Recently Prof Niel Hens was awarded a €1.6m Consolidator grant from the European Research Council for a new project on mathematical modelling called TransMID The grant will reinforce the SIMID project and the bridge between our research groups in Antwerp and Hasselt. Dr Benson Ogunjimi received the University of Antwerp’s Research Award in Biomedical sciences for his PhD research. Benson is in clinical pediatric training while continuing his postdoctoral research on modelling of within-host immunological response mechanisms. Dr Jeroen Luyten’s PhD thesis was awarded the Flemish Research Foundation’s McKinsey prize . Jeroen is currently at the London School of Economics, and will return to Belgium to join the KULeuven’s faculty. We wish him all the best!

Adriaan Blommaert successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Health econometric studies into the determinants of antibiotic consumption and the cost-effectiveness of adult influenza and pneumococcal vaccination strategies." on 3rd February 2016 at the University of Antwerp. It was a joint PhD UAntwerp-UHasselt. Adriaan will continue working at CHERMID on the cost-effectiveness of infectious disease prevention strategies and on identifying the determinants of different forms of health care use.

Benny Borremans, with whom we have been collaborating for a few years now, has been awarded a Marie-Curie fellowship. More information is provided below. Title: Spillover of Leptospira in island populations of the Channel Island fox Keywords: Leptospirosis, emerging infectious diseases, cross-species transmission, zoonosis, marine- terrestrial transmission, island ecology  Abstract: Spillover, or cross-species transmission, of pathogens from wildlife to humans is the major cause of emerging infectious diseases such as HIV, Ebola virus or SARS. Yet despite this relevance spillover as a natural process is little known, and there is a pressing need for general theory on spillover. We propose to develop a new conceptual framework for spillover, by using an interdisciplinary approach to analyse an exceptionally complete dataset of Leptospira spillover from California sea lions to endangered Channel Island…

The Centre for Health Economic Research and Modelling Infectious Diseases (VAXINFECTIO), University of Antwerp and the Center for Statistics (I-BioStat), Hasselt University were pleased to organise the 6th SIMID Workshop in Antwerpen from 28 to 29 April 2015.  This two-day workshop covered the use of statistical methodology in infectious disease epidemiology and for the prioritisation of interventions.  We organised sessions with methodological as well as applied research, including serological data, vector borne diseases, ebola,  as well as dynamics influenced by heterogeneity in transmission, individual behaviour and policy topics such as estimating DALYs and the cost-effectiveness of adult pneumococcal conjugate vaccination. We also organised a poster session. Flyer  - Registration  

Our sixth SIMID course will take place on 7-11 September 2015 in the historic city of Bruges (Belgium). Topics: - Day 1: General introduction to R - Day 2: Mathematical models for infectious diseases - Day 3: Estimating infectious disease parameters from serological and social contact data - Day 4: Health economic evaluations: general concepts & dealing with uncertainty - Day 5: Health economic evaluations: vaccination programs More info will be released soon!