Dr Emily Nightingale
Research Fellow in Polio Eradication
I completed my undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Bath in 2016, followed by an MSc in Medical Statistics here at LSHTM. I worked as a Lecturer in Medical Statistics at Queen Mary University London before returning to the LSHTM as a research fellow in 2018. I was awarded a PhD by the School in June 2023, on the topic of infectious disease surveillance in settings of emergence and elimination.
My research has primarily focussed on analysing spatial patterns in surveillance data, in particular in elimination settings of visceral leishmaniasis, TB and polio. I have also worked on COVID-19, investigating the local distribution of disease burden in the UK and the uptake of self-testing modalities in sub-Saharan Africa.
I am currently working on the Surveillance Modelling to Support Polio Elimination and Certification (SPEC) project with Dr Kathleen O'Reilly, developing statistical approaches to evaluate the sensitivity of polio surveillance (in particular environmental/wastewater surveillance) in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Affiliations
Teaching
I've taught on the Basic Statistics for PHP and Statistics for Health Data Science modules, as well as short courses on infectious disease modelling and spatial data analysis. I have supervised a range of summer projects for the MScs in Medical Statistics, Epidemiology, Control of Infectious Diseases and Health Data Science.
I am currently secondary supervisor to two PhD candidates:
- Dr Hannah Rickman, "Heterogeneity in IGRA based Mycobacterium tuberculosis immunoreactivity in urban Malawi: revisiting surveillance needs to End TB".
- Arturo de la Cruz, "A pointwise spatio-temporal model based on ensemble machine learning algorithms for high-resolution air pollution exposure assessment in Great Britain"
Research
My interests are in statistical methods for mapping infectious disease burden and risk, in particular in the context of elimination and, going forward, the impact of climate change on such efforts.
Selected Publications
