I have an undergraduate degree in Zoology and then went on to do a Postgraduate Diploma in Wildlife Management in New Zealand and a Master’s degree in Wildlife Science in India when I spent 6 months following chasing green turtles and setting up grazing experiments in the Indian Ocean. Interviewing villagers living on the edge of India’s protected Tiger Reserves made me start thinking about disease transmission between wild animals, livestock and humans who live in close proximity to animals. This led me to do my PhD at the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago (New Zealand), graduating in 2014. I then moved to the ANU, where I now work with a team of brilliant students and research associates in the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health.

My research focuses on how the physical environment, broadly defined, impacts human health and well-being. My projects combine public health surveillance with remote sensing, and land and water quality monitoring data to quantify, monitor and understand the processes that shape disease patterns. We use a wide range of techniques to examine research questions, with a focus on spatial models and temporal approaches to predict disease patterns in response to environmental change.

I teach into three programs. I convene the Master of Public Health course on Human Health, Environment and Climate Change and lecture into the Master of Demography and Master of Philosophy (Applied Epidemiology) programs.