Close

Professor Rachel Lowe

BSc MSc PhD

Associate Professor
/ Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow

Room
107

LSHTM
Keppel Street
London
WC1E 7HT
United Kingdom

Rachel Lowe is an ICREA Research Professor and Global Health Resilience Team Leader at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). She also holds a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Rachel’s research focuses on co-developing policy-relevant methodological solutions, to enhance surveillance, preparedness and response to climate-sensitive disease outbreaks and emergence.

Rachel obtained a PhD in Mathematics at the University of Exeter in 2011. Her thesis focused on spatiotemporal modelling of dengue epidemics in Brazil. She held postdoctoral positions at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Italy and the Catalan Institute for Climate Sciences, working at the interface of climate prediction science and public health decision-making. She joined the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in 2017, serving on the management committee for the Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health and co-leading the vector-borne disease theme in the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases.

She has published high impact research on integrating seasonal climate forecasts in early warning systems for infectious diseases in Latin America, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. In 2018, she won the International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases Water Award for Research, in recognition of the quality of her research on the linkages between hydrometeorological extremes and dengue outbreaks and the multi-sectoral relevance for policy and practice. Rachel has served as a consultant and advisor for impact-based forecasting projects for the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières. She is a member of the World Meteorological Organization COVID-19 research task team and was a contributing author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (WGII) chapter on risks across sectors and regions.

Rachel is the Director the Lancet Countdown in Europe, a new transdisciplinary collaboration tracking progress on health and climate change.  She coordinates two Wellcome Trust digital technology, climate, and health projects, HARMONIZE and IDExtremes, which aim to provide robust data and modelling tools to build local resilience against emerging infectious disease threats in climate change hotspots. She is the co-coordinator of the Horizon Europe project IDAlert, which aims to tackle the emergence and transmission of zoonotic pathogens by developing novel indicators and innovative early warning systems to strengthen Europe’s resilience to emerging health threats.

Affiliations

Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health

Centres

Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases (CMMID)
Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health

Research

Research Area
Climate change
Environment
Public health
Risk
Statistical methods
Bayesian Analysis
Capacity strengthening
Global Health
Natural disasters
Spatial analysis
Modelling
Discipline
Epidemiology
Mathematical modelling
Statistics
Disease and Health Conditions
Malaria
Dengue
Emerging Infectious Disease
Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs)
Vector borne disease
Zoonotic disease

Selected Publications

Probabilistic seasonal dengue forecasting in Vietnam: A modelling study using superensembles.
Colón-González FJ; Soares Bastos L; Hofmann B; Hopkin A; Harpham Q; Crocker T; Amato R; Ferrario I; Moschini F; James S
2021
PLoS medicine
Combined effects of hydrometeorological hazards and urbanisation on dengue risk in Brazil: a spatiotemporal modelling study.
Lowe R; Lee SA; O'Reilly KM; Brady OJ; Bastos L; Carrasco-Escobar G; de Castro Catão R; Colón-González FJ; Barcellos C; Carvalho MS
2021
The Lancet. Planetary health
The Relative Role of Climate Variation and Control Interventions on Malaria Elimination Efforts in El Oro, Ecuador: A Modeling Study
Fletcher IK; Stewart-Ibarra AM; Sippy R; Carrasco-Escobar G; Silva M; Beltran-Ayala E; Ordoñez T; Adrian J; Sáenz FE; Drakeley C
2020
FRONTIERS IN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
Emerging arboviruses in the urbanized Amazon rainforest.
Lowe R; Lee S; Martins Lana R; Torres Codeço C; Castro MC; Pascual M
2020
BMJ-BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL
Building resilience to mosquito-borne diseases in the Caribbean.
Lowe R; Ryan SJ; Mahon R; Van Meerbeeck CJ; Trotman AR; Boodram L-LG; Borbor-Cordova MJ; Stewart-Ibarra AM
2020
PLOS BIOLOGY
The Zika Virus Epidemic in Brazil: From Discovery to Future Implications.
Lowe R; Barcellos C; Brasil P; Cruz OG; Honório NA; Kuper H; Carvalho MS
2018
International journal of environmental research and public health
Nonlinear and delayed impacts of climate on dengue risk in Barbados: A modelling study.
Lowe R; Gasparrini A; Van Meerbeeck CJ; Lippi CA; Mahon R; Trotman AR; Rollock L; Hinds AQJ; Ryan SJ; Stewart-Ibarra AM
2018
PLoS medicine
Climate services for health: predicting the evolution of the 2016 dengue season in Machala, Ecuador.
Lowe R; Stewart-Ibarra AM; Petrova D; García-Díez M; Borbor-Cordova MJ; Mejía R; Regato M; Rodó X
2017
The lancet Planetary health
Evaluating probabilistic dengue risk forecasts from a prototype early warning system for Brazil.
Lowe R; Coelho CA; Barcellos C; Carvalho MS; Catão RDC; Coelho GE; Ramalho WM; Bailey TC; Stephenson DB; Rodó X
2016
eLife
Quantifying the added value of climate information in a spatio-temporal dengue model
Lowe R; Cazelles B; Paul R; Rodó X
2015
Stochastic environmental research and risk assessment
Dengue outlook for the World Cup in Brazil: an early warning model framework driven by real-time seasonal climate forecasts.
Lowe R; Barcellos C; Coelho CAS; Bailey TC; Coelho GE; Graham R; Jupp T; Ramalho WM; Carvalho MS; Stephenson DB
2014
The Lancet infectious diseases
Expansion of the dengue transmission area in Brazil: the role of climate and cities.
Barcellos C; Lowe R
2013
Tropical medicine & international health
The development of an early warning system for climate-sensitive disease risk with a focus on dengue epidemics in Southeast Brazil.
Lowe R; Bailey TC; Stephenson DB; Jupp TE; Graham RJ; Barcellos C; Carvalho MS
2012
Statistics in medicine
See more Publications