My major research interest is a multi-disciplinary One Health approach to investigating and managing zoonotic diseases in people, domestic animals and wildlife. Over the past four years I have been coordinating a research program involving twenty collaborative research investigation projects in South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka), covering brucellosis, leptospirosis, rabies, anthrax, avian influenza, Nipah virus, scrub typhus, Japanese encephalitis, Q fever and Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever.
I am particularly interested and experienced in investigating and managing the role of wildlife in zoonotic diseases. I researched the epidemiology of bovine tuberculosis in wild animals in New Zealand for many years which was also the topic of my PhD (2000), with a particular focus on spatial epdeimiology and use of remotely sensed habitat data to predict wild animal populations and disease distribution. I have experience in the challenges of conducting field research into wildlife disease, with involvement in a multi-year longitudinal study of tuberculosis in possums.
Biosecurity is another major area of interest, experience and exertise, in particular disease surveillance. I led multi-disciplinary teams to review surveillance systems and prepare national wildlife disease and vector-borne disease surveillance strategies for New Zealand and developed methodology to prioritise wildlife pathogens for risk-based surveillance. I have designed and implemented surveillance for avain influenza in New Zealand, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
