Jo is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biosciences and her research focuses on the ecology and evolution of infectious disease, particularly, what happens when individual hosts or host populations are infected by more than one parasite at a time (coinfection). She is also interested in how fundamental ecology may help support medical research and practice. To explore these questions, she uses a combination of field and lab based studies coupled with mathematical modelling techniques. Jo started out as a junior medical laboratory scientist in microbiology at Liverpool PHLS, but returned to education undertaking an Applied Biology degree at Liverpool John Moores University. Following her degree she spent several years studying squirrel behaviour and disease before taking up a PhD in December 1999 at Stirling University under the guidance of Prof. Peter Hudson. It was there that her interest in coinfection began while studying the “Community Ecology of Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) Parasites”. After completion of her PhD in May 2006, she moved to Armidale (NSW, Australia), to take up a position as a Research Scientist in CSIRO Livestock Industries extending her coinfection research to examine the immune mechanisms mediating parasite interspecific interactions in sheep. Finally after three years down-under, she returned to the UK and gained her position as a Lecturer here in Cardiff. Email: LelloJ@cardiff.ac.uk
