Fabian Reitzug

Fabian is a DPhil candidate in the Big Data Institute, supervised by Professor Goylette Chami (Population Health) and Professor Renaud Lambiotte (Mathematics). 

His DPhil focuses on the Neglected Tropical Disease schistosomiasis in Uganda. Globally, over 230 million require treatment for this debilitating disease which is caused by water-borne parasitic worms. Schistosomiasis affects primarily poor rural populations without access to safe water and adequate sanitation. Local risk is highly variable on small spatial scales and across otherwise similar communities which has been a formidable obstacle to understanding and interrupting disease transmission. 

The project “SchistoTrack” addresses this knowledge gap by collecting granular human mobility data using wearable GPS loggers. The high resolution and large scale of this data enable us to study the complex social-environmental dynamics which influence local risk. More precise estimates of individual-level exposure and their association with infection risk contribute to the epidemiology of schistosomiasis and may provide insights for future intervention strategies and improved targeting of treatments to the most vulnerable groups. 

Prior to starting the DPhil, Fabian served as a Carlo Schmid Fellow and Consultant at the World Bank Group in Senegal where he focused on Data Science and Applied Research. He completed an MSc in Evidence-Based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation at the University of Oxford and holds a BA (summa cum laude) from Sciences Po Paris. Fabian's studies have been supported by scholarships from Oxford Population Health and the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.