Prof Angela McLean, FRS (Department of Zoology)

Angela McLean studied Mathematics at Oxford and received her PhD in Biomathematics from Imperial College. She held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, first in Oxford’s Zoology Department and then in the Department of Immunology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. She is now a Senior Research Fellow in Theoretical Life Sciences at All Souls College and Professor of Mathematical Biology in the Department of Zoology. She is also a Director of the Institute for Emerging Infections in the James Martin 21st Century School. In 2009, Angela was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society.

Angela’s research interest is the mathematical modelling of the evolution and spread of infectious diseases. The group she heads currently has projects on HIV, influenza and hepatitis C virus. These are all RNA viruses which have highly error prone replication. This means that these viruses can evolve very rapidly. Understanding the implications of the rapid evolution of these viruses has important practical implications for the design of interventions with drugs and with vaccines. Such an understanding requires weaving together the implications of events that take place within infected people and also the spread of infections between people. To do this properly requires close collaboration between mathematical modellers and observational biologists. The Institute for Emerging Infections aims to foster such cross-disciplinary work and is a joint project between the Zoology Department and the Nuffield Department of Medicine. The Institute’s work is aimed at understanding the processes through which novel emerging infections adapt to become efficient pathogens of humans.

Angela is currently a member of the Science Advisory Council of Defra, where she chaired a sub-group considering Defra’s use of scientific risk appraisal. She also sits on the National Expert Panel for New and Emerging Infections at the Department of Health, and is an advisor to The Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise and the World Economic Forum.