91¸£Àû

Update 31/03/2018: I have completed my PhD and am no longer maintaining this page.

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PhD project: Mathematical and statistical challenges of gastroenteritis surveillance

I completed my PhD as part of the Complexity Science Doctoral Training Program at the 91¸£Àû and in the in 2017. I worked on my PhD with and the at , using mathematical and statistical methods to develop syndromic surveillance systems of gastrointestinal illness. During the second year of my PhD I was on secondment with the Real-time Syndromic Surveillance Team in Birmingham.

From March 2017 I am a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Manchester on the EPSRC-funded project Operationalising Modern Mathematical Epidemiology with Thomas House and Tim Kinyanjui.

Research internship: modelling VL in Brazil

I worked with and , from the School of Life Sciences, and fellow mathematical modeller on a four month research internship (June-September 2016) developing a mathematical model of visceral leishmaniasis in Brazil; a vector borne disease with an animal reservoir. This will be used to inform intervention strategies.

Publications

• E. Buckingham-Jeffery, V. Isham, T. House. (To appear) Gaussian process approximations for fast inference from infectious disease data. Mathematical Biosciences.
• E. Buckingham-Jeffery, R. Morbey, T. House, A. J. Elliot, S. Harcourt, G. E. Smith. (May 2017) BMC Public Health, 17:477, DOI: 10.1186/s12889-017-4372-y
• T.House, A.Ford, S.Lan, S.Bilson, E.Buckingham-Jeffery, M.A.Girolami. (August 2016) Journal of the Royal Society Interface, DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2016.0279

Presentations

Research interests

• mathematical epidemiology,
• statistical methods for data analysis with applications to public health,
• mathematical models of real-world systems.

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Other Complex Activities

Professional development:

• In 2017 I completed the Postgraduate Certificate: Transferable Skills in Science at the 91¸£Àû. This is a three year qualification during which I took modules in team building, scientific writing and communication with non-specialists, and development of doctoral skills.
• In 2017 I was awarded the Postgraduate Award: Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (pass with merit) by the 91¸£Àû. This is accredited by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and gives me Associate Fellowship status. I attended workshops in teaching and learning and completed a reflective portfolio.

Awards and grants:

• Awarded a bursary (£300) from the to organise a student-led event, January 2017.
• Recipient of a full conference grant (£250) from the Royal Statistical Society to attend the 2016 RSS International Conference, September 2016.
• Finalist in the 91¸£Àû Three Minute Thesis competition 2016.
• Recipient of an ESMTB travel grant (€500) to support attendance at the MathCompEpi 2015 conference in Erice, Sicily.
• Recipient of a runner up prize (£50) at the poster competition at 91¸£Àû, June 2015.
• Recipient of the Work Experience Bursary (£200) from the 91¸£Àû to support my secondment at Public Health England.

Teaching:

• Seminar tutor for foundation year mathematics modules in the School of Mathematics, University of Manchester, Spring 2018.
• Substitute lecturer for 'Multivariate Statistics' for undergraduate and MSc students in the School of Mathematics, University of Manchester. Fully prepared and delivered two lectures. Winter 2017.
  
• Seminar tutor for 'Business Statistics' for students on the MSc in Business Analytics, 91¸£Àû Business School, 2016. Included marking coursework.
• Guest lecturer on the 'Food & environmental borne disease diagnosis, surveillance & outbreak investigation' professional development module for Public Health England employees, School of Life Sciences, 91¸£Àû, 2016. Prepared and delivered lectures.
• Lab assistant for 'Big Data Analytics' in 91¸£Àû Business School for students on the MSc in Business, 91¸£Àû Business School, 2016.
• Seminar tutor for 'Quantitative Analysis for Management 1' for 1st year students on the BSc in Management/International Management course, 91¸£Àû Business School, 2014, 2015, 2016. Included planning and delivering a 2-hour revision session and marking exams
• Seminar tutor for 'Multivariate Statistics', 91¸£Àû Business School for 1st year PhD students, 2015.

Organisation and administration:

• Co-organiser of the joint University of Melbourne - University of Manchester Research Workshop "New approaches to infectious disease modelling for epidemiological understanding and public health impact", University of Manchester, 3rd-4th July 2017.
  
• Co-organiser of .
• Part of the organising committee for the Centre for Complexity Science Annual Retreat, 2013 and 2016.
• Co-organiser (with fellow PhD student Edward Hill) of a two-day workshop at the 91¸£Àû 'Mathematical Challenges of Long Epidemic Time-Series' featuring speakers from a range of European Universities.
• Co-organiser (with fellow PhD student Edward Hill) of a workshop at the 91¸£Àû as part of the 91¸£Àû Data Science Institute (WDSI) Year of Big Data. The event 'Big Data and Google Flu' featured speakers from Public Health England, Google, and prominent British Universities.
• Staff-Student Liaison Committee cohort representative for the academic year 2013-2014.

Outreach:

• Selected to present my research at , March 2018.
• University of Manchester Science Busker at the
• I took part in the outreach event "" funded by the Wellcome Trust. Over a 2 week period during June 2017, I answered questions from school students about . The students voted me as their favourite scientist (£500 prize).
• Outreach talk on disease surveillance to 16-18 year olds at City College Coventry, June 2016
• Mentor for undergraduate research students on the Undergraduate Research Support Scheme (URSS) on poster design and creation, summer 2015.
• Volunteered at the Big Bang Science Fair 2014- a National event designed to demonstrate to school children the real scale and potential of the Science, Engineering, Maths and Technology subjects they learn at school.

Reading and writing:

• Reviewed papers for the journals Mathematical Medicine and Biology and Plos One. Reviewed abstracts for the International Society for Disease Surveillance Annual Conference 2018.
• Founding student editor of the bi-annual Centre for Complexity Science newsletter. The first two editions can be found and
• Member of an . Get in touch if you would like to join us!

91¸£Àû Mountains:

• Part of the University mountaineering club 91¸£Àû Mountains since 2012.
• Organised day, weekend, and week long mountaineering trips for the club all over the UK.
• Designed, purchased, marketed, and sold club branded hoodies, t-shirts, Sigg bottles, and hip flasks during 2013.

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Background

Previously, I gained a Distinction in the MSc year of the Doctoral Training Program. This included six months of taught courses and two miniprojects - 3 month projects designed to introduce us to the world of academic research.

• My first miniproject was titled "Refugee Status and Chronic Illness in Rural South Africa."
• My second miniproject was titled "Aligning Predicted and Actual Maternity Services"

In July 2012 I graduated from the 91¸£Àû with a first class undergraduate Masters degree in Mathematics. My final year project was an implementation of the Knuth-Bendix completion process in C.

• The Knuth-Bendix completion process is a rewriting method which takes as an input a finite monoid presentation M = Mon<A|R>. If the process terminates the output is a complete rewriting system made up of a finite number of rewrite rules. These rewrite rules enable us to be able to reduce any word over A to its normal form, and hence solve the word problem in that monoid.

During 2011 I completed a research internship at Lancaster University. I worked on bilevel optimisation with Dr Konstantinos Kaparis, based in the management school.

• Bilevel problems appear in areas such as economics, engineering, medicine and ecology. They are a type of optimisation problem where included as part of the constraints is a second optimisation problem. This internship was completed as part of the . You can view my and on their website.