The
Veterinary Training Research Initiative (VTRI) - VT0101
Veterinary Research Training Fellowships in Quantitative Epidemiology
VT0101 led by PROFESSOR MARK WOOLHOUSE - Centre for Infectious Diseases, University of Edinburgh and PROFESSOR STUART REID - Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Glasgow
When there’s an outbreak of animal disease on an epidemic scale – where’s it heading? How does it move through herd and flock? If you don’t know that you’re well and truly on the back foot before you even start to tackle it. Consider the catastrophic outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in 2001 – it left livestock farming in ruins, cost billions to compensate and wrecked lives all over the country. It won’t be like that again – once the VTRI programme run by Professor Stuart Reid and Professor Mark Woolhouse comes to fruition.
Quantitative epidemiology is the name of the game for this challenging and urgently needed programme. The aim is to track animal disease through space and time, and understand the key factors that affect its distribution. Statistical and mathematical techniques will be used to model infection, describing and predicting it, along with risk analysis, both dynamic and static. That will enable the kind of insight which will give all involved in dealing with epidemics the ability both to plan for outbreaks and to deal with them effectively when they do occur. And that insight will be intense, and detailed: for example, how does an organism change its behaviour once you’ve started to tackle it? “A fantastic question!” declares Stuart Reid.
To deliver this, the joint Edinburgh-Glasgow Vet School programme offers a wide range of training and research opportunities – mainly post-doctorate and at the Fellowship level, but with undergraduate opportunities too. Recruits will also be sought from veterinary practice, with the supporting aim of opening up the idea of a career in research for those who may not have thought it was for them. This will hit three key targets – capacity building, delivering a growing cadre of researchers skilled in quantitative epidemiology; advancing research, with a special focus on understanding the dynamic nature of animal populations and infections; and informing policy, giving government planners the tools they need to understand and animal disease.
All this is to be done “hands on” rather than in the lecture hall - “to do is to know”, says Reid. That approach also extends to another role the project sees for its alumni: spreading the word about what they’ve discovered. So leadership and communication skills are built into the project from the start.
Better information for better interventions - all handed on to the next generation of vets and policy makers. That will be the legacy of VT0101.
Further information is available on Defra's science pages: ‘Veterinary Research Training Fellowships in Quantitative Epidemiology’ (VT0101). Information is also available on the Edinburgh/Glasgow website.
- First Annual Appraisal
(112 KB).
For more information, please e-mail mark.woolhouse@ed.ac.uk or stuart.reid@vet.gla.ac.uk
Page last modified: 15 September, 2006