Dr. rer. nat. Y. Cheng (Yanchao)

I am Yanchao, an ecologist who is interested in disease risk mapping. My general goal is to model when and where a certain infectious disease is of high outbreak risk, especially for vector-borne diseases. I use both epidemiological (e.g. the SEIR model, estimation of R0) and ecological models to understand disease transmissions. I invest my effort to compare model outputs and improve model performance.

I studied biosciences and ecology for my B.Sc and M.Sc degrees, and got my Doctoral degree (Dr. rer. Nat.) on biogeography. Throughout the years, I have worked with very different subjects, ranging from Amur tigers to mosquito-borne diseases, and for a short time I was working with PRRS transmission between farms. I have spent quite a lot of time in the field tracking tigers’ footprints, but also plenty of time sitting in front of computer writing codes. The one clue piecing everything together is modelling – all models are wrong, some are useful.

Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), Department of Earth Observation Science (EOS)

Rasmussen, P., Shaw, A. P., Jemberu, W. T., Knight-Jones, T., Conrady, B., Apenteng, O. O. , Cheng, Y., Muñoz, V., Rushton, J., & Torgerson, P. R. (2023). Economic losses due to foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Ethiopian cattle. Social Science Research Network (SSRN). https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4547171

Zhang, GG., Li, BY., Raghwani, J., Vrancken, B., Jia, R., Hill, SC., Fournie, G. , Cheng, Y., Yang, QQ., Wang, YX., Wang, ZM., Dong, L., Pybus, OG., & Tian, HY. (2023). Bidirectional movement of emerging H5N8 avian influenza viruses between Europe and Asia via migratory birds since early 2020. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 40(2). https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msad019

Samy, A. M., Yáñez-Arenas, C., Jaeschke, A. , Cheng, Y., & Thomas, S. (2022). Modeling Distributional Potential of Infectious Diseases. In Geospatial Technology for Human Well-Being and Health Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71377-5_18

Cheng, Y. (2021). Assessing spatio-temporal risks of vector-borne diseases: an interdisciplinary view integrating ecological and epidemiological models. [PhD Thesis - Research external, graduation external, Universitat Bayreuth]. University of Bayreuth.

Cheng, Y. , Tjaden, N., Jaeschke, A., Thomas, S., & Beierkuhnlein, C. (2021). Using centroids of spatial units in ecological niche modelling: effects on model performance in the context of environmental data grain size. Global ecology and biogeography, 30(3), 611-621. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13240

Tjaden, N. B. , Cheng, Y., Beierkuhnlein, C., & Thomas, S. M. (2021). Chikungunya beyond the tropics: Where and when do we expect disease transmission in Europe? Viruses, 13(6), 1-15. Article 1024. https://doi.org/10.3390/v13061024

Cheng, Y. , Tjaden, N. B., Jaeschke, A., Thomas, S. M., & Beierkuhnlein, C. (2020). Deriving risk maps from epidemiological models of vector borne diseases: state-of-the-art and suggestions for best practice. Epidemics, 33, 1-9. Article 100411. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epidem.2020.100411

See all research output of this employee

+31534897124

y.cheng-1@utwente.nl

Visiting Address

University of Twente
Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation
Langezijds (building no. 19), room 1209
Hallenweg 8
7522NH Enschede
The Netherlands

Mailing Address

University of Twente
Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation
Langezijds 1209
P.O. Box 217
7500 AE Enschede
The Netherlands

Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), Department of Earth Observation Science (EOS)

University of Twente Drienerlolaan 5
7522 NB Enschede

+31 (0)53 489 9111
info@utwente.nl
Route

Welcome...

Assistant Professor

About Me

Organisations

Publications

UT Research Information System

Contact Details

Visiting Address

Mailing Address

Organisations