Upcoming PhD Defense for Gabrielle!!!

Congratulations to math.epi.lab member Gabrielle Turcotte who is set to defend her PhD on July 24, 2024!

Gabrielle’s research focuses on assessing the role of biosecurity in the equine industry with a focus on horses that compete in the Olympic disciplines in Ontario, Canada. She explores the complexities within this field through the use of surveys, isolation activities, and agent-based modelling.

She has worked very hard developing this research and we are all very proud of her! Thank you to Gabrielle’s co-supervisor Dr. Terri O’Sullivan, and her committee members, Dr. Kelsey Spence, and Dr. Charlotte Winder. We are also welcoming our external examiner Dr. Brandy Burgess to OVC for the day from the University of Georgia, College of Veterinary Medicine.

Congratulations to Reilly and Kamal!

Both Reilly and Kamal have had their abstracts accepted for oral presentations at the upcoming ISVEE meeting. We will be heading out east to attend our first in-person conference since the start of the pandemic. We are looking forward to meeting up with all of our veterinary epidemiology colleagues from around the world in Halifax this summer.

Upcoming thesis defense for Lindsay!

Congratulations to Lindsay who is in the final stretch of her MSc with a defense scheduled for July 30, 2021. Thanks so much to our partners at Peel Public Health and to committee members Dr. Olaf Berke, Dr. Ashleigh Tuite, and Dr. David Fisman.

COVID-19 Pandemic

As a lab, we rang in the New Year with a game of Pandemic and a boatload of holiday cookies. Little did we know that we would soon be dealing with the emergence of a new virus, SARS-CoV-2 that would be declared a real pandemic!

As someone who has spent much of their career working on outbreaks, disease dynamics, and pandemics this means that I have been actively working on COVID-19 research, as well as pandemic preparedness and response activities at the federal and provincial level since early February 2020. I am also currently a member of the PHAC COVID-19 Modelling Expert Advisory Group.

Since March 2020, we have published 6 peer-reviewed manuscripts on different aspects of COVID-19 transmission dynamics, and public health interventions. You can find our most recent COVID-19 research here. While writing research papers is an important part of my job as an academic scientist, I have also written a number of opinion pieces focused on 1) infection prevention and control in school settings, and 2) parenting during a pandemic.

You can find many more details about our COVID-19 projects and related media in my CV which you can find here.

Hooray for Amy!

Our fearless leader, Dr. Amy Greer, has been awarded one of five Research Excellence Awards from the University of Guelph. This award program is co-sponsored by the University’s Office of Research and the Office of the Provost and aims to highlight the achievements of recently tenured faculty members. Congratulations Amy! We are proud to be part of your team!

New Paper Out From Mathepilab Member Emma Gardner!

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a zoonotic disease transmitted from dromedary camels to people, which can result in outbreaks with human-to-human transmission. Emma’s paper estimated the force of infection of MERS-CoV within camel populations in order to improve our understanding of MERS-CoV dynamics in camels raised outside of the Middle East. Congratulations Emma!