The Boyd Orr Centre for Population and Ecosystem Health

Alison E. Mather

Comparative Epidemiology and Informatics
School of Veterinary Medicine and
Theoretical Ecology Lab
College of Medicine, Veterinary & Life Sciences
Tel: +44 (0)141 330 8578 or +44 (0)141 330 2430
Fax: +44 (0)141 330 5602
Email: a.mather@vet.gla.ac.uk

Academic History

• 2007 - present: PhD "Epidemiological approaches to antimicrobial resistance", University of Glasgow
• 2005 - 2007: MSc Veterinary Epidemiology, University of Guelph, Canada
• 2000 - 2004: BSc Biomedical Toxicology, University of Guelph, Canada

Research Interests

My research is focussed on epidemiological approaches to antimicrobial resistance in animal and human pathogens, working in Glasgow with Professors Mellor, Reid and Haydon, and in collaboration with Dr. Richard Reid-Smith, Dr. Patrick Boerlin and Professor Scott McEwen at the University of Guelph and the Public Health Agency of Canada, and Dr. Derek Brown at the Scottish Salmonella Reference Laboratory. In addressing the controversy over the extent to which the veterinary use of antimicrobial drugs leads to antimicrobial resistance problems for humans, I am taking an ecological approach to studying the patterns of antimicrobial resistance in a comparative framework and quantifying the relationship through the application of statistical and mathematical modelling techniques. As a model system, I am using medical and veterinary data on Salmonella Typhimurium DT104 collected in Scotland from 1990 - 2007.

Prior to my current role, my MSc research, also a collaboration between the Universities of Glasgow and Guelph, examined risk factors for contamination and cross-contamination of cattle hides with the human pathogen E. coli O157. Aside from the important public health and food safety conclusions from these studies, I also addressed the methodological issues of dealing with sparse epidemiological data through novel statistical methods.

Peer Reviewed Publications

Mather, A.E., Reid, S.W.J., McEwen, S.A., Ternent, H.E., Reid-Smith, R.J., Boerlin, P., Taylor, D.J., Steele, W.B, Gunn, G.J. and Mellor, D.J. (2008) Factors associated with the cross-contamination of hides of Scottish cattle with Escherichia coli O157. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. (in press)

Mather, A.E., Holt, J.D., Mellor, D.J., McEwen, S.A., Reid-Smith, R. and Reid, S.W.J. (2007) Data sparsity and separation in multidimensional covariate space: Approaches to a common epidemiological problem. Society for Veterinary Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine Conference Proceedings, Dipoli, Helsinki/Espoo, Finland, pp275 - 281.

Mather, A.E., Innocent, G.T., McEwen, S.A., Reilly, W.J., Taylor, D.J., Steele, W.B, Gunn, G.J., Ternent, H.E., Reid, S.W.J. and Mellor, D.J. (2007) Risk factors for hide contamination of Scottish cattle at slaughter with Escherichia coli O157. Prev. Vet. Med. 80, 257 - 270.

Non-Peer Reviewed Publications

"The Toxicology of Chemicals Used in the Production and Refining of Cocaine and Heroin: A Tier-One Assessment" 2004.  Report for the Organization of American States, for distribution throughout the Americas.  (Co-editor and contributor).

Hazardous Materials Management, Feb/March 2003. Chemical Corner - "Carbon Monoxide" (Contributing author). http://www.hazmatmag.com.

Hazardous Materials Management, Dec 2002/Jan 2003. Chemical Corner - "Tetrahydrofuran" (Contributing author). http://www.hazmatmag.com. 

"Pesticide Review Committee Consultation Report", prepared for the City of Guelph by GlobalTox International Consultants, December 2002 (Contributing author).