Florence Nightingale Lecture 2015

The Eighth Lecture (Relaunch of Florence Nightingale Lectures)

This lecture forms part of the It All Adds Up: Celebrating Women Across the Mathematical Sciences event being hosted by the Mathematical Institute. We are pleased to announce that Professor Christl Donnelly will be giving the lecture, entitled An epidemiologist's life on the edge (of the science-policy interface).

Speaker: Professor Christl Donnelly, Imperial College, London

Title: An epidemiologist's life on the edge (of the science-policy interface)

As part of the London Mathematical Society's 150th Anniversary celebrations, we are relaunching the Florence Nightingale lecture on 16th April 2015 at 5pm in the Andrew Wiles Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter.

Professor Donnelly is currently based at Imperial College, London, and works with a focus on improving our understanding of (and ability to predict) the effect of interventions on infectious agent transmission dynamics and population structure. The ultimate goal of her research is to make control strategies as effective as they can be. She is on the Scientific Committee of the Health and Wellbeing in the Changing Urban Environment Programme of the International Council for Science, and honorary fellow of the ZSL Institute of Zoology.

Ebola, MERS, pandemic influenza and SARS have all posed serious threats to our health and economic wellbeing in recent years. In each of these cases, statistical (and more broadly mathematical) epidemiologists contributed to top-level policy discussions of diseases control policy development, implementation and contingency planning. The methods build upon foundations of epidemiological modelling and analysis of both human and animal diseases (HIV/AIDS, BSE, vCJD and foot-and-mouth disease, among others). The potential impact of such analyses is enormous, but it can be challenging to provide robust answers to key scientific and policy questions. In the midst of an epidemic response effort, it really does feel like living on the edge.

List of Florence Nightingale Lectures.