I am a PhD researcher belonging to the MathSys CDT, working on age-structured models for Human African Trypanosomiasis with Dr Kat Rock and Professor Matt Keeling, as part of the HAT MEPP project.

2018-present: PhD Mathematics for Real World Systems (University of Warwick)

Gambiense Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT) is a vector-borne disease transmitted by tsetse and endemic
to many countries throughout west and central Africa. While the incidence of the disease has sharply decreased
over the last two decades, thanks to the introduction of active screening campaigns and vector control, it still
remains a major health problem.

We already know that both risk of infection and participation in active screening campaigns are drivers of HAT transmission, with evidence to suggest that there is a group of individuals within the greater population who are at higher risk of exposure to tsetse and hence infection. Additionally, this group of people has been found to not participate in active screening campaigns, which further increases their contribution to the spread of the disease.

We have developed an age-structured extension to the Warwick HAT model, which allows us to set different tsetse contact rates for different subsets of the population, stratified by both age and sex, and look at the impact of changing who participates in active screening. Using an adaptive MCMC algorithm, we have been able to fit our model to age-structured HAT data from the DRC provided by the TRYPELIM project. With the resulting posterior parameter estimates, we have subsequently investigated different age-structured targeted active screening strategies, which will allow us to guide policy makers and clinicians in the DRC into ensuring that their interventions focus on those in the population who are at greater risk.

Conferences:

Epidemics7, Dec 2019 (Charleston, SC, USA) - poster presentation.

LMS Prospects in Mathematics, Sept 2019 (Lancaster University) - invited speaker.

Infectious Disease Dynamics, Sept 2019 (Ambleside, Cumbria) - oral presentation.

Education

2018: MSc Mathematics for Real World Systems (University of Warwick)

2017: MSc Medical Statistics (Lancaster University)

2016: BSc Mathematics (Lancaster University)

B.Miller@warwick.ac.uk