My main research focus is on solving problems in Aquatic food security. There are a number of projects in that area:
Gill Ogg is a final year PhD student working on scaling up models of pathogen transmission in aquatic systems. She has focussed on how to model transmission in an aquatic environment. She has then scaled up this within tank model to both a within farm model and a between farm model in order to look at the downstream impact of infections on a farm. She has also considered different fish farm structures and different grading regimes. This work is done in collaboration with Nick Taylor at CEFAS (Centre for Environmental, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science) in Weymouth.
Nicky McPherson is a CEFAS funded postdoc who is working on a variety of models of aquatic systems, she has looked at seasonal effects in models of Gyrodactylus salaris transmission and has also looked at how management strategies can be used to control Argulus foliaceous in trout fisheries.
Other projects that are currently under discussion are models of fish behaviour with Jimmy Turnbull, models of the link between protein intake and muscle growth with Oliver Wittard and models of ectoparasite population dynamics with Andy Shinn, Steve Webb from Liverpool and Nick Taylor.
Other Current research:
Tick borne diseases:
One research project, held jointly with Lucy Gilbert at the James Hutton Institute in which we are further developing models of tick borne infections to include environmental factors such as temperature and land use. These models will then be linked into GIS data for Scotland and we will use them to look at disease risks and how they might change under a variety of scenarios such as climate change and land use changes.
Research Group
PhD students:
Postdoc
Background
I did a degree in Mathematics at the University of
Liverpool, graduating in 1991. I then stayed at
- fox-dog rabies
- cattle-badger-bovine tuberculosis
- hare-grouse-louping ill
- cattle-wild ungulate-rinderpest
I then went on to a postdoctoral RA post in the Zoology Department at the University of Oxford where I started to build up a suite of models to describe lymphatic filariasis. This is a mosquito borne infection of humans affecting 120 million people worldwide. It is a disease of great economic and social importance as it causes both short-term symptoms such as fevers - which have a heavy impact on the individuals ability to work, and long-term disfigurements such as elephantiasis.
I started work as a lecturer in the Mathematics and Statistics Group - part
of the Department of Computing Science and Mathematics - at
