I am Mariken de Wit, PhD candidate for track 9: Tracing and retracing mosquito-borne disease emergence. I have a background in Biomedical Sciences and Epidemiology. During my undergraduate degree I became really interested in epidemiology and data analysis and realised I enjoyed that more than working in the lab. Infectious diseases have fascinated me since day 1 and they still do. After an internship in malaria immunology at Institut Pasteur, Paris, I went on to do an MSc in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. I then worked as a Research Fellow at LSHTM for 1.5 years on an HIV project in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a project about tracking progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals in mining communities.

After this, I joined the One Health PACT project, because I am excited to work on mosquito-borne diseases, improve my statistical and mathematical modelling skills, and work together in an interdisciplinary consortium. Within the consortium, my project focusses on better understanding the dynamics of past and future arbovirus outbreaks in the Netherlands and beyond by using mathematical transmission models. For this, I integrate several data types that are being collected by the other PhD students. These data are used as input for a spatially-explicit transmission model I am developing and for its calibration using Bayesian inference methods. This model will also be used to evaluate surveillance and intervention strategies developed within the consortium.

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