i-sense Q&A series: Visualising the pandemic and other health outcomes

Each month we will explore different themes related to developing tools and technologies to track, test and treat infectious diseases. As preparing for and responding to an outbreak is a collaborative effort, we’ll gain perspective from experts in academia, government and policy, healthcare, and industry.

This month we will be exploring the topic 'Visualising the pandemic and other health outcomes.'

Date/time: 

Wednesday, 17 March 2021

13.30 – 14.15 GMT

Joining via Microsoft Teams

Join on your computer of mobile app 

Click here to join the meeting 

Our panel members

Dr Mengdie Zhuang
Research Fellow, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL

Mengdie is a research fellow in the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL. Trained as a computer scientist, her research interests revolve around understanding user engagement with information systems, and how it shapes the design of techniques for efficient knowledge discovery in this context. 

Her work in i-sense focuses on analysing and visualising complex multi-modal datasets for identifying outbreaks of infectious disease and introducing fast intervention, with research into dynamic visualisation and user-adaptive system. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mengdie has been working with an interdisciplinary team to develop the i-sense COVID RED dashboard, which brings together publicly available government data about the pandemic into one place to help make it easy to understand and accessible.

Dr Roger Beecham
Lecturer in Geographic Data Science, University of Leeds

Roger Beecham is a Lecturer in Geographic Data Science at University of Leeds. His research designs, builds and applies data visualization techniques in the analysis of large, geospatial datasets. His work spans several disciplinary and domain areas: spatial statistics, information visualization, transport planning, political geography and crime science.  A current focus is in designing and evaluating visualization techniques for the analysis and communication of model uncertainty. 

Prof Christina Pagel
Prof of Operational Research, UCL and Director of the UCL Clinical Operational Research Unit

Christina Pagel is Professor of Operational Research (a branch of applied mathematics) at University College London (UCL) and Director of the UCL Clinical Operational Research Unit. Her main research area is using mathematical tools to support delivery of health services. This includes combining mathematical models and analysis of routinely collected national and local datasets to support service delivery and design both locally and nationally. She is co-director of the UCL CHIMERA hub where researchers will examine anonymised data, to develop a better understanding of how people’s physiology changes in hospital intensive care units. Since May 2020, she has been a member of Independent SAGE, a group of scientists who are working together to provide independent scientific advice to the UK government and public on how to minimise deaths and support Britain’s recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.

How the Q&A will work

• It’s free to join and open to everyone
• We’ll be taking questions in the Microsoft Teams chat, or you can submit questions in advance to erin.manning@ucl.ac.uk (let me know if you would like to be name as the person asking the question and who you would like to direct the question to)
• The Q&A will run strictly to time, but we will try get to as many questions as possible in that time

Get involved 

If you have suggestions of topics you would like to explore in the future or questions you want answers, email them to erin.manning@ucl.ac.uk. 

Instructions to join the virtual event

This event is hosted in a Microsoft Teams meeting by i-sense at UCL.

Please ensure that you have the Microsoft Teams App installed. If you already use Teams, sign in to the Teams App using the credentials issued by your host university, business or other provider. If you do not have the Teams App installed, or are not currently using Teams, please install the Teams App.

Please note we are unable to offer technical support to participants.