Professor Déirdre Hollingsworth

In the last 10 years she has focussed on neglected tropical diseases, which cause morbidity and stigma in the poorest populations perpetuating the cycle of poverty . She leads the Neglected Tropical Diseases Modelling Consortium, an international network of infectious disease modellers, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She has served on World Health Organisation (WHO) committees including a Guidelines Development group and the Expert Committee on Filariasis, where her role was to provide or interpret modelling results to address public health policy questions.  She has also twice been invited to present to the International Task Force for Disease Eradication.

She was a member of SPI-M-O, part of the UK government’s science advisory structure for the COVID-19 pandemic. She was awarded a SPI-M-O Award for Modelling and Data Support which recognises those people who made an exceptional contribution to the work of SPI-M-O outside of their usual work activity. She was invited to chair the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences’ responsive COVID-19 modelling programme, which hosted international discussions and scientific exchange between modellers researching the pandemic. She also served on the steering committee for the Royal Society’s Rapid Assistance in Modelling the Pandemic (RAMP) programme and co-authored their report on the reproduction number (R).

Déirdre uses mathematical and statistical models to better understand the transmission, evolution, and control of infectious diseases.  In the area of neglected tropical diseases, research questions include how to achieve and sustain low levels of these often-preventable infections. A particular challenge is how to predict, achieve and then measure local elimination of infections when there is a limited budget for both interventions and surveillance in these low-resource settings. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Déirdre and her collaborators worked on evaluating the potential impact of lockdowns, contact tracing (including the UK’s test, trace and isolate (TTI) programme), and the dynamics of immunity.

Déirdre has over 150 peer-reviewed publications on the dynamics and evolution of neglected tropical diseases, COVID-19 and a number of other infectious diseases (Google scholar profile), including:

Davis EL et al. “Contact tracing is an imperfect tool for controlling COVID-19 transmission and relies on population adherence.” Nature communications 12, no. 1 (2021): 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25531-5

Toor J et al, Predicted Impact of COVID-19 on Neglected Tropical Disease Programs and the Opportunity for Innovation, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 72, Issue 8, 15 April 2021, Pages 1463–1466, https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa933

Anderson RM, Heesterbeek H, Klinkenberg D, Hollingsworth TD. How will country-based mitigation measures influence the course of the COVID-19 epidemic?. The Lancet. 2020 Mar 21;395(10228):931-4. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30567-5