Focus: Understanding fundamental characteristics of infectious disease transmission and developing accessible software tools for outbreak analysis.
Disease Investigations
Epidemiology of Scabies
Scabies is a contagious skin disease caused by the Sarcoptes scabiei mite, affecting over 400 million people annually worldwide. Despite its global burden, fundamental epidemiological characteristics had remained poorly described. Using data from Dutch sentinel surveillance (2011–2023), this work produced the first published estimates of the mean serial interval of scabies infection and time-varying reproduction numbers, revealing increasing transmission in recent years.
Related software: mitey Scabies Vignette
Mpox Transmission
Following the 2022 mpox outbreak in non-endemic regions, transmission characteristics were investigated using detailed exposure histories from cases in the Netherlands. The work produced serial interval estimates from identified transmission pairs and found evidence of presymptomatic transmission, informing isolation guidance and contact tracing protocols.
Miura, F., Backer, J. A., van Rijckevorsel, G., et al. Time Scales of Human Mpox Transmission in The Netherlands. J Infect Dis. 2023. Read paper →
COVID-19
Real-time estimation of SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics during the pandemic, including methods for appropriately smoothing prevalence data to produce reliable estimates of growth rate and reproduction number.
Eales, O., Ainslie, K. E. C., Walters, C. E., et al. Appropriately smoothing prevalence data to inform estimates of growth rate and reproduction number. Epidemics 2022. Read paper →
Influenza
Serological data provide a powerful lens for reconstructing past infection histories and estimating immunity. serosolver uses a Bayesian framework to infer individual-level infection histories and antibody kinetics from haemagglutination inhibition (HI) titres.
Hay, J. A., Minter, A., Ainslie, K. E. C., et al. An open source tool to infer epidemiological and immunological dynamics from serological data: serosolver. PLOS Computational Biology 2020. Read paper →
Related software: serosolver