Ellie Sherrard-Smith joined Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) as a UK Research and Innovation Fellow in October 2024 after degrees at Cardiff University and post-doctoral positions at Public Health England and Imperial College London. She is a Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology in the Vector Biology department at LSTM. Her overarching aim is to deliver a sustainable framework for malaria vector control that holds environmental health at its core. She has previously developed statistical approaches to assess the potential synergism of malaria vaccines between those targeting pathogen stages preceding the parasite reaching the liver and those preventing development of the parasite within the mosquito vector. More recently, Ellie has been using and adapting transmission models to consider how novel interventions or interventions deployed in new ways to help control malaria in different ecological or social contexts. Her team’s work has led to the online Malaria Intervention Tool and includes the consideration of the risk of malaria through residual transmission (transmission that can happen outside the optimal use of indoor interventions like nets and insecticidal spraying), seasonality and data uncertainty. The team currently collaborates on projects with colleagues in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mozambique, Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and contributes to policy and decision making for the prevention of malaria. Ellie has a keen interest in ecology and its fundamental importance in vector borne disease dynamics and continues to work to characterise novel vector control strategies with this focus. 

Ellie understands that to deliver the best possible health outcomes to communities we have to recognise the connectivity of our ecosystems and the cascade of consequences that lead to our current predicament. Her upcoming projects focus on quantifying the emissions costs from the delivery of malaria vector control. Ultimately, with the aim to deliver care that is feasible, affordable, effective and that has minimal adverse outcomes for future generations. This means reducing waste and greenhouse gas emissions throughout the pathway of manufacture to end-of-life of each product. She is collaborating on projects developing new paradigms for malaria control within this space - low waste and high effectivity.

Ellie works with the Innovative Vector Control Consortium as an advisor on modelling questions and sits on the Advisory Board for Project Bite and European Academies' Science Advisory Council - projects looking at novel vector control interventions in malaria endemic settings. At LSTM, she teaches on the TROP726 and One Health Masters courses on vulnerability to sudden onset extreme events and how humans are driving climate change and biodiversity crises and how we can address these global challenges. Ellie welcomes PhD students to her group studying vector control emissions and impacts from sudden onset extreme events.