Ms Haley Christine Stone

Haley is a PhD candidate and Research Officer with the Kirby Institute’s Biosecurity Program, led by Professor Raina MacIntyre. Her PhD is entitled “Epidemic Modelling Techniques for Pandemic Preparedness.” Her research encompasses a broad range of epidemic modelling approaches, including SEIR models, agent-based models, and phylogenetic analyses. Focusing on respiratory diseases with pandemic potential, her work includes investigating early vaccine policy impacts on COVID-19 transmission, creating a novel generic contact matrix for aged care settings within Australia, and examining the impact of metadata on sequences to visualize the relationship between traits and phylogeny for Influenza A/H5N1.

Haley also works as Research Officer for EPIWATCH, an open-source intelligence tool which harnesses the power of AI and open-source data to capture early epidemic signals globally and rapid epidemic detection, leading to the prevention of global spread.

Prior to her PhD, she earned a double master's degree in Infectious Disease Intelligence and International Public Health from the University of New South Wales. She has previous experience as a microbiologist for food borne pathogen testing and genetic research into colorectal cancer.  Her BSc was completed at the University of South Carolina within the United States.