Dr. Paul Huxley

POSTDOCTORAL NETWORK  |   Global Change Center

Postdoctoral Researcher

Faculty Mentor:  Dr. Leah Johnson

Department of Statistics

phuxley@vt.edu

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Dr Huxley is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Prof Leah Johnson’s Quantitative Ecological Dynamics Lab at Virginia Tech. Prior to arriving at Virginia Tech, he was awarded his PhD in Vector Biology and Ecology at Imperial College London.

Research questions in the QED lab fall into three complementary areas:

The ecology of infectious diseases

The evolution of individual behaviours or life history strategies and the implication of individual traits on population dynamics and persistence

Inference methods (primarily Bayesian) for mechanistic models of biological systems 

The QED address these questions primarily in the context of infectious disease epidemiology, as well as in behavioural and population ecology. Our approach is to use theoretical models to understand how systems behave generally, while simultaneously seeking to confront and validate models with data and make predictions. Thus, a significant portion of our research focuses on methods for statistical — particularly Bayesian — inference and validation for mechanistic mathematical models of biological systems.

Dr. Huxley is interested in ecology across scales - understanding how current patterns of biodiversity reflect environmental conditions as well as historical patterns of evolution. He is particularly interested in ecological responses to changing environments - from life history responses through to population and community dynamics. Currently, he uses statistical and mathematical models to better understand and predict patterns of covariation between life history traits in disease vectors and other arthropods. He is also the data manager for VecTraits database, which contains information on arthropod vector traits (e.g., morphological, metabolic, behavioural, life history and demographic). This component of the broader VectorByte project aims to provide an online interface and visualization tools for data archiving, discovery, and reuse. VecTraits also trains researchers in the use of the databases and analysis methods.