As a mathematician it’s not often you get a field trip, but today’s office was a definite improvement. First day of a collaboration with colleagues @forestresearchuk.bsky.social and been wandering round trees discussing disease spread.

As a former J visa holder, solidarity to all the students, postdocs and researchers suddenly finding themselves cut adrift.

Out on strike today. Didn’t make it to the @sheffielducu.bsky.social pickets as taking child to hospital (all fine) but looks like great turnouts as ever. Asking for a time-limited ruling out of compulsory redundancies really seems like a small ask, and yet here we are.

Fully funded PhD project (UK applicants only) "Developing strategies for the control of ergot on-farm" #planthealth #plantpathology at @niab-uk.bsky.social and @camplantsci.bsky.social www.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/postgraduate... Note the short deadline. @bspp.bsky.social

V happy to announce my 1st grant in a looong time! "Integrating spatial structure & seasonality into forest disease models" (EPSRC small grant). I'll spend 12 mths modelling disease spread through forest pops, incl working with @forestresearchuk.bsky.social to specifically model Dothistroma in pines

On a related note, I wonder what the record is for papers published and still not promoted from L to SL? I suspect I'm getting close.

Pleased to see our paper out on modelling how host-parasite coevolution might play out if the host can itself simultaneously evolve constitutive and induced defences. This project came out of a side conversation during my Fulbright scholarship (y'know, back when those weren't being slashed...)

Come join us at beautiful UBC! The King Lab is recruiting a Post-doc Fellow to develop mathematical theory on infectious disease evolution and emergence, together with Ben Ashby (SFU) #zoonoses #biodiversity www.zoology.ubc.ca/kinglab/join...

It gives me a lot of joy to see this paper. I am not an author and it does not cite me. But the lead author was part of my first ever group of undergraduate tutees. To have seen Abby all the way through her undergrad and now publishing research - especially in my broad field - is something special.

Seeing this in the news reminded me how when Mrs B (then my girlfriend) first visited my family in Norfolk we said we’d go to Sea Palling for the day and she thought we were going to see some relative she’d not heard about called Pauline www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Hard agree with this. I was lucky enough to just get my first research-focussed grant in 10 years. The thought that this could just be whisked away again on a whim by anonymous higher-ups is pretty awful. Full solidarity with all US colleagues going through this right now.

1. For the past thirty years I've had the best job in the world. 
I've had the opportunity to follow my curiosity; explore the workings of nature and society; mentor students and junior colleagues in the same process; and teach generations of students about it all.

In the last 3 weeks I have had 6 review requests. What is going on?

How are we mean to keep up with all this crazy shit. Or is that the whole plan?

Wow it's been an intense start to the year. Starting to level off now thankfully and will have bits of news to share shortly. First update - it was the Yorkshire Area brass band contest at the weekend and we was robbed.

Eldest's high school are proudly sending out weekly summaries of their key teaching techniques. Last week was 'cold calling' - teachers will randomly choose students to answer questions and *all* students should expect to be called on. /1

How does your email find me? Wearing an oodie and a heated blanket, that's how.

A student actually came and shook my hand at today's last lecture of the semester. Where do I put that on my cv?

I hear some of you sometimes get grants. What’s that like then?

We're doing projectile motion today and I feel the students have suffered enough through the semester that they get to see an embarrassing picture of me as a visual aid

I’ll go with with this one from my PhD in @asn-amnat.bsky.social host-parasite coevolution had largely been modelled in gene-for-gene frameworks where infection is all-or-nothing. We attempted to loosely do the same thing in eco-evo (adaptive dynamics) www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...

Away from the stresses of work, the last 2 evenings the eldest and I have been kickstarting people’s Christmas celebrations as part of Maltby Miners Welfare Band with sellout concerts at Rotherham Civic. (It turns out whacking a timpani very hard is quite good for stress)

As an ex-resident of neighbouring Caister, I believe I am obliged to ask “would anyone notice?”

Join our 1-week course on Infectious Disease Mathematical Modelling at Institut Pasteur in beautiful Paris, April 7-11 2025! Deadline for applications: 7 December 2024. More information at www.pasteur.fr/en/education...

As my follower count creeps towards that of the old place, an unashamed plug for the FREE online textbook I wrote for #mathbio students. 'Introducing Mathematical Biology' is FREE, interactive, accessible and FREE. Please feel free to share with students. sheffield.pressbooks.pub/introducingm...

Trying something new: A 🧵 on a topic I find many students struggle with: "why do their 📊 look more professional than my 📊?" It's *lots* of tiny decisions that aren't the defaults in many libraries, so let's break down 1 simple graph by @jburnmurdoch.bsky.social 🔗 www.ft.com/content/73a1...

Today's university in trouble is Sheffield, as the unstoppable and existential crisis of most British Higher Education rolls on. Every day it's another victim. Wasteful and stupid. www.thestar.co.uk/education/re...

Great way to start the week when the first email you open is to invite applications for voluntary severance.

TFW you see an awesome @lastdivebar.bsky.social tee then realise the postage to UK is more than the tee costs to start with 😬

Figured I should actually show some of the #ecoevo #mathbio stuff that occupies my mind for those just following me. Looking here at how hosts might evolve dispersal in the presence of a parasite. Still puzzling over what they all mean...

Just recalling how at the other place a fairly bland post in support of an EDI scheme led to my name and affiliation appearing on an American right-wing 'news' website (and it only occurs to me now my bio didn't even include my affiliation, they must have looked me up). Fun times.

A recent side hustle I’ve dipped my toe into - after discovering my love of baseball (yep, some of us Brits watch and even play) - is sabremetrics. Here was a prediction I generated for this years post-season based on Elo rankings over the main season. Not a bad predictor! #SABR #MLB

At a recent tutorial I asked students to build a mathematical model of the (highly unlikely) scenario of a water company dumping pollution into 1 of nearby Peak District reservoirs and how it would move thru system. Great to see them tackling real-world (sorry, highly unlikely) problems with maths!

Feels like a lot of pressure for a 1st post so thought I'd classify my last year of posts at t'other place: * 8x Politics (there were two big elections tbf) * 7x Family life * 6x Academic life * 6x Sport * 5x Research and teaching * 4x EDI in maths So I guess that's what to expect from me!