Nik Cunniffe

Epidemiological modelling of spread, detection, evolution and control of plant pests and pathogens.

Research Area

Increasing rates of global trade and travel, as well as changing climate, threaten ecosystems worldwide. Non-native invasive pests and pathogens in forests cause significant impacts. Contemporary examples include Phytophthora ramorum, cause of sudden oak death in the United States/ramorum disease in the United Kingdom, ash dieback (caused by Chalara fraxinea) across almost all of Europe, and emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis), a beetle which has killed billions of ash trees in the US, and which is currently absent from the UK, but is top of the UK’s plant health risk register.  My research concentrates upon developing epidemiological models of plant pest and pathogens for use by policy makers. There are two parallel strands: improving our theoretical understanding of plant disease epidemics; and using that knowledge in practice. Theoretical work concentrates on using deterministic, stochastic and spatial models to improve strategic understanding of, for example, pathogen evolution or complex interactions between populations of host plants, pathogens and vectors. The applied work concentrates using forward predictions from models parameterised using spread data to understand how detection and control strategies can be optimised. This often requires computational techniques for efficient simulation of spatially explicit stochastic models at very large spatial scales.

Project Interests

The complexity of policy-relevant models means that only a small subset of all possible disease control strategies can be exhaustively tested and optimised. A recent PhD project in my laboratory has shown how simpler approximate model can be used to design management in complex simulation models. Other recent PhD projects have shown: i/ how stakeholder behaviour can be modelled, and how this has significant impacts on control; ii/ how the tension between acting with imperfect knowledge vs. delaying management & allowing an invasion to spread can have counter-intuitive effects. I would be interested in any projects in these areas.