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School of Life Sciences

Professor Mike Tildesley

Professor

Email:

Phone: 024 765 24818

Office: Mathematical Sciences Building 5.03

Research Clusters

Microbiology & Infectious Disease

Warwick Centres and GRPs

Zeeman Institute for Systems Biology & Infectious Disease Epidemiology Research (SBIDER)

Vacancies and Opportunities

For PhD and postdoctoral opportunities, and interest in potential collaborations, please contact me at the above email address.

Research Interests

Prof. Mike Tildesley is a Professor of Infectious Disease Modelling at the University of Warwick and the Director of the Mathematics for Real World Systems Centre for Doctoral Training.

He has an interest in the predictive power of models in the early stages of emerging disease outbreaks and in communicating modelling results to policy advisors. He has extensive experience of modelling livestock disease systems, including Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) and Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), and he was previously awarded a grant by NIH to model the impacts of agricultural intensification on global HPAI dynamics.

Prof. Tildesley has advised the UK Government’s Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations about strategies for control of livestock diseases including FMD and HPAI. From March 2020 to March 2022, He was a member of SPI-M-O, and worked extensively on COVID-19, providing policy advice to the UK government.

He has published over 90 publications in journals including Science, Nature and Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Research: Technical Summary

I am an infectious disease epidemiologist who has worked on the development of mathematical models to simulate the spread of infectious diseases since I was first employed as a postdoctoral research associate in 2003. Over the last 20 years, I have established myself as an internationally recognised infectious disease modeller and have particular expertise in the development of optimal intervention programmes for future emerging disease outbreaks. I was appointed as an Associate Professor at the University of Warwick in 2016, was promoted to Reader in 2020 and to Professor in 2021.

My research has consistently operated at the interface between science and policy. In my early career, I worked predominantly on livestock and zoonotic infectious diseases and have worked closely with the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). I currently have an active project in collaboration with Penn State University, funded by the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID) Program on endemic livestock diseases in East Africa and the Middle East, working with FAO to devise surveillance strategies to minimise the future impact of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) and other livestock diseases in these regions. I am Principal Investigator on a project funded by BBSRC, in collaboration with the University of Nottingham to analyse the impact of farm behaviour upon the spread of livestock disease.

Whilst I am trained as a mathematical modeller, I also have experience in running field epidemiology projects. From 2017 to 2021, I was Principal Investigator on an enhanced surveillance project in three Animal Bite Treatment Centres (ABTCs) in Albay province in the Philippines to reduce the human health impact of canine rabies in the region. This project, developed in collaboration with my Ph.D. student at the time, Kristyna Rysava, involved the development of a model phone application to collect data on animal bite incidents from patients. These data were analysed by ABTC staff to establish suspect bite incidents. These staff then alerted veterinary services to carry out field investigations to identify the suspect dog and reduce the risk to human health. This project, developed in collaboration with the OIE, resulted in a significant increase in detection of rabid dogs in the province, as well as increased awareness by the local community of the risks associated with dog bites.

  • 2021- Professor, Warwick Mathematics Institute and School of Life Sciences, U. of Warwick
  • 2020-2021 Reader, University of Warwick
  • 2016-2020 Associate Professor, University of Warwick
  • 2014-2016 Lecturer, School of Veterinary Medicine and Science (SVMS), U. of Nottingham
  • 2013-2014 Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Epidemiology, University of Exeter
  • 2011-2013 Assistant Professor, University of Warwick
  • 2008-2011 Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh
  • 2003-2008 Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Warwick
  • 1999-2003 Ph.D., Dept. of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, U. of Cambridge.
  • 1998-1999 Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics, U. of Cambridge. Distinction.
  • 1995-1998 B.A. (Hons) in Mathematics, Clare College, University of Cambridge.