Ian Roberts

I am a postdoctoral research scientist in Christophe Fraser's Pathogen Dynamics group at the Pandemic Sciences Institute. Attached to the PRESTO project, I am helping to design a modelling framework to analyse and compare a range of vaccine trial designs, with a particular focus on CEPI's seven priority pathogens (Chikungunya, Ebola, Lassa, MERS, Nipah, Rift Valley fever and an unknown Disease X).

I received my PhD in Statistics from the University of Warwick in 2024 before a postdoctoral research position in the School of Life Sciences, also at the University of Warwick. My previous work has been primarily focussed on phylogenetics and computational methods for Bayesian inference. In particular, I have developed a lambda-coalescent model allowing for superspreading dynamics in the early stages of an epidemic, and a MCMC framework for Bayesian inference using the structured coalescent.