Jessica Bridgen

Jess is a third year Statistics and Epidemiology PhD student in the CHICAS research group of Lancaster Medical School, supervised by Dr Chris Jewell and Dr Jon Read. The primary aim of her research is to better understand the role of social interactions in the transmission of infectious diseases.

Jess’ PhD has two main areas of focus:

• Quantifying and characterising UK social mixing patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Identifying nosocomial transmission routes of COVID-19 using routinely collected data.

Over the past year Jess has been working in the Outbreak Surveillance Team at UKHSA part-time alongside her PhD to assist with the COVID-19 pandemic response. She previously studied Epidemiology (MSc) at LSHTM and Mathematics (BSc) at UEA.