Sabrina Greening

Citation

Thesis Title
Integrating host population contact structure and pathogen whole-genome sequence data to understand the epidemiology of infectious diseases

Infectious diseases can spread between individuals through a number of different transmission pathways. Understanding the relative importance of each of these pathways is essential to the design of effective prevention and control strategies. Historically this has been achieved by tracing contact histories, however it can be difficult to determine exactly how and when a transmission event occurred, as epidemiological data is often incomplete. To overcome this, Miss Greening used novel methods of integrating whole-genome sequence data into network analyses to help understand the transmission dynamics of two pathogens: Campylobacter jejuni and Staphylococcus aureus. Her findings expose the relative contribution of different network contacts to the spread of each pathogen. They also highlight the strengths and weaknesses of different methods and suggest how the latter might be overcome in future studies.

Supervisors
Professor Carolyn Gates
Distinguished Professor Nigel French
Dr Ji Zhang