From Mathematical Biology to Engineering Biology: Bridging Academic Research and Science Advice for Government

Until April of last year, Professor Dame Angela McLean was a Professor of Mathematical Biology and Co-Director of the Institute of Emerging Infections at Oxford University. In this brief talk, she will describe some of her interdisciplinary work on the evolution of infections within individuals and between individuals, using population dynamics and new mathematical models.

Prof McLean will also describe how, as the UK’s Government Chief Scientific Adviser, she brings the insights from her research career into her work advising government.

Biography

Professor Dame Angela McLean DBE FRS is the Government Chief Scientific Adviser having taken up the role in April 2023. She is also Head of the Government Science and Engineering Profession. Prior to this Angela was the Chief Scientific Adviser for the Ministry of Defence.

Until April 2023, Angela McLean was a Professor of Mathematical Biology in the Department of Zoology at Oxford University and a Fellow of All Souls College. Angela’s research interests lie in the use of mathematical models to aid our understanding of the evolution and spread of infectious agents.

Angela is interested in the use of natural science evidence in formulating public policy and has co-developed the Oxford Martin School Restatements: an activity which restructures and presents the evidence underlying an issue of policy concern or controversy in a short, uncharged, intelligible form for non-technical audiences.

Angela established Mathematical Biology at the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council’s Institute for Animal Health in 1994. Before this, Angela was a Royal Society Research Fellow at Oxford University and a Research Fellow at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.

In 2009 Angela was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. She has been awarded the Gabor Medal in 2011 and the Weldon Memorial Prize in 2018. She received her damehood in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours List. In 2024 Angela was appointed an Honorary Distinguished Professor of Loughborough University.

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