David Sprott Distinguished Lecture by Professor Peter Diggle, Lancaster University

A Tale of Two Parasites: how can Gaussian processes contribute to improved public health in Africa?

In this talk, I will rst make some general comments about the role of statistical modelling in scientic research, illustrated by two examples from infectious disease epidemiology. I will then describe in detail how statistical modelling based on Gaussian spatial stochastic processes has been used to construct region-wide risk maps to inform the operation of a multi-national control programme for onchocerciasis (river blindness) in equatorial Africa. Finally, I will describe work-in progress aimed at exploiting recent developments in mobile microscopy to enable more precise local predictions of community-level risk.

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About Peter Diggle:

Peter Diggle is a Distinguished University Professor of Statistics in the Faculty of Health and Medicine, Lancaster University. He also holds Adjunct positions at Johns Hopkins, Yale and Columbia Universities, and was president of the Royal Statistical Society between July 2014 and December 2016. Peter began his academic career at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1974, moved to Australia in 1984 as a research scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and returned to the UK in 1988 to take up his current post in Lancaster. His research involves the development of statistical methods for spatial and longitudinal data analysis, and their application to substantive research in the  biomedical and health sciences.