Citation for Prof Jennifer Flegg

Prof Jennifer Flegg is an outstanding applied mathematician. Her work brings expertise in applied mathematics and advanced computational statistics to critical areas of the biological and medical sciences. Prof Flegg currently holds an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship, has previously held a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) and has received multiple other major competitive grants from both the ARC and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). She is the University of Melbourne Node Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Mathematical Analysis of Cellular Systems (2023—2029).  

 As of late 2024, Jennifer has published 77 journal papers which together have attracted more than 6,000 citations. A 2014 paper on the Spread of Artemisinin Resistance in Plasmodium Falciparum Malaria, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, on its own, has been cited more than 2500 times. She has a Google Scholar h-index of 30. The strength of her research has been recognised through awards of several prestigious medals including the ANZIAM JH Michell Medal (2020) for outstanding new researchers, the Australian Academy of Science Christopher Heyde Medal (2020) to recognise distinguished research in the applied mathematical sciences by researchers up to 10 years post PhD and the Society for Mathematical Biology Leah Edelstein-Keshet Prize (2020) for exceptional contributions to mathematical biology and exhibiting a continuously high level of scientific endeavour and leadership.  

Jennifer’s work has had important global impact. She developed the first predictive spa- tiotemporal mathematical models of the spread of resistance to the drugs used to treat malaria. Using Bayesian model-based geostatistics, her models have predicted drug resis- tance in space and time over Africa and the Mekong region using data that is sparsely available in these regions. This approach overcomes the barrier of gaps in information regarding antimalarial drug resistance by taking a set of discrete observations of resis- tance in space-time and generating continuous predictive maps, where each location in space-time has an associated predicted resistance level, with quantifiable uncertainty. The World Health Organization (WHO) has used these models to update its policies on where and when certain drugs should be used. Her work in this field has been published in high quality, interdisciplinary journals including PNAS, Lancet Infectious Diseases, PLOS Computational Biology and the New England Journal of Medicine. She is involved in leading change in drug policy for malaria as a core part of the Mitigating Antimalarial Resistance Consortium in South-East Africa.  

Jennifer has also made significant advances in developing mathematical models which pro- vide biological insight into tissue dynamics that allow assessment of treatment therapies. Working closely with clinicians (at the Wesley Hospital, Brisbane and the Alfred Hospital, Melbourne), she has used coupled partial differential equation models (typically mixed parabolic-hyperbolic systems) of complex cellular interactions to gain biological insight into the treatment of chronic wounds including oxygen therapy for diabetic wounds and compression therapy for venous leg ulcers. This insight is achieved with numerical ap- proximations to the model (typically with finite volume methods) and analytic methods (typically asymptotic analysis). Using her models, Jennifer has derived conditions which allow the stimulation of healing in chronic wounds that would otherwise remain unhealed. She has published this work in top mathematical biology journals including PLOS Computational Biology, Proceedings of the Royal Society B and Bulletin Mathematical Biology.

Prof Flegg has been invited as a plenary speaker at major Australian and International conferences, including ANZIAM 2020, AustMS 2021. Computational Techniques and Ap- plications Conference (CTAC) 2022, Society for Mathematical Biology (SMB) 2018, 2021, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) 2022. She has held edito- rial positions with top journals in applied mathematics and mathematical biology includ- ing SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, PLOS Computational Biology and Bulletin of Mathematical Biology. She was Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly SMB Newsletter from 2017-2019 and was elected to the Board of Directors for the SMB (2024—2028).

Jennifer has been heavily involved in the Women in Mathematics Special Interest Group (WIMSIG) and has contributed to numerous mentoring programs in mathematics includ- ing the WIMSIG mentoring program, STEM Professionals in Schools , ChooseMaths and Sisters in Science.

With these accomplishments as a researcher, leader and mentor, Jennifer Flegg is a worthy recipient of the EO Tuck Medal for 2025.