The Epidemic Zone was a themed zone supported by Wellcome with six scientists participating:
- Verity Hill is a PhD student, using genetics to better understand the spread and evolution of the Ebola virus
- Trystan Leng uses maths to study the spread of sexually transmitted infections through populations and how to control that spread as part of his PhD research
- Raquel Medialdea Carrera is a field epidemiologist at the European Centre for Disease Control and identifies epidemics and how to control them
- Danny Ward, the winner of this zone, is a PhD student trying to understand how bacteria are able to infect living things and how we can stop them doing so
- Catherine Smith is an infectious disease data scientist working at UCL using coding to assess disease epidemiology
- Andy Guise conducts research and lectures on inequality, health and homelessness at King’s College London
Students were very interested in the zone theme, asking about each of the scientists’ areas of research in addition to general questions about epidemics and diseases. A third of the questions put to the scientists in ASK concerned careers and education, but students were also interested to know about the scientists’ spare time and hobbies.
