Prof. Matthew Baylis is the Executive Dean of the Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences at the University of Liverpool. He studied Zoology at Oxford University (1982-85) and then a PhD on the ecological interactions of lycaenid (blue) butterflies and ants. His first postdoctoral post (1989-93) was at the Tsetse Research Laboratory, University of Bristol, but he was permanently based in Kenya for 4 years. He then moved to the UK’s Institute for Animal Health to study arboviruses spread by biting midges and, later, scrapie. In 2005, he took up the Chair in Veterinary Epidemiology at the University of Liverpool. With fellowship funding from the Leverhulme Trust he established the Liverpool University Climate and Infectious Diseases of Animals group (LUCINDA) which undertakes research into midge and mosquito-borne arboviruses (inc. West Nile, Japanese encephalitis, dengue, Zika), plague, tick-borne diseases, and liver fluke, and uses Big Data approaches to develop a comprehensive pathogen-host database. From 2018-2022 Matthew was the PI of the £8.8 m GCRF Grow award project “One Health Regional Network in the Horn of Africa (HORN)” which aims to build capacity in the area of One Health - the impact of health of animals and the environment on human health and livelihoods.
