Dr Rob
I’m a Public Health doctor in the NHS and a researcher at UCL’s Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology. I’m part of a team looking at how to find and slow the spread of diseases such as influenza and tuberculosis. Ultimately we want to prevent people getting infected, becoming sick or even dying from these diseases in the first place.
During my A-levels, I took part in a public engagement project like this one for students interested in engineering (I studied engineering at university before becoming a doctor). It really inspired me and was a key point during my A-levels. Since leaving school I’ve been determined to get involved in something similar and when the opportunity arose to take part in I’m a Scientist, Decipher my Data, I jumped at it.
Dr Andrew
I’m a Reader in Infectious Disease Epidemiology at University College London (UCL). This means I’m a full time researcher, but I also teach students on various courses at UCL. I previously led a major trial of the influenza vaccine which looked at whether it could be used in health care staff (such as doctors and nurses) in order to prevent their patients from getting infected. I’m also the chief investigator of the Flu Watch Study. This is a big community study of influenza transmission and immunity funded by the Medical Research Council. The main aims of this project are to understand the community burden of influenza, how it’s transmitted, the uptake and effectiveness of interventions and the basis of how our immune system works to protect us against the disease.
I’ve been Rob’s academic supervisor for the last four years and I’ve enjoyed helping him put this project together. Our team is looking forward to working with you on this project, and although we don’t know the results yet, we it will provide us with lots of really useful data for understanding how influenza is spread in students at school and could lead to some important discoveries.
Dr Nigel
I am a doctor and researcher at UCL interested in infections in our population, and my specialty area is public health. This means I spend most of my time thinking about how infections affect groups of people, rather than about individual patients. However, I also see patients in a clinic where I treat infections that are caught through sexual activity. I’ve been fascinated by science, medicine and infections ever since school, and I am really looking forward to working with you on this project.
Dr Charlotte
I am a doctor doing research at UCL. My work involves investigating links between influenza infections and cardiac complications. I work on several different research projects, including a study of patients in hospital after heart attacks and another study comparing UK data to Hong Kong data on flu and heart attacks. The aim is to help improve our understanding of causes of heart attacks and to generate new ideas about preventing heart attacks. I have also worked in hospitals in Edinburgh and London and in Public Health Medicine.
Dr Colette
I’m a medical statistician working for UCL. My main work involves looking at how effective treatment for HIV is, and how to improve the response to treatment even further in all groups of HIV positive individuals. I originally studied for a degree in Maths, and realised that I was interested in using statistics to improve health care outcomes. So, I therefore gained a Masters in Medical Statistics, before coming to UCL to work in HIV research.
