James Hay

Luca Ferretti

Katrina Lythogoe

David Bonsall

PSI Data Analytics and Epidemiology Group

I am a Senior Group Leader in Pathogen Dynamics at the Pandemic Sciences Institute and a professor in the Nuffield Department of Medicine. I am interested in studying the population dynamics and epidemiology of pathogens, and translating this knowledge to public health. The primary tools used in my group are mathematical modelling and pathogen genomics.

Trained in theoretical particle physics, I converted to mathematical biology after my PhD in 1998. I was Royal Society URF and then Professor in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College before joining the BDI at Oxford in 2016.

I lead a friendly group of currently five postdocs and five PhD students, a software developer and a scientific manager. We are recruiting postdocs at regular intervals and can supervise PhD students from several PhD programmes at Oxford University. Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you are interested in joining the group or collaborating with us.

See also our Group webpage.

Current topics of interest: Pandemic preparedness, outbreak response, epidemic modelling, digital contact tracing tools, molecular epidemiology, HIV treatment as prevention, HIV genomics, HIV virulence.

Current projects

Pandemic Preparedness: PRESTO is building a comprehensive modelling framework to recommend vaccine trial designs for epidemic or pandemic versions (“X” versions) of the seven CEPI priority pathogens (Chikungunya virus, Ebola virus disease, Lassa virus, MERS-Cov, Nipah virus, Rift Valley fever virus and an unknown virus).

Digital contact tracing: In early 2020, we proposed to slow the spread of COVID-19 by using a contact-tracing app on mobile phones. Since then, we have published a number of studies on how to design and evaluate succesful contact tracing apps, see a summary of our work COVID-19 work here. The Oxford Martin Programme on Digital Pandemic Preparedness will generate a blueprint for digital health systems that can be deployed during pandemics, create a funding model for implementation, and work with public health agencies to develop the next generation of pandemic-ready digital tools.

HIV phylogenetics and modelling: The PANGEA-HIV is a consortium mapping HIV-1 genomic diversity and linking to prevention modelling across sub-Saharan Africa. BEEHIVE is cross-European study of HIV genomics and virulence amongst seroconverters. HPTN071 PopART is a cluster-randomised trial of HIV prevention including universal test and treat, in a population of 1.2 million people at high risk in Zambia and South Africa. AMPHEUS aims to deliver an integrated platform for clinical microbiology, real-time epidemiology and intervention research to fight infectious pathogens in low income settings.