Simon Thelwall, BSc, MSc, PhD

Education

MSc Epidemiology
2012-2014

London School of Hygiene and Tropical medicine

PhD Biochemistry
2001-2005

‘The Properties of 4.1G: Localisation, Interactions and Evolution‘

University of Kent

BSc Biomedical Science (Hons), 2:1
1997-2000

Nottingham Trent University

Career history

Lead epidemiologist (uG7)
UK Health Security Agency
Feb 2023 to date

Building and leading team of data scientists within the HCAI & AMR division

Leading the data analytics and epidemiology cell for a standard response to an HCAI outbreak

Joint lead epidemiologist (G6)
Public Health England/UK Health Security Agency
Feb 2021-Feb 2023

Led a team of six epidemiologists to monitor cases and variants of SARS-CoV-2

Directed the assessment of relative severity of SARS-CoV-2 variants

Senior scientist (epidemiology)
Public Health England
Feb 2018-Feb 2021

Senior scientist in mandatory bacteraemia team

Line manager for three scientists

Senior scientist (epidemiology)
Public Health England
2015-Feb 2018

Prepared annual report for mandatory surveillance

Analysed data on relationship between Index of Multiple Deprivation and C. difficile infection by Clinical Commissioning Group

Prepared monthly outputs for mandatory surveillance

Developed HCAI indicators for PHE fingertips

Developed R package for working with data from HCAI DCS

Scientist (epidemiology)
Public Health England
2012-2015

Collected and submitted UK data for Europe-wide antimicrobial resistance surveillance.

Led project to redevelop collection of UK antimicrobial resistance data for European surveillance.

Analysed data for the English point prevalence survey of health care associated infection and antimicrobial usage.

Lectured students studying for Masters in Public Health.

Prepared annual reports on bacterial organisms causing bloodstream infections.

Information Officer
Public Health England
2009-2012

Analysed data for surgical site infection surveillance.

Ensured timely and accurate submission of data by hospital staff.

Delivered surveillance training to clinicians.

Assisted with production of SSI annual report.

Prepared annual reports on uncommon bacterial pathogens causing bloodstream infections.

Medical Information Officer
NHS Direct
2007-2009

Prepared health information in response to enquiries received from the public, via the web.

Prepared and delivered training to colleagues.

Cheminformatician
GlaxoSmithKline
2005-2006

Developed text mining approach to extracting pharmacokinetic and toxicology data from documents.

Analysed drug attrition from compound identification to clinical trials.

Research Assistant
CeNeS Pharmaceutials Plc
2000-2001

Performed safety pharmacology testing on candidate drugs.

Analysed data and prepared reports for customers.

Technical skills

R,
Stata,
SQL,
LaTeX,
version control with Git,
Ruby.

Other interests

I participate in Parkrun; volunteering or running most weeks. I am interested in photography and enjoy both digital and film photography.

Papers, reports and presentations

Johnson, A. P., Muller-Pebody, B., Budd, E., Ashiru-Oredope, D., Ladenheim, D., Hain, D., Hope, R., Bhattacharya, A., Elgohari, S., Guy, R., Henderson, K., Puleston, R., Rooney, G., Thelwall, S., Wellington, E., Lamagni, T., Hopkins, S.
Improving feedback of surveillance data on antimicrobial consumption, resistance and stewardship in England: putting the data at your Fingertips
JAC, 2016
http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/12/02/jac.dkw536.short

Thelwall, S., Nsonwu, O., Wasti, S., Elmi, M., Gerver, S., Davies, J., Hope, R.
Annual Epidemiological Commentary Mandatory MRSA, MSSA and E. coli bacteraemia and C. difficile infection data 2015/16
PHE, 2016
gov.uk

Thelwall, S., Harrington, P., Sheridan, E., Lamagni, T.
Impact of obesity on the risk of wound infection following surgery: results from a nationwide prospective multicentre cohort study in England
CMI, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cmi.2015.07.003

Green, N., Johnson, A. P., Henderson, K. L., Muller-Pebody, B., Thelwall, S., Robotham, J. V., Sharland, M., Wolkewitz, M. and Deeny, S. R.
Quantifying the burden of hospital-acquired bloodstream infection in children in England by estimating excess length of hospital stay and mortality using a multistate analysis of linked, routinely collected data
JPIDS, 2014
http://jpids.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/07/21/jpids.piu073.abstract

Thelwall, S., Elgohari, S., Harrington, P., Wloch, C., Sheridan, E., Lamagni, T.
Burden of surgical site infection in English hospitals in the 21st Century
Health Protection, 2011

Thelwall, S., Elgohari, S., Wloch, C., Sheridan, E.A., Harrington, P., Lamagni, T.
Body Mass Index as a risk factor for Surgical Site Infection: The size of the problem.
European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, 2012

Thelwall, S., Guy, R., Henderson, K. L., Murray, M. L., Sharland, M., Muller-Pebody, B., Johnson, A.
Trends in the antibiotic susceptibilities of Haemophilus influenzae, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus from respiratory isolates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 2008-2013
Federation of Infection Societies, 2013
Poster available at ResearchGate
github:fis2013

Thelwall, S., Davies, J., Johnson, A., Hope, R.
Local-area socioeconomic status is associated with Clostridium difficile infection rates
European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, 2017

R packages

fingertipsR
Package to interact with the PHE fingertips website API
github

nicethings
Collection of useful functions and functions for inline text in Rmarkdown
github
Documentation/

hcaidcs
Package for working with line listing data from PHE's HCAI Data Capture System
github

Documentation

episheet
Package to replicate Ken Rothman's Excel episheet
github