Dr Sumali Bajaj
I have a background in statistics and biostatistics, earning my BSc from Lady Shri Ram College for Women and an MSc from Harvard University. After my masters I worked as a research assistant at Imperial College London for three years. I recently completed a DPhil in infectious disease modelling at the University of Oxford, focusing on statistical and computational approaches to studying SARS-CoV-2 transmission and healthcare disparities in England.
I develop statistical and computational tools to analyse infection risks and healthcare disparities in infectious diseases. My current work focuses on leveraging serological data to reconstruct past transmission dynamics across populations and designing well-powered surveys with limited resources. I collaborate with researchers across various departments in the university, as well as partners in South America and India. I am also passionate about teaching the application of statistics and mathematics in disease modelling and public health. If you share similar interests or would like to discuss potential collaborations, feel free to get in touch!
Bajaj, S., Thompson, R. and Lambert, B. 'A renewal-equation approach to estimating Rt and infectious disease case counts in the presence of reporting delays' Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences (2025) [In press].
Kamau, E., et al. 'The Mathematics of Serocatalytic Models with applications to public health data', medRxiv (2025)
Bajaj, S., et al. 'COVID-19 testing and reporting behaviours in England across different sociodemographic groups: a population based study using testing data and data from community prevalence surveillance surveys', The Lancet Digital Health (2024)
McCrone, J. et al. 'Context-specific emergence and growth of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant.', Nature (2022)
Kraemer, M.U.G., et al. 'Spatiotemporal invasion dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.1.7 emergence' Science (2021)
