Professor of Mathematical Biology at the School of Public Health, Imperial College, London

Professor Ferguson's research aims to improve understanding of the epidemiological factors and population processes shaping infectious disease spread in human and animal populations. A key practical focus is the analysis and optimisation of intervention strategies aimed at limiting disease spread – whether within a host population or within an infected individual. This work has the applied goal of aiding disease control policy making in the public health, clinical and veterinary contexts. Also, from an ecological perspective, the effect of interventions is often to perturb the dynamics of pathogen spread and the nature of the dynamical response to such perturbation often gives valuable information on fundamental population dynamic and genetic processes.

He holds research grants totalling £5 million in the areas of (a) development of statistical techniques for analysing heterogeneous infectious disease data, (b) modelling viral evolution under immune and treatment induced selection, (c) BSE/vCJD risk assessment, (d) Epidemiology of Foot and Mouth disease and Avian Influenza in livestock, and (f) Mathematical modelling of emerging and deliberately released pathogens.