Unravelling the dynamics of rapidly evolving infectious diseases in humans with Approximate Bayesian Computations

Oliver explores how genetic and epidemiological data can be combined to better understand the disease dynamics of rapidly evolving viruses such as influenza, norovirus and HIV. Both types of data are now often routinely collected and could be used synergistically to investigate, for example, whether influenza's antigenic evolution is punctuated rather than gradual, and how different types of influenza interfere with each other. Oliver's Fellowship started in October 2010, and he is currently based in the laboratory of Dr Koelle at Duke University, USA, to work on influenza. He is also interacting with the Baric lab at the nearby University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to investigate the disease dynamics of norovirus. He will later return to the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London, to join Professor Christophe Fraser's evolutionary epidemiology unit, and apply his techniques to HIV.