Professor Rowland Kao
Biography
Rowland Kao was appointed Chair of Defra’s Science Advisory Council in January 2025 for 3 years.
Rowland is Professor of Veterinary Epidemiology and Data Science, University of Edinburgh.
Rowland is a mathematical biologist who studies infectious disease dynamics, mainly with respect to the role of demography in the spread and persistence of infectious diseases in wildlife, humans and livestock. This work includes the development of theoretical models of disease transmission on social networks and applications to the transmission of livestock diseases using a range of analytical and simulation based techniques.
An early proponent of the use of complexity science in infectious disease research, he also led some of the very first investigations that integrated epidemiological and bacterial sequence data, applying this approach to the problem of bovine Tuberculosis in British Cattle and Wildlife. He has since extended these approaches to a range of other pathogens.
Rowland is also interested in the development of real-time parameter estimation techniques during the course of disease outbreaks. This research integrates demographic and spatial/geographic data for all large livestock and poultry in the UK, detailed information regarding the movements of livestock amongst agricultural premises and molecular epidemiology.
As such it integrates a wide variety of topics, most importantly the analysis of networks, but also elements of human behaviour (why do farmers move livestock the way they do, and what would happen if the conditions under which they moved livestock, changed), risk-based surveillance (can we use livestock movements and other forms of contact to identify individual farms most at risk of disease, and/or of transmitting it) and parameter inference (from observed disease data, can we estimate the relative and absolute importance of different routes of contact). Increasingly, the role of climate and land use change in the emergence of novel infectious disease problems is a feature of his work.
Rowland previously served as a member of the SAC from 2018 to 2024.
Chair, Science Advisory Council
The Science Advisory Council (SAC)’s chair is responsible for:
- providing expert independent advice to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)’s Chief Scientific Adviser
- helping to guide Defra’s scientific priorities and planning