Dr Anthony O'Hare

I am an applied mathematician at the University of Stirling since March 2013 lecturing courses in Linear Algebra, Stochastic Proceses, Calculus of Variations, Financial Modelling with an interest in infectious disease dynamics. I am particularly interested in how spatial structure, population dynamics (i.e. movements of individuals), stochasticity, heterogeneities in population structure affect the spread and persistence of both human and animal diseases. Understanding the role of these phenomena is critical in developing effective control strategies.

Prior to moving to Stirling I worked as a postdoc in the Boyd Orr Centre for Population and Ecosystem Health at the University of Glasgow where I modelled the transmission of bovine tuberculosis in cattle in the UK and Northern Ireland. I graduated with a BSc in Physics, Mathematics and Mathematical Physics from University College, Cork in 1994 and a Postgraduate Diploma in Computational Physics in 1995. I obtained an MSc in Computational Physics from the University of Salford in 1996. I completed my PhD entitled "The Formation of Low Temperature Superstructures in the Two-dimensional Ising model with Next-Nearest Neighbour Interactions" at the University of Loughborough under Prof Feo Kusmartsev in 2007.

I have spent a number of years working as a scientist at British Nuclear Fuels Ltd, modelling neutron skyshine radiation, as a software engineer at Logica, Thales, and Sungard where, laterly, I worked as a consultant in Credit Risk management and Collateral Management for several top tier banks including JP Morgan Chase.

I am a member of the Institute of Physics, a fellow of the Higher Education Academy, have level 5 certification from the Institute of Leadership and Management. I am currently the Program Director for undergraduate maths degrees at the University of Stirling and lead the Biological Modelling group in the division of Computing Science and Mathematics at the University of Stirling with my colleague Dr Savi Maharaj.

My research interests lie in modelling and simulating the behaviour of many-body interacting systems which typically display a rich phase diagram. My current research focuses on modelling the interactions between farms and the effect on food security, modelling the spread og bovine TB in the UK, incorporating genomic data into disease transmission models, inferring model parameters from [partially] observed outbreaks, topological defects in graphene sheets.

I am interested in the mathematical and computational techniques used to model these dynamic systems, such as ABC, Monte Carlo methods (MCMC, Dynamic Monte Carlo, Particle Filter Mondate Carlo, Hidden Markov Models) and have created an open source framework for using some of these techniques (Broadwick).

My current research is in * game theoretic techniques to model dynamic interacting systems with complicated payoffs and strategy profiles that might exists, for example, in diverse farming systems or epidemiological control. * Modelling the spread of novel infectious diseases in synthetic populations * Incorporating genomic data from pathogens into disease models.

I am a member of the Institute of Physics.

Research Interests

Evolutionary game theory approaches to modelling dynamical complex systems

Simulation and analysis of complex many-body interacting systems

Incorporating genomic data into epidemiological models

Mathematical Epidemiology

Funded Projects

2013-2014 (CoI): Introduction to mathematical modelling for the environmental and biological sciences. (NERC)

2014-2015 (CoI): Introduction to mathematical modelling for the environmental and biological sciences. (NERC)

2015-2016 (PI): Introduction to mathematical modelling for the environmental and biological sciences. (NERC)

Selected Publications

Enright, J.A. O'Hare, A. Reconstructing disease transmission dynamics from animal movements and test data. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess (2016). doi:10.1007/s00477-016-1354-z

O'Hare, A., Lycett, S., Doherty, T., Salvador, L., and Kao, R. (2016) Broadwick: a framework for computational epidemiology. BMC Bioinformatics, 17, 65. (doi:10.1186/s12859-016-0903-2)

A O'Hare 2015. Inference in a High Dimensional Parameter Space. Journal of Computational Biology. November 2015, 22(11): 997-1004. doi:10.1089/cmb.2015.0086

A O'Hare, RJ Orton, PR Bessell, RR Kao. 2014. Estimating epidemiological parameters for bovine tuberculosis in British cattle using a Bayesian partial-likelihood approach. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281 (1783) 20140248

A O'Hare, FV Kusmartsev, KI Kugel, 2012. A Stable 'Flat' Form of Two-Dimensional Crystals: Could Graphene, Silicene, Germanene Be Minigap Semiconductors?. Nano Lett., 2012, 12 (2), pp 1045-1052.

R Biek, A O'Hare, D Wright, T Mallon, C McCormick, R J Orton, S McDowell, H Trewby, RA Skuce, RR Kao, 2012. Whole genome sequencing reveals local transmission patterns of Mycobacterium bovis in sympatric cattle and badger populations. PLoS pathogens 8 (11) e1003008.

PR Bessell, RJ Orton, A O'Hare, DJ Mellor, D Logue, RR Kao 2013, Developing a framework for risk-based surveillance of tuberculosis in cattle: a case study of its application in Scotland. Epidemiology and Infection 10.1017/S0950268812000635

A O'Hare, FV Kusmartsev, MS Laad, KI Kugel. 2006, Evidence of superstructures at low temperatures in frustrated spin systems. Physica C: Superconductivity 437 230-233

A O'Hare, FV Kusmartsev, KI Kugel 2007. Two-dimensional Ising model with competing interactions and its application to clusters and arrays of π-rings and adiabatic quantum computing Physical Review B 76 (6) 064528

Teaching

MATU9M1 - Mathematics I (Calculus I, Linear Algebra) (Autumn 2015,2016,2017).
MATU9M2 - Mathematics II : (Calculus II, Probability) (Autumn 2014).
MATU9D1 - Discrete Structures (Autumn 2013).
MATU9D2 - Practical Statistics (Spring 2014,2015,2016,2017).
MATU9RP - Research Portfolio (2014-15)
MATU9J8 - Research Project (Spring 2013-2017)
GEOU4HP - Our Hungry Planet (Spring 2015,2016,2017)

Public lectures

Can Animals Do Maths? Public lecture 17/4/2014.

Zero: The history of an unappreciated number Public lecture 31/3/2016.

 

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