Research Fellow in Mathematical Modelling of Sexually-Transmitted Infections

Location: London Campuses

Job Summary

The post is a great opportunity to become a member of a highly motivated team, develop a broad range of skills and experience, and build an international network of collaborators. Our research in epidemiology and public health of sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) focuses on understanding the natural history, epidemiology, and transmission patterns of infection, and the (cost-)effectiveness of control measures, including combating drug resistance. The work combines infectious disease modelling with studies of patient and population behaviour, health services research, and health economics. The burden of STIs is large, with 1 million new infections per day globally, and diagnoses increasing in many countries.

It is an exciting time to be addressing the burden of STIs, with gonorrhoea vaccine trials underway, new vaccines in development for several STIs, new antibiotics becoming available, new diagnostics (including rapid tests that detect drug resistance), and new studies of sexual behaviour patterns and infection natural history, as well as improvements to surveillance systems.

Our work is of global significance, and we have multiple international collaborators in Australia, Denmark, Kenya, Uganda, and the USA. We publish regularly in journals like Lancet Infectious Diseases, Lancet Public Health, PLOS Medicine, Clinical Infectious Diseases (recently on gonorrhoea and M. genitalium), International Journal of Epidemiology, Epidemiology, Eurosurveillance, Journal of Infectious Diseases, etc. The group leader Prof Peter White (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/p.white) is a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Technical Advisory Group on STI Research Priority Setting and has recently presented work at WHO Global Technical Meetings on Gonococcal Infection Modelling and a WHO meeting on Gonococcal Vaccine Preferred Product Characteristics. He is a former Expert Consultant to US CDC on STI modelling and recently provided expert advice to CDC and NACCHO (National Association of County and City Health Officials) for their research agenda consultation.

There will be opportunities for travel, and for close interaction with world-leading academic and public health partners in both the UK and abroad.

Duties and responsibilities

The range of activity in the group makes it possible to tailor the role to your skills and interests, so you will perform a some of:

• analysing data from research studies and surveillance to improve understanding of the natural history of monkeypox, N. gonorrhoeae, M. genitalium and/or C. trachomatis;
• analysing surveillance data to understand time trends, and local inequalities to improve targeting of interventions;
• developing model code for Bayesian evidence synthesis of multiple data sources to provide insights in to epidemiology of the infections that we are working on;
• developing code to model the impact of interventions including vaccination and novel diagnostics;
• genetic sequence analysis of N. gonorrhoeae to improve understanding of its natural history and transmission.

Essential requirements

• PhD with relevant data-analysis and coding skills
• Extensive knowledge of infectious disease epidemiology / modelling
• Strong skills in R, Python, or C/C++
• A record of high-quality publications in respected peer-reviewed journals

Ideally, you will have some of the following but they are not essential as training will be provided:

• Strong skills in statistics (ideally in R)
• Knowledge of Bayesian methods
• Knowledge of STI epidemiology
• Experience of cost-effectiveness analysis

Further Information

The post is full time fixed term until 31 March 2025, based initially at the St Mary’s Campus.

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