Louise Dyson

I am a Reader in Epidemiology appointed jointly between the School of Life Sciences and the Mathematics Institute. I am also a member of the Zeeman Institute (Systems Biology and Infectious Disease Epidemiology Research, SBIDER), a cross-departmental group bringing together researchers from different disciplines to better understand the biological world. My research interests involve using techniques from mathematics and statistical physics to analyse biological and epidemiological systems. I am particularly interested in work with strong experimental links and in discovering the simplest possible explanatory mechanisms for observed data. <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/zeeman_institute/staffv2/dyson/">My Zeeman Institute webpage</a>. My recent work has largely focussed on mathematical modelling of COVID-19, feeding into the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) via the modelling subgroup, SPI-M-O and as part of the <a href="https://maths.org/juniper/">JUNIPER consortium</a>. More on COVID-19 modelling can be found on the <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/zeeman_institute/new_research/combatting_disease/covid19">Zeeman Institute webpages</a> and reports that were considered at SAGE can be found on <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/scientific-evidence-supporting-the-government-response-to-coronavirus-covid-19#meeting-minutes-and-supporting-papers">the government webpages</a>. My work particularly concentrated on modelling infection in schools and universities and assessing the spread of novel variants, as well as short and medium-term projections of infection dynamics. More widely, I undertake modelling to support the eradication or elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs), particularly yaws (a bacterial infection that can cause lesions in the skin and bones and is primarily found in tropical areas). This work is in collaboration with Michael Marks at the London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Moving away from epidemiology, my research interests also include the mathematical modelling of cellular migration and modelling of “noisy” dynamics, in which randomness plays an important role.

Thompson, R. N., Bansal, S., Clapham, H., Dyson, Louise, Gutierrez, M. A., Hadley, L., Hart, W. S,, Heesterbeek, H., Hollingsworth, T. D., House, T. <a title="Show all authors" id="eprint_et_al_link_195871" onclick="return showEtAlAuthors( '', '195871' );" href="https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/cgi/exportview/author_id/42844/HTML/42844.html#">et al.</a> (2026) <a href="https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/195871/"><em>Infectious disease outbreak controllability : biological, social and public health factors.</em></a> Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 293 (2063). 20252848. doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.2848" target="_blank">10.1098/rspb.2025.2848</a> ISSN 0962-8452. Dyson, Louise (2026) <a href="https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/191872/"><em>Louise Dyson