The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), Imperial College London (ICL) and the UK Health Security agency (UKHSA) are joining together to offer 11 PhD studentships in health analytics and modelling, funded by the Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU).
This series of studentships includes an exciting research project focused on understanding and predicting behavioural drivers of epidemic dynamics, to be supervised by ICL's Marisa Miraldo, Adam Kucharski (LSHTM), Peter White (UKHSA) and Katy Turner (UKHSA).

The project will bring together multiple datasets (e.g. the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, Google Mobility, Facebook, OpenTable, CoMix, YouGov surveys) to quantify drivers of epidemiologically-relevant behaviour change (both spontaneous and in response to policy changes) across different socio-economic groups using a combination of statistical analysis, mathematical modelling, and machine learning. As well as traditional transmission dynamic modelling approaches integrated with economic modelling, the project will evaluate methods that combine mechanistic understanding with estimation of unknown relationships in datasets, such as ‘universal differential equation’ approaches, which can combine known epidemiological processes with neural networks to learn as-yet little-understood behavioural dynamics. It will consider both retrospective analysis of COVID and implications for future emerging disease threats.

The studentships will be funded by the Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU), with funding covering a tax-free stipend of £22,780, tuition fees at home rates, and research and travel expenses.

More info about the studentship and how to apply before the 7th March deadline can be found here: http://lshtm.ac.uk/study/fees-and-funding/funding-scholarships/research-degree-funding/phd-studentships-health-analytics-modelling.