How can we navigate patchy data and counter-intuitive patterns to uncover what is really happening? What tools do we need to make sense of a noisy, uncertain world? These are the sorts of questions I'm interested in, with my work spanning academia, policy, industry and writing.
I'm a Professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, where my academic research focuses on analysis of emerging health threats and how these interact with behaviour and information. I have contributed scientific insights to multiple governments and health agencies, including SPI-M-O and SAGE for the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 2022–25, I was founding co-director of the interdisciplinary Centre for Epidemic Preparedness and Response at LSHTM, which now has over 1000 members.
In 2017, I was awarded a Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellowship, and in 2013 a Medical Research Council Career Development Award in Biostatistics. I did my PhD in applied mathematics at the University of Cambridge.
I'm co-founder and CTO of WholeSum, a startup developing statistically robust, auditable methods for interpreting large volumes of open-ended text. We work with a range of teams in industry to support decision intelligence.
I'm also an award winning science writer, and my articles have appeared in places like Wired, Financial Times, New Scientist, Scientific American, The Times and The Observer. My popular science book 'The Rules of Contagion' was named as a Times, Guardian and FT Science Book of the Year, and my latest book 'Proof' was named an FT, New Scientist and Waterstones Science Book of 2025. I have also contributed to multiple documentaries, including BBC Horizon.