Luca Nelli

Background

About Luca Nelli

My research interests cover a spectrum spanning form ecology to epidemiology, and their interface in the field of public health, One Health and wildlife conservation. Currently, my main research project is embedded in a cross-disciplinary USAID funded project (STOP Spillover), working with in-country stakeholders to understand and address the threats posed by zoonotic viral diseases and reduce the risk of viral spillover and spread. As a parallel project, I am collaborating with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on a research programme funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, entitled “Freedom from Infection – Confirming the Interruption of Malaria Transmission (FREEDOM)”. The programme seeks to investigate whether tools developed for confirming the absence of infection in veterinary epidemiology can be applied to malaria, and will provide key evidence as to whether and how these tools can be best used to guide decision-making when driving towards and confirming malaria elimination. In addition, I am involved in different collaborative projects on ecology and epidemiology of vector-borne diseases in South Saharan Africa (primarily Burkina Faso, Tanzania and Kenya), where I collaborate with local scientists focusing on spatio-temporal analyses of vector-borne disease ecology. In parallel with my main research, I am involved in several other collaborative projects on species distribution and connectivity models of a range of taxa such as insects, birds, fishes and mammals. For example: water vole in Glsagow, in collaboration with the Glasgow City Council; bats in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, in collaboration with Makerere and Mount Kenya Universities; Orangutan in Borneo, in collaboration with Smithsonian National zoo and International Animal Rescue.