The Envirology Team
Prof Vincent Savolainen
Vincent combines field ecology, molecular phylogenetics, and population genomic approaches to address key societal challenges, from explaining the origin of biodiversity to finding solutions for its preservation in a rapidly changing world. Vincent sits on various panels and advisory committees, including the UK Natural Environment Research Council Peer Review College and the Royal Society International Committees.
Prof Thomas Bell
Thomas is a microbial ecologist, interested particularly in patterns and processes in microbial communities across a range of aquatic and terrestrial study systems. His past research has focused on spatial patterns in microbial communities and the ecological and evolutionary processes involved in microbial invasions, which could hold particular relevance for understanding persistence and spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus in the environment.
Dr Christopher Coleman
Chris has worked extensively on the molecular biology, pathogenesis and treatment of highly pathogenic human coronaviruses. He is a new PI building a group studying the virus: host interactions of human coronaviruses at the University of Nottingham and is advising on matters related to SARS-CoV-2 biology and virology.
Prof Nick Jones
Nick studies problems in inference and dynamics in the context of sequence evolution and processes on unobserved networks.
Dr Till Hoffmann
Till is an applied mathematician with an interest in statistical models for networks and the dynamics unfolding upon them. After developing large-scale machine learning models for audio applications at Spotify, he now focuses on building inference pipelines to map the prevalence of Covid-19 in the population using wastewater samples with a focus on uncertainty quantification.
Dr Emma Ransome
Emma is a microbial ecologist, with a particular interest in microbial community responses to environmental stressors (temperature, pollution) and the consequences these responses have for whole ecosystems. She combines field surveys, molecular biology, and large-scale experiments to elucidate key determinants of bacterial and viral community structure and function -– which is of central importance for predicting the transmission of pathogens, such as SARS-CoV-2, in the environment.
Prof Guy Woodward
Guy is a freshwater ecologist, with particular interests in developing new gene-to-ecosystem approaches to understand how natural systems respond to stressors – from climate change and chemical pollution to novel pathogens such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Guy sits on the Board of Directors at the Freshwater Biological Association and the Events Committee of the British Ecological Society, and he is the Deputy Head of Life Sciences, based at Imperial’s Silwood Park campus.
Dr Danielle Harris
Danielle uses molecular approaches to measure microbial community-level responses to anthropogenic stressors in freshwaters. For her PhD, she investigated the impacts of warming on freshwater biofilm communities, integrating field surveys across the Arctic with more controlled, high replicability mesocosm and laboratory experiments. More recently, Danielle has begun exploring the impacts of chemical stressors on freshwater communities using the mesocosm facility at Silwood Park, Imperial College London.
Dr Sarah Bunney
Sarah studies the resilience of socio-technical systems in response to low probability, high consequence events. She is currently working on a project looking at privacy-preserving healthcare data for wastewater-based epidemiology.
Project partners
- Environment Agency
- Public Health England
- UK Water Industry Research
- Thomson Ecology
- The Riferfly Partnership
- Zoological Society of London
- Norfolk River Trust
- Slough Borough Council
- Freshwater Biological Association
- University of Bangor