Research

My research interests lie in the mathematical study of infectious diseases, at both the within-host and population (epidemiological) scale. I draw on techniques from applied mathematics, computational modelling and biostatistics in solving biological and public health problems.

My team sits across the School of Mathematics and Statistics and the Infectious Disease Dynamics Unit (IDDU), led by A/Prof Freya Shearer, in the Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health.

Please contact me if you are interested in working or studying in my research group.

Research Staff

Current

Dr Sophie Hao (primary supervisor), Research fellow in mathematical epidemiology

Dr Casey Middleton (co-supervisor), Research fellow in vaccine modelling

Dr Marya Poterek (primary supervisor), Research fellow in multi-scale malaria infection dynamics

Dr Kate Senior (co-supervisor), Research fellow in ecological modelling

Dr Richard Creswell (co-supervisor), Research fellow in surveillance system design

Dr Oliver Eales (co-supervisor), McKenzie Fellow in mathematical epidemiology

Dr Pengxing Cao (primary supervisor), Research fellow in influenza and malaria within-host dynamics

Past

Dr Robert Moss (co-supervisor), Research fellow in epidemic forecasting

Dr Jiahao Dao (primary supervisor), Research fellow in multiscale infection dynamics

Dr Ada Yan (primary supervisor), appointed Lecturer, RMIT

Dr Camelia Walker (co-supervisor), Research fellow in infectious disease modelling

Dr Freya Shearer (primary supervisor), now NHMRC Fellow and Head, Infectious Disease Dynamics Unit

Dr Roslyn Hickson (primary supervisor), appointed Associate Professor and Science Leader – Emerging Infectious Diseases, CSIRO and James Cook University

Dr Karen McCulloch (co-supervisor), Research fellow in infectious disease modelling

Dr Nicholas Geard (co-supervisor), appointed Senior Lecturer and now Associate Professor, University of Melbourne

Dr Dora Pearce (primary supervisor), Research fellow in epidemiology

Dr Mathew Dafilis (co-supervisor), Research fellow in infectious disease modelling

Dr Kirsty Bolton (co-supervisor), appointed Anne McLaren Fellow, University of Nottingham

Dr Paul Pallaghy (co-supervisor), Research fellow in infectious disease modelling

PhD students

Current

Haoyu (Howie) Zhou (primary supervisor), 2026–

Bhavya Srivastava (co-supervisor), 2025–

Shadia Sristy (co-supervisor), 2025–

Yilei Huang (co-supervisor), 2025–

Ruarai Tobin (shared primary supervisor), 2024–

Kartik Kamboj (primary supervisor), 2022–

Xiao Sun (shared primary supervisor), 2022–

Yang Yue (shared primary supervisor), 2021–

Past

Thomas Williams (2021–25), Spatially–structured models for acute viral infection within the host

Md. Nurul Anwar (2019–23), Mathematical modelling of Plasmodium Vivax Transmission

Punya Alahakoon (2019–23), A Bayesian hierarchical modelling framework for estimating parameters of stochastic epidemic models

Ke Li (2019–23), Viral dynamics models to explore biological mechanisms for highly pathogenic influenza viruses

Juan-Pablo Villanueva Cabezas (2014–19), Village chicken production and the risk of avian influenza events in Indonesian villages

Ngo Nam (Tiffany) Leung (2015–19), Models of infectious disease transmission to explore the effects of immune boosting

Alexander Zarebski (2015–19), Quantitative Epidemiology: A Bayesian perspective

Michael Lydeamore (2015–18), Mechanistic and statistical models of skin disease transmission

Ada Yan (2014–17), Influenza viral dynamics models to explore the roles of innate and adaptive immunity

Stephen Petrie (2010–14), Analysing competition between co-infecting influenza viruses using within-host models

Patricia Campbell (2010–14), Understanding the determinants of pertussis spread to improve herd protection of vulnerable infants