Christopher Aidan Gilligan

Christopher Aidan Gilligan CBE, Sc.D. (born 9 January 1953) is Director of Research, Professor of Mathematical Biology and is Head of the Epidemiology and Modelling Group in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge. He is currently the King's Trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Gilligan is best known for designing and testing theoretical frameworks to explain and predict the dynamics of epidemics in crops and natural environments at a range of scales up to country-wide and continental. The models provide real-time guidance for emerging epidemics in more than fourteen countries in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the UK, US, Australia,

Education and training After early schooling in Ireland, where he was born, Gilligan attended St Mary's College Grammar School in Crosby, Liverpool. and was awarded a Sc.D. (Cantab.) for his research in the Epidemiological of Plant Disease in 1999. Gilligan took up the position of Head of School in Biological Sciences, University of Cambridge from 2009 to 2013,

Gilligan has a wide range of national and international experience at senior level in setting and monitoring research strategy and advising Government bodies on policy. He held Prime Ministerial appointments as Trustee of the Natural History Museum the public body that advises the UK Government, Devolved Administrations and Overseas Territories on UK-wide and international nature conservation. He chaired the Science Advisory Council of the UK Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs from 2011 to 2014 and served two terms as a member of the UK Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council from 2003 to 2009. and has been appointed by the UK Government as a Trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. with all recommendations being accepted by the Government, the crop science review for BBSRC in 2003-04

Gilligan's research in epidemiology has led him to work at the interface between biology, mathematics and economics. He has published more than 260 papers and reviews, an Honorary Research Fellow of Rothamsted Research (1998–2015), and is an Honorary Fellow of the American Phytopathological Society (2005).