following on from this, Samik Datta was also interviewed on the BBC Coventry and Warwickshire radio program "Drive Time", on Friday 4th October. The interview was based on the work being done at Warwick on modelling and predicting the spread of disease in honeybees, and the importance of bees in agriculture for their pollination services to crops worldwide. The MP3 for the interview can be found here.

The Regulation of Animal Health and Welfare: science, law and policy comes out of the Governance of Livestock Disease project at Warwick funded by RELU. It draws on the research of scientists, lawyers, economists and political scientists to address the current and future regulatory problems posed by endemic disease of livestock. The book is written by three Warwick Professors: John McEldowney (Law), Wyn Grant (PAIS) and Graham Medley (WIDER). It has been ordered for the library, and the contents can be viewed on Amazon.

A team from Warwick and FERA (York) have just published a paper on the spread of American Foul Brood in Jersey. This is the first paper from this team that is funded by the Insect Pollinator Initiative. The work is published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Four members of the WIDER group (Hollingsworth, House, Pellis & Keeling) were invited to the Infectious Disease Dynamics meeting at the Issac Newton Institute in Cambirdge. This meeting marked the 20th anniversary of a ground breaking meeting held in 1993 which revolutionised the impact of mathematical modelling in epidemiology. Both Keeling and House were invited to give presentations. Hollingsworth, House and Pellis will be at the extended workshop for four weeks.

WIDER is part of an international consortium that has just recieved funding from NIH to examine H5N1 circulation in China and Thailand.

The proposal is built around three specific aims: (i) to develop spatially-explicit models of within and between farm HPAI dynamics accounting for different trade-related and water-borne transmissions by incorporating different connectivity structures in the models, (ii) to quantify the spillover of influenza at the human – livestock – poultry – wild bird interface, and (iii) to assess scenarios and control options that may reduce virus transmission and spillover between different hosts, and reduce the overall exposure to HPAI viruses.