Dengue is a mosquito-borne disease that is fast becoming the highest infectious disease priority in many South East Asian countries. While highly effective vector control tools to prevent infection are currently lacking, forecasts of dengue incidence can help countries better prepare for, manage and eventually reduce the burden of dengue.

The post is funded by the UK Space agency as part of their International Partnership Programme (including HR Wallingford, the MET Office and the Vietnam government). The scheme’s aim is to show how data collected from space projects, in our case satellite derived meteorological data, can be used to directly improve the health and infrastructure of developing nations such as a usable integrated dengue and water management warning system.

The post-holder will play a key technical role in designing, fitting and evaluating a new statistical dengue early warning system that gives seasonal (6-8 months) and short-term (2-4 weeks) predictions for all 58 provinces in Vietnam. Other consortium partners will then package these outputs into a useable application for use by government officials. The post-holder will play a key role in training government officials on best use of these predictions. Data on dengue cases and meteorological covariates (and their forecasts) will be preassembled by consortium partners (and a linked research assistant post), allowing the post-holder to focus on the modelling for the project and communication of outputs to key stakeholders. The post-holder will report to Dr Oliver Brady and Dr Rachel Lowe.

The post-holder must have a PhD in either mathematical modelling, statistics, bioinformatics, medical geography or computational biology, or equivalent professional experience. They must be proficient in using modelling software such as R, Python or Matlab. They must be able to write clearly and produce high quality written reports and publications. They must also have some experience with time series forecasting, ideally of infectious disease dynamics and be willing to travel within the UK and internationally to work with collaborators. Experience of constructing, analyzing and fitting statistical or mathematical models of infectious diseases or their vectors would be an advantage.

The post is full-time and is based in London at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. It is available immediately and is currently funded by the UK Research Councils until 31st March 2020. Further funding may be available after this date. The appointment will be made on the School’s Research Fellow scale Grade 6, in the range £38,533 to £43,759 per annum. Annual leave entitlement is 30 working days per year. In addition there are discretionary “Director’s Days”. Membership of the USS Pension Scheme is available.

Applications should be made on-line via our website jobs.lshtm.ac.uk. The reference for this post is EPH-IDE-2018-25-R. Applications should include the names and email contacts of 2 referees who can be contacted immediately if shortlisted. Any queries regarding the application process may be addressed to jobs@lshtm.ac.uk.