Roy M. Anderson

Sir Roy Malcolm Anderson FRS (born 12 April 1947) is a leading British expert on epidemiology. He has mathematically modelled the spread of diseases such as new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and AIDS. He also currently chairs the science advisory board of WHO's Neglected Tropical Diseases programme, is a member of the Bill and Melinda Gates Grand Challenges advisory board, and chairs the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) advisory board funded by the Gates Foundation. He is a non-executive director of GlaxoSmithKline.

Biography

Education and early life

Anderson was born the son of James Anderson and Betty Watson-Weatherborn.^[2] He attended Duncombe School, Bengeo and Richard Hale School. He gained a BSc degree in zoology at Imperial College and a PhD degree in parasitology in 1971 with thesis titled A quantitative ecological study of the helminth parasites of the bream Abramis brama (L).^[3] Most of Anderson's early career was at Imperial College, becoming Professor of Parasite Ecology in 1982. He was head of the Department of Biology from 1984 to 1993.^[2] At Imperial College, he served as Director of the Wellcome Centre for Parasite Infections from 1989 to 1993.

Career

In 1993 Anderson moved to the University of Oxford where he was head of the Zoology department and held the Linacre Chair of Zoology until 2000. During this time he served as Director, Wellcome Centre for the Epidemiology of Infectious Disease. He left Oxford after a unanimous vote of no confidence in him by the Department of Zoology.^[4] At issue were false accusations about a colleague (for which he later apologized), undeclared financial conflicts of interest, and his autocratic leadership style. This also prompted his resignation in May 2000, from the Wellcome Trust where he had been a Trustee (then a Governor) for nearly ten years.^[5]

Anderson is the author of over 450 scientific articles and has sat on numerous government and international agency committees advising on public health and disease control including the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS. From 1991–2000, he was a Governor of the Wellcome Trust.

Foot and mouth
Anderson was one of the most prominent scientists who advised the UK Government on the handling of the Foot and Mouth control policy in 2001, a policy that culminated in the destruction of around six million UK cattle.

Chief Scientific Advisor
He was Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Ministry of Defence from October 2004 to September 2007. After that, he returned to his Chair in Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London.^[6]

Rector of Imperial College
Anderson succeeded Richard Sykes as the 14th Rector of Imperial College on 1 July 2008. In this role he expressed a desire to raise tuition fees^[7] and privatise top UK universitites within 10–20 years.^[8][9][10] He tendered his resignation in November 2009 stating "I have decided to step down as rector as I want to return to my primary concern, which is my deep and abiding research interest into global health."^[11]

2009 swine flu outbreak
Anderson was interviewed on the BBC's Today programme about the 2009 swine flu outbreak on 1 May 2009 and said "the pandemic has started."^[12] Anderson is a temporary member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, a group set up to give scientific advice to the British government over health issues relating to swine flu. He faced calls to resign over a conflict of interest as an adviser to the government and as a member of GlaxoSmithKline's board, though a spokesperson from Imperial College noted Anderson was 'not a member of the drug or vaccine sub committees of the flu advisory group.'^[13]

Honours

Anderson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1986, and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in 2004. He was knighted in the 2006 Queen's Birthday Honours list.

Personal life

In 1975, he married Mary Joan Mitchell, who he later divorced in 1989. In 1990, he married Claire Baron. He enjoys hill walking, croquet, natural history and photography.^[2]

Selected publications

• Anderson, R. M.; May, R. M. (1978). "Regulation and stability of host-parasite population interactions: I. Regulatory processes.". J. Anim. Ecol. 47 (1): 219–247. doi:10.2307/3933. JSTOR 3933. 
• Anderson, R. M.; May, R. M. (August 1979). "Population biology of infectious diseases: Part I.". Nature 280 (5721): 361–7. doi:10.1038/280361a0. PMID 460412. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v280/n5721/abs/280361a0.html. 
• May, R. M.; Anderson, R. M. (August 1979). "Population biology of infectious diseases: Part II.". Nature 280 (5722): 455–61. doi:10.1038/280455a0. PMID 460424. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v280/n5722/abs/280455a0.html. 
• Anderson, R. M.; May, R. M. (1981). "The population dynamics of microparasites and their invertebrate hosts". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 291 (1054): 451–524. doi:10.1098/rstb.1981.0005. JSTOR 2395437. 
• Anderson, R. M.; Gordon, D. M. (October 1982). "Processes influencing the distribution of parasite numbers within host populations with special emphasis on parasite-induced host mortalities.". Parasitology 85 (Part 2) (02): 373–98. PMID 1145478. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=4133080. 
• Anderson, R. M.; May, R. M. (October 1982). "Coevolution of hosts and parasites". Parasitology 85 (Part 2) (02): 411–26. PMID 6755367. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=4133104. 
• May, R. M.; Anderson, R. M. (October 1983). "Epidemiology and Genetics in the Coevolution of Parasites and Hosts". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 219 (1216): 281–313. doi:10.1098/rspb.1983.0075. JSTOR 35852. PMID 6139816. 
• May, R. M.; Anderson, R. M. (March 1987). "Transmission dynamics of HIV infection". Nature 326 (6109): 137–42. doi:10.1038/326137a0. PMID 3821890. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v326/n6109/abs/326137a0.html. 
• Nowak, M. A.; Anderson, R. M.; McLean, A. R.; Wolfs, T. F.; Goudsmit, J.; May, RM (November 1991). "Antigenic diversity thresholds and the development of AIDS". Science 254 (5034): 963–9. doi:10.1126/science.1683006. PMID 1683006. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/254/5034/963. 
• Anderson, R. M.; May, R. M. (1991). Infectious diseases of humans: dynamics and control. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-854599-1. 
• Anderson, R. M.; Donnelly, C. A.; Ferguson, N. M.; Woolhouse, M. E.; Watt, C. J.L; Udy, H. J.; MaWhinney, S.; Dunstan, S. P. et al (August 1996). "Transmission dynamics and epidemiology of BSE in British cattle". Nature 382 (6594): 779–88. doi:10.1038/382779a0. PMID 8752271. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v382/n6594/abs/382779a0.html. 
• Donnelly, S. H.; Ghani, A. C.; Leung, G. M.; Hedley, A. J.; Fraser, C.; Riley, S.; Abu-Raddad, L. J.; Ho, L. M. et al (May 2003). "Epidemiological determinants of spread of causal agent of severe acute respiratory syndrome in Hong Kong". The Lancet 361 (9371): 1761–6. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(03)13410-1. PMID 12781533. http://image.thelancet.com/extras/03art4453web.pdf. 
• Riley, S.; Fraser, C.; Donnelly, C. A.; Ghani, A. C.; Abu-Raddad, L. J.; Hedley, A. J.; Leung, G. M.; Ho, L. M. et al (June 2003). "Transmission dynamics of the etiological agent of SARS in Hong Kong: impact of public health interventions". Science 20 (5627): 1961–6. doi:10.1126/science.1086478. PMID 12766206. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/300/5627/1961. 
• Fraser, C.; Riley, S.; Anderson, R. M.; Ferguson, N. M. (April 2004). "Factors that make an infectious disease outbreak controllable". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101 (16): 6146–51. doi:10.1073/pnas.0307506101. PMC 395937. PMID 15071187. //www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=395937. 

References

External links

• Freeview Video 'The Epidemic of Mad Cow Disease (BSE) in the UK, Roy Anderson — a Royal Institution Discourse by the Vega Science Trust
• EPSRC biography
• Telegraph — Honours for those who 'work and serve at the sharp end'