Simon Gubbins

Simon Gubbins is group leader in Transmission Biology at The Pirbright Institute. After completing a BSc in Mathematics at Imperial College London he undertook a PhD in Botanical Epidemiology at the University of Cambridge.

His main research interest is understanding the transmission of viral diseases of livestock across scales. This work explores the question of how the dynamics of viruses at one scale (for example, within an animal or within a farm) influence the dynamics at another scale (for example, between animals or between farms). A particular focus of his work is the epidemiology of foot-and-mouth disease, bluetongue and African horse sickness, integrating field and laboratory data for these diseases into mathematical frameworks that can be used to inform disease control policy.

He provides regular advice to policy makers, including those in Defra, Scottish Government and the European Food Safety Authority. He was awarded the BBSRC Social Innovator of the Year award in 2013 (joint with Carrie Batten, Simon Carpenter and Peter Mertens at the Institute) for his work on the control of bluetongue.