Start date: 03-01-2018
Academic department: Mathematics
Title of research project: Viral phylogenetic approach to HIV transmission in the Netherlands
Academic supervisors: Dr Caroline Colijn and Dr Oliver Ratmann
Native country: India

How has the scholarship award enabled you to pursue your ambitions? 

The scholarship has allowed me to work at the cutting-edge of my field by providing significant financial support towards my doctorate.

Why did you choose to study at Imperial? 

I applied to Imperial to work on the mathematics of epidemiology with Dr Caroline Colijn and Dr Oliver Ratmann. We have access to thousands of pathogen sequences that allow us to infer and study pathogen ancestry and dynamics. However, much of the state-of-the-art analyses with sequence data are descriptive in nature. We wish to develop predictive models using various mathematical and statistical methods which will be essential to informing public health decisions.

What have you been up to on the programme so far? 

I have been taking courses, reading about, and implementing various methods to characterise the spread of HIV in the Netherlands from viral sequence data.