Stay up to date with the most recent news from the math.epi.lab.
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.
Faculty at the University of Guelph stand firmly against the spread of vaccine misinformation. Misinformation actively undermines our national public health response and global health security.
With freedom comes responsibility. That applies to academic freedom too. It should not be used to provide cover for misrepresentation and misinformation.
We support evidence-based public health measures, which includes SARS-CoV-2 vaccination.
Read our open letter in support of vaccination (signed by over 80 faculty members).
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.
Elissa’s research from her master’s thesis has been published in Pathogens! Elissa developed a mathematical model to assess the effects of changes in host recruitment rate on Streptococcus suis incidence. The results show that monthly introduction of pigs into the nursery (instead of weekly introduction) reduced cumulative cases of S. suis by up to 59%, while increasing disease-removal rates alone averted up to 64% of cases. These findings suggest that modifications to host recruitment rates could be leveraged as a tool for S. suis disease control. Well done Elissa!
Today, our lab spent a fun morning wall climbing. Now that we have conquered the Gryphon climbing wall, (and our fear of heights), we are ready to conquer the world’s infectious disease problems.
Look at Amy climbing so high!
Everyone else is watching in awe.
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!
Photo courtesy of Roksolana Hovdey
Congratulations to Elissa Giang for the successful defense of her master’s thesis! She was all smiles as she discussed her work on Streptococcus suis in swine and the use of mathematical models to simulate control strategies for reducing disease burden. Well done Elissa!
Photo courtesy of Amy Greer
Congratulations to mathepilab member Roksolana Hovdey for the successful completion of her master’s thesis defense. Here she is discussing the environmental drivers and transmission dynamics of E. coli infection in humans. Well done Roxy!
