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HAM - early detection of pandemics

LSHTM, UKHSA and Imperial logos

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), Imperial College London and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) are pleased to invite applications a PhD studentship in real-time infectious disease modelling, as part of the NIHR funded Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) on Health Analytics, Epidemic Modelling and Health Economics. The studentships will start in September 2026 and comes with 3.5 years of funding.

The awards will cover a tax-free stipend of £22,780 per year and tuition fees at home rates.

The HPRU in Health Analytics and Modelling brings together three of the world’s leading groups in infectious disease analytics and modelling (at Imperial College, LSHTM and UKHSA). It will create an unparalleled environment for research degree students to thrive, being supervised by leading experts in their fields. This studentship will be based within LSHTM’s Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health but will be jointly supervised by a team representing each of the three institutions. All three institutions are multi-disciplinary encompassing epidemiologists, data scientists, mathematical modellers, health economists and public health practitioners.

Please see the  project description for the type of research that the project involves. The exact focus of the PhD will be developed with the successful candidate and will depend on their interests and prior expertise. Applicants are asked to contact the project supervisors for an informal discussion prior to applying.

Eligibility requirements

Applicants must hold, or expect to obtain before the start of the PhD, a relevant Master’s Degree awarded with good grades, or have a combination of relevant qualifications and experience which demonstrates equivalent ability and attainment.

Applicants must meet the criteria for home fees to be eligible to apply. Your fee status is determined in accordance with the Fee Assessment Policy of LSHTM  and regulations defined by the UK Government.

The PhD programme

Students will be mentored by their supervisory team made up of academics/public health specialists from each of the three institutions. They may also have a wider Advisory Committee who can help with specific issues. Students are expected to take part in the academic life of their institution and help create a strong cohort of early-career researchers across the three institutions within the HPRU. LSHTM students may join relevant Academic Centres, such as the Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases. Imperial College has the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis and WHO’s Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling. Both universities have several other NIHR Health Protection Research Units. Research seminars and journal clubs in the three collaborating institutions will be open to PhD students from this scheme. Students are also able to take Master’s level study modules within either academic institution, subject to approval from their supervisors.

Support for research students’ future career development is covered through the supervision process, the transferable skills programmes and careers services within each institution. As the students will work with individuals from all three institutions they will gain excellent opportunities to network and establish professional contacts across both academia and public health.  They will also have the opportunity to attend national and international conferences.

How to apply

Further information about research degree study at LSHTM as well as application guidance and a link to the portal, can be found on the School’s Research Degrees and Doctoral College pages. Applicants should submit an application for research degree study via the portal. Please write “HAM – early detection of pandemics” in the funding Section on the application form.

In your application, please expand on how you might address the research project, using a maximum of 2 pages. You may want to expand on the background information and motivation as well as outline an appropriate research methodology by which the question can be addressed.

Project description

The increasing frequency of emerging infectious diseases underscores the need for surveillance systems capable of detecting outbreaks early and implement rapid interventions before they escalate into national health emergencies. Traditional clinical surveillance is often limited by reporting delays, testing capacity constraints, and biases in health-seeking behaviour. To complement these limitations, community-based surveillance including wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) and other participatory and innovative data streams have gained attention for their ability to provide early, population-level signals of infectious disease transmission. This PhD project aims to develop, integrate, and rigorously evaluate modelling frameworks that leverage community surveillance data alongside other datasets - such as hospital reporting, community sampling, and syndromic reporting- to improve early pandemic detection.

The first objective is to characterize the lead times from each dataset of emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants during the 2020-2022 COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. The successful candidate will have access to unique datasets collected by UKHSA, including site level wastewater data from early 2020 to 2022. Advanced statistical methods, such as machine learning and other ‘big data’ methods will be applied, and used to quantify the lead times and what data attributes (eg. frequency of sampling, location of samples) affect lead times.

The second objective will focus on the application of Bayesian evidence synthesis methods to evaluate the reliability of key outbreak metrics estimated from different surveillance sources. Support will be provided to develop skills in advanced data analytics and mathematical modelling, both through the supervision team and through courses and workshops hosted by the Health and Analytics Modelling HPRU. The student will develop skills in analysis and the application of infectious disease models, and in knowledge transfer of analytical insights into actionable evidence. As the PhD progresses, there will be opportunity for the successful candidate to develop and direct their own research in understanding the value of infectious disease surveillance.

Supervisory team 

LSHTM

Imperial College

Applications for these projects will only be reviewed and processed after the deadline. All complete applications that are submitted before the deadline will be considered equally, regardless of submission date. 

Only applications in the correct format will be considered.

The deadline for applications is 23:59 (GMT) 23 March 2026.