Influenza

Influenza continues to pose many scientific and public health challenges, from a sporadic spillover of non-human strains to the increasing demand for annual vaccination. We are funded to work on a number of different themes with colleagues at Public Health England, the US CDC, WHO, and academic partners around the world; gathering primary data, leveraging routine surveillance and conducting secondary analyses. Robust inference underlies our work as we try to further develop the best available statistical and epidemic models.

Examples of recent work include:

• Assessing the severity of pandemics
• Describing the life course of human influenza infection
• Understanding within- and between- host viral dynamics
• Explaining complex patterns of national epidemics following the 2009 pandemic
• Developing key evolutionary theory to support future cross-reactive vaccines
• Describing patterns of influenza reassortment

There are a number of postdoctoral fellows and PhD students working on influenza. We are always interested to hear from people who want to join the group.