Miss Rachael Pung

Research Student - MPhil/PhD - Epidemiology & Population Health

United Kingdom

Email
Rachael

I am a senior data analyst at the Ministry of Health, Singapore and joined the school as a research degree student in 2021, focusing on infectious disease modelling. I am interested in how disease surveillance could shape our understanding of the underlying outbreak dynamics and how changes in human behaviour affects disease transmission and effectiveness of outbreak control measures.

Prior to joining the school, I was primarily involved in the surveillance of influenza and other respiratory viruses. I completed my MSc in Epidemiology at Imperial College London (2016-2017) and BEng in Environmental Engineering at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (2012-2016)

Affiliations

Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Dynamics

Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health

Research

My current research interest focuses on understanding the epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 and modelling the COVID-19 transmission dynamics at the population-level and in specific settings (e.g. households, large-scale events). I am interested in Bayesian inference methods and network modelling and also interested to understand how different modelling techniques infleunce our interpretation of an outbreak.

Research Area

Mathematical modelling

Bayesian analysis

Epidemiology

Public health

Surveillance

Outbreaks

Disease and Health Conditions

Emerging infectious diseases

COVID-19

Influenza

Country

Singapore

Selected Publications

Detecting changes in generation and serial intervals under varying pathogen biology, contact patterns and outbreak response.

PUNG, R; Russell, TW; KUCHARSKI, AJ;

2024

PLoS computational biology

Temporal contact patterns and the implications for predicting superspreaders and planning of targeted outbreak control

PUNG, R; Firth, J; RUSSELL, T; Rogers, T; Lee, V; Kucharski, A;

2023

medRxiv

Severity of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron XBB subvariants in Singapore.

PUNG, R; Kong, XP; Cui, L; Chae, S-R; Chen, MI-C; Lee, VJ; Ho, ZJ M;

2023

The Lancet regional health. Western Pacific

Within-host SARS-CoV-2 viral kinetics informed by complex life course exposures reveals different intrinsic properties of Omicron and Delta variants

RUSSELL, T; Townsley, H; ABBOTT, S; Hellewell, J; Carr, E; Chapman, L; PUNG, R; QUILTY, B; HODGSON, D; Fowler, A; Adams, L; Bailey, C; Mears, H; Harvey, R; Clayton, B; O’Reilly, N; Ngai, Y; Nicod, J; Gamblin, S; Williams, B; Gandhi, S; Swanton, C; Beale, R; Bauer, DL V; Wall, E; ... KUCHARSKI, A.

2023

medRxiv

Severity of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron XBB subvariants in Singapore

PUNG, R; Kong, XP; Cui, L; Chae, S-R; Chen, MI-C; Lee, V; Marc Ho, ZJ;

2023

medRxiv

Relative role of border restrictions, case finding and contact tracing in controlling SARS-CoV-2 in the presence of undetected transmission: a mathematical modelling study.

PUNG, R; Clapham, HE; Russell, TW; CMMID COVID-19 Working Group,; Lee, VJ; KUCHARSKI, AJ;

2023

BMC medicine

Patterns of infection among travellers to Singapore arriving from mainland China

PUNG, R; Kucharski, A; Marc Ho, ZJ; Lee, V;