I'm trying for a regular update of things going on in SBIDER. Three main things to report this week:

1) Congratulations to Sam Moore, who has been awarded this year's Faculty Postdoctoral Prize in Mathematics, for his contribution to the paper:
Moore, S., Hill, E.M., Tildesley, M., Dyson, L., Keeling, M.J. (2021) "Vaccination and non-pharmaceutical interventions for COVID-19: a mathematical modelling study Link opens in a new window" Lancet Infectious Diseases. 21(6): 793-802. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(21)00143-2Link opens in a new window

2) Ed Hill and Laura Guzman-Rincon have started a series of podcasts - please contact either of them if you would like to talk about your latest research.

3) Two new papers out this week:
Keeling & Moore (2022) An assessment of the vaccination of school-aged children in England against SARS-CoV-2. BMC Medicine.
Ledda, Cummins, ... Didelot (2022) Hospital outbreak of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales associated with a bla( OXA-48) plasmid carried mostly by Escherichia coli ST399. Microbial Genomics.

Following a previous meeting in 2018, Kat Rock met with Bill Gates (albeit virtually) again in August to present her research group’s modelling results on African sleeping sickness. Kat heads the HAT MEPP group, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which uses data-driven insights to support local decision making and planning in an effort to eliminate sleeping sickness in a number of countries in Africa. The HAT MEPP group consists of modellers and health economists from both the University of Warwick and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute.

Throughout June and July the HAT MEPP group held a series of virtual meetings with collaborators, stakeholders and partners to re-align the group’s project goals with the HAT communities current priorities. The meetings, which were conducted in both French and English, proved to be a great success with many lively and informative discussions and contributions being made throughout each of the sessions. The meeting, which provided HAT MEPP’s collaborators with the opportunity to influence the direction of the modelling work, will ensure that their future research addresses the HAT community’s most pressing questions.