One of multiple PhD projects available, University of Surrey in joint partnership with the Defence Science Technology Laboratory (Dstl) and the animal and plant health agency (APHA) is looking for a candidate for the project entitled: Projecting operational effectiveness under new and emerging infectious disease threats.

Project Summary
The recent SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic has highlighted the need to improve surveillance for new and emerging threats and improved preparedness in critical sectors. For instance, in a military context, effective infection control measures are essential to ensure that operations can continue. This is particularly challenging when a new respiratory infection emerges, for example through a zoonotic reservoir, with direct human-to-human transmission potential and asymptomatic carriers that might delay detection. This project aims to develop general methodologies and evaluate these risks in an illustrative set of scenarios, combining stakeholder elicitation techniques, transmission dynamics modelling integrating biology with mathematics and statistics. This will be tackled through the following objectives:

Objective 1: Identify a set of representative scenarios through a Multi-Decision Criteria Analysis evaluation exercise with subject matter experts (e.g. military advisors, One Health professionals) and elicit criteria for operational effectiveness in each setting.

Objective 2: Characterize contact points for transmission, identify suitable diagnostic surveillance approaches, and explore the impact of different interventions in these scenarios using a disease dynamics mathematical modelling framework.

Objective 3: Assess the expected changes in operational effectiveness by integrating model outcomes with the key criteria for success in each scenario.

The student will acquire broad and valuable expertise in mathematical modelling, Operational Research and infectious diseases, through this unique collaboration between UoS, Dstl and APHA. By exploring scenarios for a new “Disease X” epidemic of potential zoonotic origin, the student will be at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary research in this area. Outcomes from the project will provide key stakeholders (e.g. the military community, the agriculture sector, outbreak response teams) with evidence to support decision-making about potential risks and mitigation strategies in operational environments. The student will thus deliver a novel framework for the holistic assessment of challenges from emerging respiratory pathogens to the defence sector and beyond.