Neil Ferguson

Neil Ferguson, a British epidemiologist and professor of mathematical biology, specialises in studying the spread of infectious diseases in humans and animals.

At Imperial College London, he holds multiple key positions, including director of the Jameel Institute, director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, head of the department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology in the School of Public Health, and vice-dean for Academic Development in the Faculty of Medicine.

Throughout his career, Ferguson has utilised mathematical modelling to provide valuable data on various disease outbreaks, such as the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak in the United Kingdom, the 2009 swine flu outbreak, the 2012 Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus outbreak, and the 2016 Ebola epidemic in Western Africa. He has also conducted extensive research on mosquito-borne diseases, encompassing Zika fever, yellow fever, dengue fever, and malaria. In February 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ferguson and his team at the Jameel Institute employed statistical models to reveal the significant under-detection of COVID-19 cases in China. Notably, he contributes to the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team.

Currently, Neil heads a WellcomeTrust funded research programme which aims at improving current understanding of how environmental conditions affect the transmission of five key diseases: malaria, dengue, yellow fever, cholera and meningitis A. The programme then aims to examine the implications of climate change for the health burden caused by those diseases and implications for control policies.