Dr Rob Aldridge (that’s him on the right) is a specialty registrar in Public Health and an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow at University College London’s Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology. Rob’s research interests are focused on respiratory infections such as influenza and tuberculosis. Rob has published research on a wide range of infectious disease and public health topics, including several high impact publications. In addition to carrying out research, Rob lectures in epidemiology and public health on a number of courses at UCL including the MSc in Global Health and the BSc in primary care and population health.
During his A-levels, Rob benefited greatly from being involved in a public engagement project for students interested in engineering. This project was inspiring for Rob’s learning at school and he looks back at this moment as a pivotal point in his science teaching. Rob has always been determined to get involved in something similar during his research career and when the opportunity arose to take part in I’m a Scientist, Decipher My Data, he jumped at it.
The department in which Rob is based hosts the MRC Flu watch study. This is a community study of behavioral & biological determinants of transmission to inform seasonal & pandemic planning. The department is one of the UK’s leading centres of infectious diseases epidemiology and surveillance studies and as such is extremely well placed to host the academic part of this project.
Andrew Hayward, the Head of the Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology is extremely supportive of Rob’s involvement in this work. Andrew is considered a leading expert in the field of influenza epidemiology studies and has published extensively on influenza.
