A holistic approach: Professor Rowland Kao

Issued: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 15:12:00 BST

Emerging infectious diseases are one of the major challenges facing countries worldwide today. Research at Glasgow emphasises both basic epidemiological research and the development of a fundamental understanding of the population-level factors that render poultry and livestock industries vulnerable to disease invasion.

The work of Rowland Kao, Professor of Mathematical Population Biology, helps to advise government policy on the prevention and control of infectious diseases that are of vital interest to UK farming.

‘Research in my group integrates the development of parsimonious mathematical models with large-scale datasets that include disease notification data, livestock movements, spatial/geographic data and molecular type data,’ he explains. ‘Our aim is to better understand why infectious diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease, bovine tuberculosis, scrapie, BSE and avian influenza spread in poultry, and how best to control them.’

Always striving to understand the interdependence of animal and human populations, ecosystems and the environment, Professor Kao and his colleagues across the institute explore the consequences of this interdependence for disease pathogenesis and transmission, food security and the conservation of species and habitat. Given the threats posed by rapid environmental change and the increasing size of our planet’s human population, there has never been a more pressing need for the institute’s multidisciplinary and holistic research approach.

‘We are interested not just in using established analytical techniques, but also in developing new approaches,’ says Professor Kao. ‘This is critical in these exciting times when our data on populations and pathogens are becoming increasingly complex, and the demands on quantitative epidemiology are ever-increasing.’