COVID-19: BioSS Statement
To better support our staff in complying with the UK and Scottish Governments' social distancing policies during the current COVID-19 pandemic, BioSS has switched to a home-based, remote working model for our activities.
We have made strenuous efforts to ensure that our staff will be efficient and effective while working from home, and our intention is to continue to operate as best we can during the outbreak. Research and consultancy work is ongoing, and training courses are now taking place online.
All BioSS staff are contactable by electronic means, and we are happy to arrange virtual meetings with new and existing collaborators.
BioSS is a founder member of the Scottish COVID-19 Response Consortium which is developing open source epidemiological models of COVID-19 spread designed to inform policy. BioSS staff are contributing through the management team and via development of detailed large scale simulation modelling, statistical inference of model parameters from data and information processing pipelines.
Number Muncher Diets is a computer program developed by Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BioSS) and the Rowett Institute from their research funded principally by the Scottish Government. The program uses mathematical methodology to create a ‘weekly shopping list’, offering a selection of food items that satisfies a combination of criteria based on data input in the form of published nutritional guidelines, costs, environmental impact, and personal food preferences.
StagePop enables ecologists to model the dynamics of populations
that are stage-structured (those in which individuals transition
between distinct stages, e.g. eggs, juveniles, adults for most
insects). Although initially developed to model the impact climate
change may have on populations whose development rates
are temperature dependent, such as potato cyst nematodes, its
capability is much more general, including modelling interacting
species in complex food webs.