I am an applied mathematician with experience in modelling the immunology and epidemiology of infectious disease. My current projects involve developing dynamic transmission and cost-effectiveness models for blood-borne virus epidemics (namely, HCV and HIV, and recently HBV and HDV) in various population groups. I have led or am leading projects on generalised HCV epidemics in lower-middle income country (LMIC) settings such as Pakistan and Ethiopia, HCV and HIV in marginalised, high-risk subpopulations such as people who inject drugs (PWID) in a range of settings such as Norway, Australia, Pakistan, and Myanmar, and HBV in the general population in Cambodia and antenatal population in the UK. I have recently been developing research ideas on migrant health, including novel methods for estimating the burden of HBV and HDV among migrant populations in the UK and Europe.

On HCV, I have done a body of work on modelling the general population HCV epidemic in Pakistan, to identify risk factors involved in the spread of the infection, estimate the extent of HCV-associated morbidity and mortality, and investigate the potential impact and cost-effectiveness of interventions, including prevention and treatment strategies, to reduce the burden of long-term infection and disease. These models have been used to inform Pakistan's national HCV elimination plan, as well as global guidance on achieving World Health Organization (WHO) targets for viral hepatitis elimination.

Other projects that I have worked on include exploring the impact of opioid substitution treatment (OST) duration on reducing drug-related poisonings (DRP) in a cohort of patients prescribed methadone or buprenorphine in the UK. In this work, I quantified the probability of benefit of OST in stabilising or reducing DRP in patients under different treatment modalities and delivery strategies of OST regimens.

My doctoral thesis focussed on modelling the within-host dynamics of persistent infection by the human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) to help elucidate the complex mechanisms underlying virus infection, persistence, and pathogenesis.

More generally, formulating and analysing mathematical models of infectious diseases can help offer insights into the establishment and trajectory of infection at both the immunological and epidemiological scales. A deeper understanding of these issues is a crucial step to developing effective ways to circumvent the spread of the pathogen under study and may help identify promising new intervention strategies to reduce the burden or severity of long-term infection and associated disease at both the within-host and population levels.

Keywords: HBV, HCV, HIV, HTLV-I, infectious disease dynamics, data-driven mathematical modelling, immunological and epidemiological models, host-virus interactions, viral persistence, virology, prevention and treatment interventions, incidence, mortality, direct-acting antivirals, opioid substitution treatment, drug-related poisonings, methadone and buprenorphine, migrant health, mathematical and computational modelling, differential equations and dynamical systems, mathematical biology.