Nirali Soni

I am a first year PhD student in Statistics and Epidemiology, and a part of the Medical Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership between the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Lancaster University. My supervisors are Dr Emanuele Giorgi and Professor Federico Costa.

My background is in Biomedical Sciences, which I completed in 2017 from the University of Southampton. After this, I did my Masters in Public Health at Imperial College London, where I subsequently worked as a research assistant for two years.

My current research focuses on the zoonotic disease leptospirosis, in urban slums in Salvador, Brazil. I am currently looking at leptospire shedding by rats into the environment, to understand how this translates to risk in human infections. I also plan on looking into the immunological processes of the disease.