Student
Abby Barlow

Abby graduated from the University of Sheffield in July 2020 with an MMath degree, where she found her interest for biological applications in mathematics.

Abby graduated from the University of Sheffield in July 2020 with an MMath degree, where she found her interest for biological applications in mathematics. Throughout her time at Sheffield she participated in multiple research projects in this field. These include a summer research project on host-parasite dynamics and evolution and her dissertation project on the modelling of stem cell pluripotency and differentiation. Additionally, as a summer project she worked on the optimisation of a two-drug chemotherapy for neuroblastoma using a genetic algorithm with the Insigneo Institute for in silico medicine. Outside of Math, Abby enjoys spending time outdoors: hiking, camping and running.

Research project title:
Epidemiological dynamics in populations with spatial and demographic structure

Supervisor(s):
Ben Adams, Sarah Penington

Project description:
Abby’s research lies in the field of epidemiology. In particular, she is concerned with further developing and applying the theory of spatially and demographically structured epidemiological models. In her thesis formulation report, she developed and analysed an age-structured model for COVID-19 epidemiology in Mongolia. The model incorporates age-related transmission rates to account for the country’s specific demographic structure. In her future PhD research she plans to develop spatially-structured epidemiological models under metapopulation and household frameworks. Under these frameworks, the population is divided into subpopulations based on their spatial separation or designated households. This allows for a distinction between the stronger and more frequent contacts we expect between individuals who reside closer to each other and the weaker contacts between those further apart.

Fun fact(s):
I’ve climbed mount Snowdon in Wales at least 20 times.