Sarah is a Lecturer in the School of Biosciences and her research focuses on a combination of field and laboratory experiments to determine the role of variation in infectious diseases. Sarah studied Environmental Science at Plymouth University after which she worked for the UK Wildlife Trusts as a Conservation Officer. She started her research career several years later with a NERC Fellowship at Aberdeen University studying for a MSc Ecology. After this, she completed her PhD at Stirling University with Prof. Peter Hudson, studying the ecological dynamics of disease with a NERC Fellowship based at the Centro di Ecologia Alpina in the Italian Alps. Her post-doc took her to the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics (CIDD) at Penn State University. Sarah returned to the UK in 2009 to start a Marie Curie Fellowship at Cardiff University, after completion of which she stayed. Her researched is now focused on the role of individuals in disease persistence and invasion, social networks and infectious disease dynamics, interactions between macrobiota (helminths) and microbiota (bacteria), wildlife diseases and citizen science. Email: PerkinsS@cardiff.ac.uk