IGPP - Who we are

Who we are

Potential Supervisors

Filter supervisors by area of expertise

Public Health

Public Health:

	Alex Baker is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry within the Department of Chemistry. His research focuses on the design of robust and low-cost lateral flow devices. He is primarily interested in replacing the biological components of diagnostic devices with synthetic chemical mimics, such as peptides, glycans, small drug molecules and polymers, to broaden their capabilities beyond traditional antibody-based systems. He has applied these technologies to targets such as COVID-19 and snakebite.
	Roberto Vivancos Roberto Vivancos is Professor of Public Health within Warwick Medical School. He has over 16 years’ experience in health protection at senior level and has worked in public health response of emerging infections (e.g. Mpox, Zika virus, avian flu) and in two pandemics (Swine flu and COVID-19). His research is mainly translational, focusing on improving surveillance, understanding risk of transmission and the impact of prevention and control measures of infectious diseases. His work is multidisciplinary and uses a mixed methods approach, combining quantitative analysis and qualitative approaches.
	Craig Thompson is an Assistant Professor within Biomedical Sciences. Craig's research focuses on the antigenic evolution and pandemic potential of viruses (mainly influenza and coronaviruses), viral disease severity and vaccine design.
	Dan Lasserson is Professor of Acute Ambulatory Care at Warwick Medical School. Dan's research looks at acute medical care in ambulatory and Hospital at Home care models.
	Frances Griffiths is Professor of Medicine in Society, Warwick Medical School. Her research looks at information and communication technology in health care in low and middle income countries, along with living with long-term conditions.
	Nicole Robb is Assistant Professor at the University of Warwick Medical School, a visiting lecturer at the University of Oxford and a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow. Her research interests include the development of rapid pathogen diagnostics, using biophysics techniques to study viral replication, and the application of machine learning algorithms for pathogen detection.
	Darius Koester is Assistant Professor in Cell Biology. Darius' laboratory focusses on the effects of mechanical forces in remodeling the plasma membrane and the underlying actin cortex. He uses a combination of in vitro methods based on reconstituted, minimal systems of the cell membrane-cortex composite as well as live cells in culture.
	Dimitris Grammatopoulos is Professor of Molecular Medicine at Warwick Medical School. His research includes redictive tools for identifying women at risk of depression during pregnancy and postpartum along with understanding barriers to accurate early laboratory diagnosis and patient centric control of gestational diabetes mellitus.
	Heather DraperLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window is Chair of Bioethics in WMS. She is interested in the ethical dimensions of pandemic planning particularly in relation to healthcare staff – for example, the blurring of boundaries between clinical ethics and public health ethics during pandemics, workers’ obligations during pandemics and measures that may lessen the ethical burdens on staff. More information on her research interests can be found on Heather Draper’s personal webpage, Heather Draper’s Google Scholar pages, and the Warwick Medicine, Ethics and Society website (which contains information on her current and previous research projects).
	Tom SorellLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window is Professor of Politics and Philosophy in the Dept. of Politics and International Studies at Warwick, and directs the Interdisciplinary Ethics Research Group (IERG). He works on the ethics of responses to pandemics by individuals and governments, and more generally on the ethics of response to emergencies, including civil war and terrorism. He has published a recent article on the ethics of Covid surveillance in the early stages of the pandemic, and has previously written about the ethics of parental refusals of the MMR vaccine for their children. He is PI of an ongoing AHRC-DFG project on the ethics and epistemology of vaccine hesitancy in the Covid pandemic. He is willing to supervise work on the relation of medical ethics to public health ethics, and the technology developed for track and trace regimes.
	Keith HyamsLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window is Professor of Political Theory and Ethics at Warwick. A philosopher by training, Keith’s interdisciplinary research programme looks at ethics and justice issues arising in the context of health policy, pandemic response, climate change, international development, and technological risk. His policy work includes advising a broad range of UK and international NGOs and government bodies, including the UK Cabinet Office. Current research projects include ‘Supporting Just Response and Recovery to Covid-19’ , which investigates the effects of the Covid pandemic on youth in informal urban settlements across Africa; and ‘Covid Observatories’, which looks at the experience of Indigenous Peoples worldwide during the Covid pandemic.

Mathematical Epidemiology

Mathematical epidemiology:

	Isty Rysava Isty Rysava is an Assistant Professor appointed jointly between the School of Life Sciences and the Mathematics Institute. Isty is a quantitative ecologist with interest in the evolutionary, environmental, and social determinants driving disease dynamics, focused on applications in policy, health inequalities, and justice. The specific focus of her research is to investigate how heterogeneity in environment, life-history, and behaviour of hosts and pathogens modulate contact rates and disease transmission; examine trade-offs that limit pathogen virulence and host preference; and characterize the patterns of outbreak variation across time and space. She uses a combination of empirical field and serological data, large-scale experiments, computational simulations, and mathematical and statistical modelling to predict likely development patterns to assess the potential benefits and resource requirements for management and surveillance strategies for disease systems.
	Emma Davis Emma Davis is an Assistant Professor and Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Statistics. Her research is mainly focused on modelling vector-borne diseases in tropical and sub-tropical regions. Emma is interested in the stochastic behaviour of disease transmission at low prevalence (representing both early and late stage epidemic dynamics) and indirect surveillance strategies, including mosquito capture and testing for mosquito-borne diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic she also investigated the implications of individual behaviour and adherence for non-pharmaceutical intervention efficacy (e.g. Test, Trace and Isolate in the UK), which has led to additional research interests in the heterogeneous interactions between behaviour, contact patterns, and disease transmission.
	Matt Keeling holds a joint Professorship between the Mathematics Institute and the School of Life Sciences. Matts research focuses on the three E's: Epidemiology, Evolution and Ecology, particularly looking at how spatial structure, heterogeneities and stochasticity affect the emergent population-level dynamics using a wide range of modelling tools and concepts.
	Mike Tildesley is a Professor in the Zeeman Institute for Systems Biology and Infectious Disease Epidemiology Research at the University of Warwick. His research focuses upon the development of models of infectious diseases and their utility as predictive tools. He has a particular interest in the predictive power of models in the early stages of disease outbreaks, when there is significant uncertainty regarding the spread of disease
	Louise Dyson is Associate Professor in Epidemiology appointed jointly between the Mathematics Institute and the School of Life Sciences. Her research interests involve using techniques from mathematics and statistical physics to analyse biological and epidemiological systems. In particular working with strong experimental links and in discovering the simplest possible explanatory mechanisms for observed data.
	Xavier Didelot is Professor of Statistical Epidemiology and Genomics in Life Sciences. His research looks at the way bacterial pathogens evolve, spread and cause disease. A key aim is to develop new bioinformatics and statistical methods that can handle the very large amounts of data made available by novel high-throughput sequencing techniques.
	Kat Rock is Associate Professor in Mathematics with particular interest in vector-borne transmission and neglected tropical diseases. Kat is keen to develop new modelling approaches and theory as well as answering highly focused applied research questions which can aid in the control or elimination of diseases.
	Simon Spencer is Associate Professor in Statistics. He is part of the Zeeman Institute for Systems Biology and Infectious Disease Epidemiology Research (SBIDER) and the Warwick Analytical Sciences Centre (WASC). His research interests include Bayesian inference applied to epidemiology, model comparison and model assessment, stochastic epidemic models, statistics for analytical science, outbreak detection and source attribution methods.
	Erin Gorsich is Associate Professor in School of Life Sciences. Erin is a quantitative disease ecologist with broad interests in disease dynamics, wildlife health, and conservation. Her work combines host ecology or community ecology to understand infection dynamics with research interests to include disease dynamic consequences of co-infecting pathogens, emerging infectious disease, land use change and vector borne disease, network and spatial models of diseases transmission and wildlife health and population dynamics.
	Matthew TurnerLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window is a professor of Theoretical Physics, attached to the Zeeman Institute at Warwick. His group works on several problems associated with collective decision making and control, in both animal and human systems. Their work on rational behaviour and control during epidemics asks the following question: How should a policymaker plan to intervene to minimise the overall effects of an epidemic? We believe it is important to first ask this question in the idealised case where we have perfect information about the disease and individuals are perfectly rational. While this is a highly stylised setting it represents an important proof-of-principle. From this starting point we can make progress towards scientifically sound policy tools that optimise an objective function for the future. This objective function typically includes the costs associated with catching a disease, as well as those of social distancing. In principle, both individuals and governments have objective functions and these might be different. This casts the problem as one in which individuals seek to restrict behaviour (say) so as to minimise their own costs (maximise their objective function) while Governments seek to offer costly incentives to change individual behaviour so as to target a government level objective function that may be rather different. The main technology that we employ is that of control theory, in which the future epidemic trajectory and behaviour is optimised at two levels of the heirarchy: for individuals and for government. More recent projects include establishing Nash equilibrium behaviour for individuals and then inferring the objective function from behavioural data. For this we use a new machine learning technique inspired by physics-informed machine learning. This involves a methodology that we refer to as “Nash Neural Networks”. In the future we would like to include a more faithful description of uncertainties and a more realistic heterogenous population, currently treated in the mean field using a simple SIR model (or variants thereof).
	Angela Noufaily is an Associate Professor of Medical Statistics at Warwick Medical School. She works on epidemiological surveillance and the statistical modelling of outbreaks. Through her collaboration with the UK Health Security Agency, she developed, with colleagues, improvements to their algorithm for infectious disease surveillance and evaluated their algorithm for syndromic surveillance. They now aim to introduce machine learning to provide further accuracy.

Behavioural Science

Behavioural Science:

	Nick Chater is Professor of Behavioural Science, Warwick Business. He works on the cognitive and behavioural sciences, especially reasoning, decision making and language. He applies his experimental, computational and mathematical studies to public policy and the private sector.
	Neil Stewart is Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School. He has been using mass transaction data to understand how people's behaviour and financial situation has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
	Andrea Isoni is Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick, Business School. He is an experimental and behavioural economist. His research studies human behaviour of under controlled laboratory conditions using insights from economic theory and cognitive psychology. He is also interested in exploring how market interaction shapes people's preferences, and in various aspects of strategic behaviour, including coordination, bargaining and other-regarding behaviour.
	Suzy Moat is Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School, where she co-directs the Data Science Lab. Her research investigates whether data on our usage of the Internet, from sources such as Google, Wikipedia and Flickr, can help us measure and even predict human behaviour in the real world.
	Tobias Preis is Professor in Behavioural Science and Finance at Warwick Business School. His interdisciplinary research investigates whether data from sources such as Google, Wikipedia, Twitter, Flickr and Instagram can be used to: reduce delays in measurement of human behaviour, measure behaviour which previously could not be measured and improve predictions of future behaviour.
	Hossam Zeitoun is Associate Professor Behavioural Science Group, Strategy & International Business at Warwick Business School. His main research interests looking at behavioural science, strategic management and corporate governance. Applying an interdisciplinary approach using organizational, psychological and economic perspectives.
	Daniel Read is Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School. Daniels research focuses on judgment and decision making including intertemporal choice, choice under uncertainty and risk, heuristics and biases. Philosophical psychology.
	Tim Mullett is an Assistant Professor in the Behavioural Science group at Warwick Business School. Tim's research focuses on how people make choices, and search information when comparing options.

IGPP Management Team

IGPP Management Team

	Professor Nick Chater Professor of Behavioural Science, Warwick Business School Professor Nick Chater works on the cognitive and behavioural sciences, especially reasoning, decision making and language...
	Professor Matt Keeling Joint appointment, Life Sciences and Maths Institute Matt's research focuses on Epidemiology, Evolution and Ecology, using modelling tools to understand population dynamics...
	Professor Mike Tildesley Joint appointment, Life Sciences and Maths Institute Mike is a Professor in the Zeeman Institute for Systems Biology and Infectious Disease Epidemiology Research...
	Associate Professor Nicole Robb Associate Professor, Warwick Medical School Nicole studies viruses using biophysics, super-resolution imaging and machine learning for rapid diagnostics...
	Professor Neil Stewart Professor in Behaviour Science, Warwick Business School Neil uses large-scale transaction data to understand behavioural and financial change during COVID-19...
	Dr Dan Todkill Dr Daniel Todkill is a Consultant in Public Health Medicine and Associate Clinical Professor...

Current Research Students

Current PhD Students

	Thomas Wolfgarten Thomas.Wolfgarten@warwick.ac.uk Thomas is an economist (University of Cologne) and statistician (University of Warwick). He is interested in the integration of Behavioural Science concepts with Mathematical Epidemiological Models, in particular, how behavioural factors offer an opportunity to monitor and ultimately control Dynamical Systems, which can provide a tool to manage pandemics. TwitterLink opens in a new window
	Rosanna Glazik Rosanna.Glazik@warwick.ac.uk Rosanna is a Registered Nurse (UK) and holds a Diploma in Tropical Nursing and a Master of Public Health. She has worked on emergency humanitarian responses to different crises in various countries, including South Sudan and Mozambique. Working with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Haramaya University, she coordinated the clinical data collection of a maternal infection study in Ethiopia. Rosanna has also worked with the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team during the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting infectious disease outbreak preparedness and response across the world. Her research project focuses on the utility of wastewater surveillance of priority pandemic pathogens to inform public health interventions in low-resource settings. She is supervised by Professor Sascha Ott and Professor Nicholas Grassly.
	Carlos Dos Santos Carlos.Dos-Santos@warwick.ac.uk Carlos obtained his BSc in Biological Sciences in 2020 and his MSc in Genetics and Molecular Biology in 2022 at the Federal University of Goiás (UFG), Brazil. He has experience in molecular diagnostic methods, working on the development of qPCR and LAMP assays for the detection of different infectious diseases. Carlos has directly worked towards the development of tests for viruses such as Mayaro fever, Dengue, Zika, and SARS-CoV-2. During the 2021 pandemic, his work on the identification of SARS-CoV-2 variants with RT-LAMP awarded him the Commendation Colemar Natal e Silva, an honours medal given by the city council for the most impactful research. In the Institute for Pandemic Planning, his PhD project focuses on the development of a new low-temperature isothermal molecular assay for the detection of infectious diseases..
	Aishah Ibrahim aishah.ibrahim@warwick.ac.uk With a medical degree from The University of Manchester, Aishah trained as a physician in Malaysia before taking a career break to look after her young family. She found her passion in public health research during her years abroad and went on to obtain an MSc in Epidemiology from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and an MSc in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science from University of Hull before joining IGPP in October 2022. Her research plans include applying epidemiological and behavioural science techniques to explore the challenges and opportunities of women’s empowerment driven by the COVID-19 pandemic.
	Yuki Chan suet.c.y.chan@warwick.ac.uk Yuki has a BSc in Economics and a MSc in Business with Consulting from the University of Warwick. Her research focuses on Behavioural Science, with particular interest in health economics in the context of pandemics and public health interventions. She also explores mother-child interactions, child development and mortality, and intergenerational health mobility.
	Reanna Gregory Reanna.Gregory@warwick.ac.uk Reanna studied Biomedical Science at the University of Warwick and then stayed on to join IGPP. She is interested in the intersection between public health and mathematical epidemiology, with a particular focus on viruses. Her project involves assessing the risk levels posed by different potential pandemic influenza strains, bridging between lab-based virology work and mathematical epidemiology. The aim is to generate data that informs the modelling process and can support conclusions made in silico.
	Hanna Palya hanna.palya@warwick.ac.uk Hanna got their BSc in Biology and Philosophy from the University of St Andrews. During their degree, they developed an interest in computational biology and biosecurity. Their dissertation focused on mammalian cytomegalovirus evolution - they built phylogenies and conducted positive selection analysis. They also completed a summer research project on DNA synthesis screening mechanisms with mentoring from the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. For their PhD project, they are planning on doing mathematical modelling for biosurveillance systems for pandemic prevention and response.
	Joe Hill Joseph.E.Hill@warwick.ac.uk Joe holds an integrated Master’s degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Warwick. He is currently pursuing a PhD within the Institute for Global Pandemic Planning at Warwick, where his research explores the potential impact of climate change on vector-borne diseases in the UK. His work focuses on modeling mosquito life cycle dynamics under varying temperature and precipitation conditions, and how these environmental drivers influence disease transmission. By integrating SEIR-type epidemiological models with mosquito and human mobility equations, Joe simulates future outbreak scenarios across different climate pathways. His broader research interests lie in mathematical epidemiology, spatial modeling, and the development of policy-relevant tools for anticipating and managing emerging public health risks under climate change.
	Saranya Jeevamani Saranya.Jeevamani@warwick.ac.uk Saranya is a Biomedical Scientist with an MPH (Distinction) from the University of York, a PGCert in Infectious Diseases (Merit) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a BSc in Biomedical Science from the University of Western Australia. She has extensive experience in novel bacteriophage therapeutics, antimicrobial resistance, and immunology research, with a strong interest in emerging zoonotic diseases. Notably, she led a team at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in COVID-19 diagnostics and was awarded Singapore’s National COVID-19 Resilience Medal. Her current work focuses on pathogen diagnostics, specifically the development of rapid diagnostic assays for a pandemic-potential virus. She is committed to translating laboratory research into public health applications that drive evidence-based policy and advance pandemic preparedness.
	Areesh Fatmee areesh.fatmee@warwick.ac.uk Areesh Fatmee is an infectious disease epidemiologist with an MPH from George Washington University as a Fulbright scholar. She has contributed to research at the Antimicrobial Resistance Action Center (ARAC), the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the DC Department of Health during the MPOX outbreak in partnership with the CDC, and as a Research Fellow at the Walter Reed Army Research Institute. After completing her MPH, she worked in Pakistan on the Global Burden of Disease project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, focusing on immunization gaps and healthcare utilization among children. Currently, Areesh is conducting a mixed-methods study in the UK to examine factors influencing pediatric MMR vaccine uptake and the resurgence of measles following the COVID-19 pandemic.
	Jack Ward jack.p.ward@warwick.ac.uk Jack has previously worked as a research assistant at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Prior to that, he obtained his MPH from the University of Sheffield. His work at the London School focused on identifying pathogens with pandemic potential and reviewing their epidemiology. He has also worked at the UKHSA, appraising potential acute health threats and how they may evolve over the next five years. His research interests lie in developing policy playbooks for a range of pandemic scenarios and the control of outbreak-prone pathogens.
	Rutuja Wakchuare rutuja.wakchaure@warwick.ac.uk Rutuja is a postgraduate researcher with a background in virology, having studied Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases at the University of Glasgow. Her research interests focus on mathematical and spatial modelling of infectious diseases, particularly zoonotic pathogens, with an emphasis on applications to outbreak preparedness. She is interested in using SEIR-type models, GIS, and environmental data to investigate transmission dynamics, assess control strategies, and inform policy-relevant early warning systems.
	Merline Feero merline.feero@warwick.ac.uk Merline holds a BA in Biology from Bowdoin College and a MSc in Control of Infectious Diseases from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her interests include planetary health and emerging infectious diseases, focusing on zoonotic viruses that are influenced by climate and ecosystem change. She integrates her field and laboratory experiences with applied mathematical epidemiology for arboviral diseases, combining ecological and case data to create prevention and preparedness policy-relevant results. Merline is also passionate about science and public health communication and engagement, aiming to incorporate these aspects into her PhD research through her role as a Planetary Health Alliance campus ambassador.

Past Research Students

Past Research Students

	Michael Smah Michael.Smah@warwick.ac.uk Michael studied Mathematics at the Nasarawa State University, Keffi, Nigeria, graduating in 2014. He obtained his MSc in Computational Mathematics (Terrorism Modelling) from the Bayero University before joining the Institute for Global Pandemic Planning, University of Warwick in 2021. His research interest is in the fields of Mathematical Epidemiology, particularly the development of mathematical models needed for the control and elimination of infectious diseases, violent conflicts (as contagious spread of infectious diseases) and other phenomenon with similar characteristics.
	Ezinne Peters Ezinne.Peters@warwick.ac.uk Ezinne Peters is a physician and development specialist with experience in HIV/TB, MNCH, Health Systems Strengthening, and Nutrition Programmes. She was a Fulbright-Humphrey Fellow and an alumna of Warwick Medical School. With her return to Warwick, her research will broadly focus on Behavioural Sciences and Public Health, with particular interest on how decision-making during pandemics impact policymaking. LinkedInLink opens in a new window
	Abiola Ojumu Abiola.Ojumu@warwick.ac.uk Abiola’s research examines vaccination implementation and uptake for emerging and re-emerging diseases in lower-middle-income countries within the broader context of strengthening systems for health and building resilience. Her work in global health has focussed on increasing equity in access to healthcare, pharmaceuticals and vaccines in low-resource settings and supporting countries’ health systems in developing and operationalising policies and public health programs. She obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy from the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Nigeria and has completed an MSc in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, an MSc in Development Management from the University of Birmingham, UK and an MBA from the University of Toronto, Canada.
	Gbeminiyi Joshua Oyedele Gbeminiyi.Oyedele@warwick.ac.uk Joshua holds a B.Tech in Mathematics from Ladoke Akintola University of Technology in Ogbomoso and an MSc. in Mathematical Sciences from the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Cameroon. His research interests lie in applying mathematical and statistical technics to study how human behaviour affects the spread and control of infectious diseases. He also likes to explore the use of available and/or new data sources to study infectious, and poverty related, diseases.
	Ankit Shanker Ankit.Shanker@warwick.ac.uk Ankit has an MSc in Behavioural and Experimental Economics. His fundamental research interests lie at the intersection of pandemic planning and behavioural science. Specifically, he is interested in social identity and social preferences of healthcare professionals, social narratives and norm nudging in a pandemic, context effects in work attitudes of healthcare professionals in a pandemic.