Dr Edwin Michael is an epidemiologist and infectious disease modeller whose research focuses on understanding how major global infectious diseases emerge, spread, and can be sustainably controlled. His work spans Covid 19, arboviral and tick borne infections, malaria, and a range of neglected tropical and zoonotic diseases, including lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, leishmaniasis, and Buruli ulcer.

Dr Michael’s research combines analytical, computational, and AI enabled modelling approaches to uncover the ecological, social, and spatial processes that shape disease transmission in endemic communities. He uses these insights to support the design of cost effective interventions and long term strategies for disease control and elimination, which also includes the development and evaluation of third-sector social enterprise approaches for facilitating sustainable disease control.

His work is strongly interdisciplinary, drawing on applied mathematics, biostatistics, socio-ecology, economics, systems dynamics modelling, complex networks, and agent based simulation. He also leads initiatives to develop place based digital twins that integrate population structure, behaviour, and spatial heterogeneity into models of pandemic preparedness and response.

A central feature of Dr Michael’s programme is close engagement with public health policy makers and global health organisations. He has collaborated with the World Health Organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, national ministries of health, and local authorities to ensure that modelling outputs address real world policy needs and guide decision making across multiple scales.