What do you do at Imperial?

I am an Imperial College Research Fellow in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology. I develop new mathematical models to help policy makers respond to infectious disease outbreaks. For example, I've developed models to work out the proportion of cases that were not detected during an Ebola outbreak and if local transmission or importations are driving the spread of malaria in countries close to eliminating the disease.

Who is an inspiration to you?

I’ve had a number of female role models right from school through to the present day who have inspired me. My maths teacher at school encouraged me to use maths to solve problems in the real world. Now my mentors help support me to think big and make the largest difference with my research.

How important is digital education and transformative technology for women in your field?

Both digital education and transformative technology are really important for women who work in infectious disease modelling. We work closely with disease experts and policy makers all over the world. Digital literacy is key to be able to understand how models can be useful for outbreak response and the limitation of our approaches.