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Bryan Grenfell
Study systems include
Childhood infections such as measles and whooping cough
Foot & mouth disease (FMD) in farm animals
Influenza: avian, equine and human
Selected publications
Viboud C, Bjornstad ON, Smith DL, Simonson L, Miller MA & Grenfell BT (2006) Synchrony, waves and spatial hierarchies in the spread of influenza. Science 312: 447-451
Tildesley MJ, Savill NJ, Shaw DJ, Deardon R, Brooks SP, Woolhouse MEJ, Grenfell BT & Keeling M.J. (2006) Optimal reactive vaccination strategies for a foot-and-mouth outbreak in the UK. Nature 440: 83-86
Grenfell BT, Pybus OG, Gog JR, Wood JLN, Daly JM, Mumford JA & Holmes EC (2004). Unifying the epidemiological and evolutionary dynamics of pathogens. Science 303: 327-332
Rohani P, Green CJ, Mantilla-Beniers NB & Grenfell BT (2003). Ecological interference between fatal diseases. Nature 422: 885-888
Bjornstad ON, Finkenstadt B & Grenfell BT (2002). Dynamics of measles epidemics I. Estimating scaling of transmission rates using a time series SIR model. Ecol. Mon. 72: 169-184
Grenfell BT, Bjornstad ON, & Kappey J (2001). Traveling waves and spatial hierarchies in measles epidemics. Nature 414: 716-723
Research interests
I am a population biologist, working at the interface between theoretical models and empirical data. I'm particularly interested in:
- Investigating how the interaction of noise and non-linear density-dependent feedback drive population processes at different scales
- Understanding the spatio-temporal dynamics of infectious disease and how these are affected by control strategies
- Phylodynamics: exploring how pathogen phylogenies are affected by host immunity, transmission bottlenecks and epidemic dynamics — at scales from individual host to population.
Recent work
With Ottar Bjørnstad and Yingcun Xia (University of Singapore), we have conducted a major study using gravity models (adapted from transportation theory) to capture and explain key features of measles metapopulation dynamics in developed countries (England and Wales). We are currently extending this work to:
- Measles in developing and least-developed countries, in collaboration with Rebecca Grais (Médecins sans Frontières) and others
- Human influenza in the U.S.A. in collaboration with Cecile Viboud and David Smith at the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
- I am exploring the dynamics of Bordetella pertussis (whooping cough) epidemics in collaboration with Pejman Rohani (University of Georgia, Athens).
In association with Matt Keeling (University of Warwick, U.K.), Mark Woolhouse (University of Edinburgh, U.K.) and Steve Brooks (University of Cambridge, U.K.), we are investigating vaccination control strategies for foot and mouth disease in livestock.
Réka Albert and I are using network models to explore how disease dynamics are affected by heterogeneities in social interactions between hosts.
