Summary
I am an epidemiologist, entomologist and mathematical modeller working to understand the best way to kill mosquitoes and eliminate vector-borne diseases through targeting transmission. My work concentrates on malaria though interests span a number of other parasitic infections as I believe much can be learnt from drawing parallels between different host-parasite systems.
vector Control
Killing mosquitoes remains one of the most important global public health interventions. There are many different ways to target the mosquito and the most effective interventions will vary from place to place. My research focusses on using novel analytical methods and mathematical models to evaluate the efficacy of different vector control tools and predict the best way to use them to prevent disease. Key to this is understanding the biology and impact of insecticide resistance and how best to monitor mosquitoes in low resource settings. Working closely with control programmes, scientists from disease endemic countries and policy makers we aim to optimise the use of vector control and produce practical, policy relevant research.
Surveillance
As an area approaches local elimination it becomes increasingly difficult to measure malaria accurately. We are developing new epidemiological tools to allow countries to quantify their current level of transmission from routine surveillance data. These methods can be used to determine whether endemic transmission has been halted and show where and when control programs should target their resources in order to achieve elimination.
(A) The weekly incidence or reported malaria cases in Swaziland. (B) The estimated reproduction number. For further details see Churcher et al. (2014) Science 344,1230-2.
Transmission Biology
The processes governing transmission of malaria between mosquito and manand back again are diverse and complex. Understanding and controlling disease transmission is essential to reduce morbidity and eliminate the infection. My group has been working on investigating the biology of malaria transmission to see how drugs, vaccines and diagnostics can be best used to control the disease. In particular we have been working closely with laboratory scientists to understand the best way to evaluate novel transmission reducing vaccine candidates and predict their impact in the field.
Selected Publications
Journal Articles
Churcher TS, Cohen JM, Novotny J, et al., 2014, PUBLIC HEALTH Measuring the path toward malaria elimination, Science, Vol:344, ISSN:0036-8075, Pages:1230-1232
Reports
Esperanca P, Da D, Lambert B, et al., 2020, Functional data analysis techniques to improve the generalizability of near-infrared spectral data for monitoring mosquito populations