Professor of Applied Mathematics
University of Melbourne
Prof. Jennifer Flegg’s research focuses on using mathematics and statistics to answer questions in biology and medicine. In particular, she develops mathematical models in areas such as wound healing, tumour growth and infectious disease epidemiology.
She was awarded a PhD in 2009 from Queensland University of Technology on “Mathematical modelling of chronic wound healing”. This was followed by post doctoral work at the University of Oxford developing mathematical models for the spread of resistance to antimalarial drugs. From 2014 she was a Lecturer and the recipient of an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award at Monash University and then a Senior Lecturer in Applied Mathematics at the University of Melbourne..
Jennifer was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020 and Professor in 2023. She is the recipient of the JH Michell Medal (2020) for excellence in research by ANZIAM (Australian and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics), the Christopher Heyde Medal (2020) from the Australian Academy of Science and the Society for Mathematical Biology Leah Edelstein-Keshet Prize (2021). She currently serves as an Editorial Board member for PLOS Computational Biology, eLife, Bulletin of Mathematical Biology and SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics. In 2022, Jennifer started an ARC Future Fellowship to advance data integration modelling for infectious disease response.