IDDconf 2025
A Conference on Infectious Disease Dynamics.
A Conference on Infectious Disease Dynamics.
IDDconf 2025 is back! IDDconf 2025 is the fifth instalment of a meeting series focussing on innovative research in infectious disease dynamics.
This meeting is an opportunity for infectious disease modellers to share new ideas, in-progress research, and build an open and collaborative network of scientists.
Concurrent updates on this website and on BlueSky at @IDDconf.
Topics include any aspects of infectious disease dynamics: from methodological to applied modelling of emerging, epidemic and endemic infectious diseases, including epidemiology, phylodynamics, evolutionary biology and ecology.
We are aiming for the meeting to be as informal and family-friendly as possible. Please see the family section for more information.
Format: single-stream of short talks (~15 mins) by most attendees (numbers permitting), with a small poster session during evening reception.
Abstracts for talks and posters will be solicited in August 2025. Decisions will be made in a transparent manner, without reference to topic or institution. IDDconf 2025 offers a presentation mentoring scheme.
We are committed to making IDDconf a relaxed and safe experience for everyone, free from bullying or harassment of any nature. We expect all participants to act in a professional and responsible manner. If you experience or witness anything of concern, please contact one of the meeting organisers.
*There are cafes and supermarkets in Ambleside, or a supermarket at Windermere train station, that we recommend delegates visit to get breakfast. The accommodation has kitchen facilities including kettle, toaster, crockery and fridges.
| Time | Content |
|---|---|
| 18:00-21:00 | Check in to accommodation for workshop attendees |
| Time | Content |
|---|---|
| 8:45-9:00 | Set up |
| 9:00-10:30 | Workshop sessions |
| 10:30-11:00 | Coffee + snack |
| 11:00-12:30 | Workshop sessions |
| Time | Presenter | Title | Chair |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12:30-13:20 | Lunch and Registration | ||
| 13:20-13:30 | Opening Remarks | ||
| 13:30 | Jonathan Read | The structure of social interactions in England during the COVID-19 pandemic | Roz Eggo |
| 13:45 | Luke Murray Kearney | Inferring Age-Stratified Social Networks from Contact Data with Machine Learning | |
| 14:00 | Lucy Goodfellow | Post-pandemic social contact patterns in the United Kingdom: the Reconnect survey | |
| 14:15 | Alexis Robert | Impact of ethnicity-specific distribution of contacts on outbreak dynamics | |
| 14:30 | Liza Hadley | Quantifying population susceptibility to measles in Canada using vaccine coverage estimates | |
| 14:45-15:30 | Coffee | ||
| 15:30 | Phoebe Aslpin | Estimating the strength of symptom propagation from contact tracing data | Chris Jewell |
| 15:45 | Frederick T. A. Freeth | Pig Brother: An AI Framework for Livestock Movement Analysis and Disease Detection in Swine Barns | |
| 16:00 | Christopher Davis | The impact of control measures on highly pathogenic avian influenza transmission in poultry in Great Britain | |
| 16:15 | Jo Widdicombe | Modelling the transmission dynamics of Cystic Echinococcosis in Argentina | |
| 16:30-16:45 | Comfort Break | ||
| 16:45 | Alex Kaye | Quantifying infectious disease epidemic risks for seasonal pathogens | Liz Fearon |
| 17:00 | Jonathon Mellor | Exploring sampling strategies for community surveillance studies in future pandemics | |
| 17:15 | Nathan Doyle | The case for using temporal healthcare capacity constraints for pandemic response optimisation | |
| 17:30 | Martin Wohlfender | Machine learning-based short-term forecasting of COVID-19 hospital admissions using routine hospital patient data | |
| 17:45-19:30 | Reception and Poster Session |
| Time | Presenter | Title | Chair |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9:00 | Rebecca Underwood | Identifying relationships between care home outbreaks and the local area using SARS-CoV-2 whole genome sequence data | Julia Gog |
| 9:15 | Muhammad Bilal | Evaluating the effect of sampling bias on genetic estimate of disease transmission | |
| 9:30 | Jake Carson | Incorporating epidemiological data into the genomic analysis of partially sampled infectious disease outbreaks | |
| 9:45 | Hannah Lepper | Multiple mechanistic models of strain competition are needed to capture pneumococcal serotype-specific antibiotic resistance patterns | |
| 10:00 | Greg Barnsley | The impact of Azithromycin mass drug administration on bacterial carriage in humanitarian settings | |
| 10:15 | Fateen Yasir | The challenges of modelling contemporary measles dynamics | |
| 10:30-11:15 | Coffee | ||
| 11:15 | Julia Bicker | A hybrid modeling framework to combine agent- and population-based epidemiological models | Graham Medley |
| 11:30 | Simon Spencer | A Bayesian modelling framework with model comparison for epidemics with super-spreading | |
| 11:45 | Lloyd Chapman | Non-centered Bayesian inference for discrete-time individual-level epidemic models: the Rippler algorithm | |
| 12:00 | Daniel Higgins | A doubly stochastic approach to compartmental modelling | |
| 12:15 | Julia Gog | What I learned during my sabbatical | |
| 12:30 | Anna Wendler | An extension of age-of-infection models: A SECIR model based on integro-differential equations for epidemic outbreaks | |
| 12:45 | Melissa Iacovidou | Spatially explicit individual-based model for schistosomiasis | |
| 13:00-13:45 | Lunch | ||
| 13:50 | Assemble for walk | ||
| 14:00-17:30 | Optional Walk / Free time |
| Time | Presenter | Title | Chair |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9:00 | Emilie Finch | Optimising vaccination and Wolbachia interventions to control dengue | Yang Liu |
| 9:15 | Samuel Sutherland | Measuring elimination of gambiense human African trypanosomiasis: A comparison of deceptively different metrics | |
| 9:30 | Cana Kussmaul | Modeling the effect of weather on infectious diseases: why causal structure matters. | |
| 9:45 | Camille Schneider | Understanding antibiotic resistance transmission within and between humans in Klebsiella pneumonia and Escherichia coli – a theoretical modelling study | |
| 10:00 | Angkana T Huang | Twice and yet done: evidence from dengue type-specific reconstructions across Brazilian states | |
| 10:15-10:45 | Coffee | ||
| 10:45 | Joel Winterton | Untangling contact heterogeneity and host susceptibility | Jon Read |
| 11:00 | Zviiteyi Chazuka | Co-producing Infectious Disease Models: A Collaborative Journey | |
| 11:15 | William Hart | Impact of future climate uncertainty on vector-borne disease risks | |
| 11:30 | Max M. Lang | Fine-Scale Environmental Risk Mapping and Non-Linear Age Dynamics of Malaria Infection in rural Ugandan Communities | |
| 11:45 | Jack Goodall | The influence of meteorological conditions on Streptococcus pneumoniae colonisation | |
| 12:00-13:00 | Lunch | ||
| 13:00 | Jiaxin Zhou | Quantifying the relationship between antibody titres and infection risk for influenza A/H1N1 and B/Victoria across different infection outcomes: a Bayesian approach using serological and PCR-confirmed data | Louise Dyson |
| 13:15 | Neil Wilkins | Influenza hospital admissions prevented by vaccination: a transmission-dynamic analysis of the 2022/2023, 2023/2024 and 2024/2025 programmes in England | |
| 13:30 | Ayaka Monoi | Optimal RSV infant immunization strategies in Japan: a modelling study | |
| 13:45 | Closing Remarks |
IDDconf 2025 will have a presentation mentoring scheme. The aim is to allow speakers and attendees get the most out of presentations at IDDconf 2025, by generating constructive feedback ahead of the meeting.
Mentors will be able to volunteer at registration. For mentees, at the time of title submission (1st-11th August) you will be able to opt in to join the scheme. We hope that mentors and mentees of all academic levels will opt in to the scheme.
The scheme will pair people from different institutions, who will then set up a 30-minute video call in the 10 days before IDDconf 2025. The mentee will give their presentation, and receive constructive feedback from the mentor.
Here are some resources to help in preparing talks:
“How to give a good scientific talk” (video by Julian Rayner)
This is a great place to start, and fits well with IDDconf format.
“How To Give a Good Talk” (Paper by Uri Alon)
Some more details here, splitting into considering preparation, delivery and handling questions afterwards.
“Ten simple rules for short and swift presentations” (paper by Christopher Lortie)
(Can skip the preamble.) The “rules” will help in preparing slides.
IDDconf 2025 will provide bursaries for childcare during the conference. We have increased the support from previous years. Please indicate at registration if you are likely to need the bursary. IDDconf will provide £250 in travel and accommodation support.
Delegates cannot claim both bursaries. We encourage delegates to claim from a grant or funding agency if that is possible, to demonstrate to funders the need for these subsidies.
IDDconf has a limited budget, and childcare subsidies will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis until that limit is reached.
Children and babies are welcome at IDDconf, but caregivers should please make regular efforts not to interrupt speakers during sessions. Children are the responsibility of parents/caregivers while on campus and at IDDconf. Parents should note that that there will be alcoholic beverages at the poster session.
Children and babies are unfortunately not allowed in the University of Cumbria accommodation, and therefore outside accommodation must be sought for those bringing children. We suggest doing so as soon as your plans are made, as there is high demand in Ambleside. You are welcome to use the IDDconf parent mailing list to co-ordinate with other parents to find accommodation. At registration, please let us know if you would like to be added to the mailing list for people who may make childcare arrangements in Ambleside.
IDDconf 2025 will offer a workshop session, from 9am—12.30pm on Tuesday 2nd September. Delegates can arrive on Monday evening, and therefore the cost of the workshops includes 1 night accommodation plus the session.
This session will cover emerging packages and methods for simulating outbreak dynamics using R, including
incorporation of demography, social mixing patterns, overlapping NPIs and vaccination. This will include simple
branching process models with {epichains}, loading social mixing data with {socialmixr}, calculating overall epidemic
size with {finalsize} and simulating temporal dynamics with {epidemics}, as well as customisation of models with
social mixing structure and overlapping interventions in {odin}.
Our aim is to provide a fairly small (~100), community-driven conference, to improve interaction between modellers. We want a forum for modellers to present up to date work, stimulate discussion, and build collaborations. We are completely transparent about decision-making, and as many of these decisions as possible (such as talk selection) are done randomly. Last year we gave away leftover wine using a live random number selection in R!
IDDconf is organised by the Juniper Organisation. Organisation is led by Roz Eggo, with Julia Gog (Cambridge), Nick Davies, Graham Medley, Ciara Dangerfield, and Jon Read (Lancaster) on the organisation team. The conference is run by The University of Cambridge but there is no particular focus on Cambridge at the conference.
IDDconf.org is the sister of IDDjobs.org, a community-driven site for finding and posting positions in infectious disease dynamics. Please add your jobs, and studentships there!
For any questions or queries regarding content, please email contact@iddconf.org, and in relation to logistics, organisation, or dietary requirements, Juniper (with IDDconf in the subject line).