The School of Life Sciences at the University of Sussex is at the forefront of research in the biological sciences in the UK, coming in the top 10 in the REF 2014.

We wish to appoint a Research Fellow in spatial modelling of infectious diseases. Recent years have shown the importance of better understanding the spread of (re-)emerging infectious diseases, e.g. Ebola in West Africa, chikungunya and Zika in Latin America.

The post-holder will contribute to the development of new statistical models, that are spatially explicit, to infer the spread of infectious diseases. Emphasis will be put in explicitly describing the dynamics of local transmission vs. importations. We anticipate a particular focus on particle filtering methods (e.g. pMCMC).

The statistical inference will most likely rely on spatially resolved surveillance data for Ebola (and possibly other emerging infections, such as chikungunya or Zika). However, the breath of the project could go far beyond, as the dynamics explored are almost ubiquitous among infectious diseases (i.e. importations can be environmental, between species, between locations).

The post-holder will work closely with Pierre Nouvellet at University of Sussex (website). During the project, we expect close collaboration with the department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London, and the post-holder will hold a visiting status at Imperial.

For informal enquiries, please contact Pierre Nouvellet by email (pierre.nouvellet@sussex.ac.uk)

The School is committed to equality and valuing diversity, and currently holds an Athena SWAN Silver Award. Applications are particularly welcomed from women and black and minority ethnic candidates, who are under-represented in academic posts in Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine and Mathematics (STEMM) at Sussex. The School of Life Sciences welcomes applications to academic posts from candidates who wish to work part-time or as job-sharers.

The University offers various schemes to provide real benefits to parents, these can be found at Family Friendly Policies.