Helena Stage (top) and Laura Guzmán-Rincón (bottom).

During the pandemic we all learnt to value the work of epidemiologists, whose mathematical models are essential in giving us an idea of where an epidemic might be heading. But just as there's a wide range of infectious diseases apart from COVID, so there's also a wide range of research questions epidemiologists ask.

In this podcast we talk to researchers Helena Stage and Laura Guzmán-Rincón about two such questions. One concerns the fact that a warming climate allows disease-carrying mosquitoes to live in places they previously found too cold. The other asks how you might detect a hidden outbreak of food poisoning coming, for example, from ready meals having been contaminated way back in the production chain. Both require clever mathematical ideas and ingenious detective work.

Helena and Laura are members of the JUNIPER modelling consortium. We met them at a JUNIPER research meeting which took place at the University of Warwick in March 2023.

This podcast is part of our collaboration with JUNIPER, the Joint UNIversity Pandemic and Epidemic Response modelling consortium. JUNIPER comprises academics from the universities of Cambridge, Warwick, Bristol, Exeter, Oxford, Manchester, and Lancaster, who are using a range of mathematical and statistical techniques to address pressing questions about the control of COVID-19. You can see more content produced with JUNIPER here.