The post holder’s primary role will be to develop seasonal forecasting models to contribute to a new real-time global dengue forecast. The post holder will have strong R skills, experience of developing time-series forecasting models and an interest in communicating the outputs of complex modelling analyses to stakeholders in ministries of health worldwide.
The post holder will be responsible for developing, fitting and evaluating a series of models that: i) account for gaps in real-time surveillance datasets (e.g. reporting delay models), ii) process dengue-relevant climate and environmental datasources and iii) forecast dengue risk by leveraging the delayed effects of climate on virus transmission risk. They will also be responsible for developing a web-based platform to host the Observatory and issue regular automated summary outbreak reports for public audiences and detailed reports for ministries of health. Longer- term this post will involve developing relationships with ministries of health to evaluate the usefulness and impact of these forecasts.
The post holder would join the Dengue Mapping and Modelling Group (DMMG) - a medium sized (6-9 people) collaborative and friendly group with a range of technical and applied expertise. Beyond this research group, the post holder will also have opportunities to collaborate with researchers across LSHTM departments, faculties and centres.