I am a Lecturer in Mathematical Sciences at RMIT University, Australia. I develop mathematical models to understand how biological mechanisms drive the time course of infection within the host, and interactions between infection and host immunity. Prior to my appointment at RMIT University, I was an Imperial College Research Fellow in the Section of Virology, Department of Infectious Disease. During my fellowship, I developed skills in experimental virology and bioinformatics, to understand the cutting-edge questions in the field of infectious disease and the technologies available to tackle them. I have held previous Research Fellow appointments at La Trobe University, The University of Melbourne and the Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College London. My PhD studies at the School of Mathematics and Statistics at The University of Melbourne analysed the effects of different components of the immune response on within-host influenza infection. Abstract : Different viruses tend to infect specific types of cells in the body, a characteristic known as cell tropism. We have developed mathematical models to capture different mechanisms by which changing cell tropism could increase a virus’ fitness. I will show how the model can be used to reveal infection dynamics of a single influenza virus strain in different cell types, by fitting the model to data where the initial proportions of cell types are varied. I will then discuss ongoing experimental work to determine how a tropism-changing mutation mechanistically changes an influenza virus’ fitness.

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