Dr. Marc Baguelin

Current Students

Ivy Kombe

Ivy Kombe

PhD Student

---

Ivy is part of the Viral Epidemiology and Control (VEC) research group at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust. Her work involves modelling the transmission of infectious diseases. She has a Masters in Epidemiology from Imperial College London and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the University of Nairobi. Her PhD project is focused on trying to understand the spread of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), an important viral cause of pneumonia, within households. The project aims to find generalizable insights about the pattern of infection spread that can inform and help to optimize intervention strategies.

Affiliation(s):

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK

I am a mathematical modeller working at the Immunisation department at Public Health England and at the London of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine with Prof. John Edmunds on models of influenza transmission, immunisation and control.

After graduating from the Ecole Centrale de Lille with a MSc in Control engineering from the University of Lille in 2000, I completed a PhD in 2003 on modelling the co-evolution of populations of bacteria and phages. In 2004, I took a position as Research Associate to work in collaboration with the Animal Health Trust, Newmarket, analysing data from equine influenza. I first joined the department of zoology at the University of Cambridge and subsequently the Cambridge Infectious Diseases Consortium in the Department of Veterinary Medicine, following its creation in 2005. I developed a model of transmission of equine influenza including new techniques to infer parameter estimation from sparse data. The model helped to understand the role of compulsory vaccination in changing the dynamics of the equine influenza viruses following the introduction of compulsory vaccination for racehorses in 1981.

In January 2009, I joined the Health Protection Agency (now Public Health England), UK to work with Profs Miller and Edmunds on the modelling and economical evaluation of immunisation policies in the United Kingdom. During the outbreak of pandemic influenza virus in the United Kingdom, I was part of the team of scientists who provided early results to assess the transmission in the United Kingdom. In particular we developed algorithms to integrate epidemiological information with the temporal dynamics of the virus in order to improve estimation of the effective reproduction ratio of the disease. In order to inform vaccination policy decisions with the newly developed pandemic vaccine, I developed with colleagues a model to assess in real time the impact of vaccination strategies. This model incorporates a transmission model fitted to the epidemiological data with health care costs and savings applied to the disease burden. This model was developed and published in real time during the outbreak.

I am also an enthusiastic photographer. Some of my recent work can be seen on my personal website.