Hi! I'm Abi, and I'm currently in my writing up period of a PhD in the MathSys II CDT. My background is mainly in fluid dynamics from my undergraduate master's degree at the University of Manchester, where I produced a third year project on Extracting Energy from Waves, and a fourth year project on Aerodynamics of Sports Balls.

Currently I'm pursuing a PhD in epidemiology, supervised by Professor Matt Keeling and Dr Warren Tennant, specifically using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods to fit models for the spread of Varroa Destructor in domesticated honeybees.

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Bee Disease Work

Pollinators are an extremely important resource, and wild bees are declining due to pressures such as climate change and habitat loss. Managed honey bees can be transported to fields in order to provide pollination services, and their diseases can be treated by their beekeepers, so they're an important tool in agriculture. However, since the mite Varroa destructor (varroa) host switched from the Asian honeybee to the European honeybee and spread globally the number of beekeepers and managed beehives has fallen, partly due to the costs associated with treating for varroa and the diseases it vectors. Hopefully, my modelling work can be used to help control emerging diseases in the future.