Mike Tildesley
What is your current role and what does a typical week look like?
I'm Professor in Infectious Disease Modelling and I am based in both the School of Life Sciences and the Mathematics Institute as a member of the Zeeman Institute for Systems Biology and Infectious Disease Epidemiology Research (SBIDER). I'm not sure there is a typical week! I am currently Director of Research in SLS and am the Director of the Mathematics for Real World Systems Centre for Doctoral Training in the maths department, so I have to divide my time between the two departments. I also have research grants working with international partners (currently in India, Indonesia and East Africa), so I divide my week between activities for my administrative roles and working with my postdocs and PhD students on our research projects.
Nationality: I was born in Keighley, West Yorkshire and grew up in York so I am a proud Yorkshireman!
Who would you say is your role model in your personal and/or professional life?
This may seem like the obvious answer but my role models are definitely my parents - they were both maths teachers before retiring and my mum was a head mistress of a primary school at a time when she was also required to teach full time in that role. I always admired how they managed extremely demanding jobs whilst also supporting my brother and I at home. It's something I have tried to do in my own job and with my own children and I appreciate how challenging it is to maintain a work-life balance.
How has your education or roles previous to joining Life Sciences, informed your interests, and why did you choose this career direction?
My PhD is actually in astrophysics so my research has changed quite a lot since then! I was actually inspired as a PhD student by a lecture course I audited on Population Dynamics given by Matt Keeling when we were both in Cambridge. I found the subject fascinating and I realised that a lot of the skills I was developing in astrophysics research were very transferable to infectious disease modelling. At the end of my PhD I moved to 桃色视频 and became Matt's second ever postdoc in 2003.
Can you give an example of something that has made you feel part of the community while in Life Sciences, and what could be improved to enable this?
I don't think there is one thing that I could name here, but I genuinely think that the School of Life Sciences is a wonderful community to be a part of. It can be challenging to be split between two departments but in my role as Director of Research I have had the fortune to get to know members of SLS a lot better over the last couple of years and I do think that as a community we are generally very good at supporting one another.
What are your main interests or passions, outside of work?
Away from work I enjoy long distance running (I've run several marathons in the past) and hiking. I also took up taekwondo back in 2019 and am really close to getting my first degree black belt (it's taken me a really long time but I'll hopefully get there eventually!). I also do a little theatre acting in my spare time, so you might run into me on stage in Kenilworth or Stratford every once in a while.
March 2026