ANDREW W. PARK
Assistant Professor
Joint Appointment with Odum School of Ecology

My lab is jointly with the Odum School of Ecology and the Department of Infectious Diseases at the College of Veterinary Medicine. We are interested in the epidemiological, ecological and evolutionary consequences of host-parasite interactions. Research is largely theoretical (e.g. computer simulation of disease outbreaks) but the questions are often motivated by field and laboratory data, which leads to inter-disciplinary research with veterinarians, virologists, geneticists and ecologists, among others.

Our main focus is on understanding how processes combine to shape patterns of disease at scales from amino acids up to global populations. Influenza has proved a great study system to illuminate these mechanisms. Using equine influenza data we have worked on optimal vaccination strategies, calibration of immune escape and transmission potential. We have also used avian influenza as a model system to consider when zoonoses are more likely to establish via multiple cross-species transmission rather than direct adaptation. However, we are not a disease-specific lab, but rather we look to available data to motivate and address a range of infectious disease issues.

Theoretical work includes applied questions such as determining when basic measures like quarantine actually work and also more fundamental problems including how parasite diversity and host heterogeneity interact to modulate disease risk in populations. Recently we have begun to integrate evolutionary thinking into our approach, because the ability of pathogens to evolve can cause problems such as drug-resistance, antigenic drift and increases in virulence. Part of our work aims to understand the processes driving change in parasite populations.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Search PubMed for "park, aw"

Park, A. W. & Glass, K. 2007. Dynamic patterns of avian and human influenza and East and South East Asia. Lancet Infectious Diseases. 7(8): 543-548.

Day, T., Andre, J. B. & Park, A. W. 2006. The evolutionary emergence of pandemic influenza. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 273(1604): 2945-2953.

Day, T., Park, A.W. Madras, N., Gumel, A. &Wu, J. 2006. When is quarantine a useful control strategy for emerging infectious diseases? Am. J. Epidemiol. 163(5): 479-485.

Park, A.W., Wood, J.L.N., Daly, J.M., Newton, J.R., Glass, K., Henley, W., Mumford, J.A. & Grenfell, B.T. 2004. The effects of strain heterology on the epidemiology of equine influenza in a vaccinated population. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 271(1548): 1547-1555.

Daly, J.M., Yates, P.J., Newton, J.R., Park, A.W., Henley, W., Wood, J.L.N., Davis-Poynter, N., & Mumford, J.A. 2004. Evidence supporting the inclusion of strains from each of the two co-circulating lineages of H3N8 equine influenza virus in vaccines. Vaccine 22(29-30): 4101-4109.

Wood, J.L.N., Kelly, L., Cardwell, J.M. and Park, A.W. 2004. Results of a quantitative assessment of the risks of reducing routine swabbing requirements for the detection of Taylorella equigenitalis. Vet. Rec. 157: 41.

Park, A.W., Wood, J.L.N., Newton, J.R., Daly, J., Mumford, J.A. & Grenfell, B.T. 2003. Optimising vaccination strategies in equine influenza. Vaccine 21: 2862- 2870.

Park, A.W., Gubbins, S. & Gilligan, C.A. 2002. Extinction times for closed epidemics: the effects of host spatial structure. Ecol. Lett. 5: 747-755.

Park, A.W., Gubbins, S. & Gilligan, C.A. 2001. Invasion and persistence of plant parasites in a spatially structured metapopulation. OIKOS 94(1): 162-174.

Degrees
MSc, PhD