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.

You can listen to the podcast using the player above, and you can subscribe to our podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify and through most other podcast providers via podbean.

Return to the Plus advent calendar 2023.

This content is part of our collaboration with JUNIPER, the Joint UNIversities Pandemic and Epidemiological Research network. JUNIPER is a collaborative network of researchers from across the UK who work at the interface between mathematical modelling, infectious disease control and public health policy. You can see more content produced with JUNIPER here.