I am currently undertaking a PhD within the Department of Geomatics at The University of Melbourne, under the supervision of Dr Stephan Winter.
The focus of my research is the relationship between population distributions, population movements and epidemic spread. I'm particularly interested in populations where a significant proportion are considered migratory; that is, movements are typically several orders of magnitude greater for this proportion than for the (comparatively) stationary proportion. A typical general response to the outbreak of any epidemic is a movement lockdown and a quarantine zone establishment. But does this work when we have a migratory population?
The swine flu pandemic of 2009 is a case where there was such a high level of population movement over such long distances that locally imposed quarantine was unable to halt the spread.
Here in Australia, my motivation is to develop alternative control strategies for the honeybee industry. There are over 600,000 hives managed by beekeepers in Australia, and the majority of these are moved several times per year. The distances involved can be very large; sometimes over 1000km. For this reason, it's not surprising that the beekeepers are referred to as "migratory" or "nomadic". We also have a very large population of feral bees (not to be confused with native bees). So what's the best response when an outbreak of a new honeybee disease or parasite is detected? Under what conditions does a movement lockdown make sense? And if a lockdown won't work, what alternative controls will?
My research is supported by the Rural Industries Research & Development Corporation (RIRDC).
