Personal statement

Gabriela Gomes is an applied mathematician specialised in population dynamics. She obtained her PhD in Mathematics from the University of Warwick and, subsequently, switched to biology with a Wellcome Research Training Fellowship in Mathematical Biology. She established an independent research group at the Gulbenkian Science Institute, initially supported by a Marie Curie Excellence Grant, with projects ranging from fundamental mathematical concepts to management of population and ecosystem health, public engagement in science and development of research infrastructures. She also led research programmes at the University of Porto and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and held visiting positions in the USA and Brazil. Gabriela is now a Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Strathclyde, where she leads the Mathematics of Life Sciences (MoLS) and co-leads the Variation and Selection (VaS) research groups. She co-directs the Centre for Mathematics Applied to the Life Science (CMALS, a joint venture of Scotish universities), holds a Royal Society International Exchanges grant for collaboration with researchers in Melbourne, and is a Research Coordinator at the Centre for Mathematics and Applications (NOVA Math) at the NOVA University of Lisbon. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (FIMA).

Gabriela is broadly interested in how variation among individuals affects the dynamics of populations, whether this concerns demography, epidemiology, ecology or evolutionary biology. In collaboration with experimental and observational scientists, she studies microbial population dynamics and the spread of infectious diseases. She is also involved in research devoted to optimising study designs and policy decisions.