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

Assistant Professor
ITC-EOS
Langezijds 1209
y.cheng-1@utwente.nl
+31534897124
Business card

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. 

Expertise

  • Earth and Planetary Sciences

    • Model
    • Risk
    • Vector

  • Medicine and Dentistry

    • Vector Borne Disease
    • Suggestion
    • Usutu Virus

  • Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

    • Species
    • Basic Reproduction Number

Organisations

Publications

2023
Economic losses due to foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Ethiopian cattle. Social Science Research Network (SSRN). 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.https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4547171Bidirectional movement of emerging H5N8 avian influenza viruses between Europe and Asia via migratory birds since early 2020. Zhang, G., Li, B., Raghwani, J., Vrancken, B., Jia, R., Hill, S., Fournie, G., Cheng, Y., Yang, Q., Wang, Y., Wang, Z., Dong, L., Pybus, O. & Tian, H.https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msad019
2022
Modeling Distributional Potential of Infectious DiseasesIn Geospatial Technology for Human Well-Being and Health. Springer. Samy, A. M., Yáñez-Arenas, C., Jaeschke, A., Cheng, Y. & Thomas, S.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71377-5_18
2021
Chikungunya beyond the tropics: Where and when do we expect disease transmission in Europe?, Article 1024, 1-15. Tjaden, N. B., Cheng, Y., Beierkuhnlein, C. & Thomas, S. M.https://doi.org/10.3390/v13061024Assessing spatio-temporal risks of vector-borne diseases: an interdisciplinary view integrating ecological and epidemiological models. University of Bayreuth. Cheng, Y.Using centroids of spatial units in ecological niche modelling: effects on model performance in the context of environmental data grain size, 611-621. Cheng, Y., Tjaden, N., Jaeschke, A., Thomas, S. & Beierkuhnlein, C.https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.13240
2020
Deriving risk maps from epidemiological models of vector borne diseases: state-of-the-art and suggestions for best practice, Article 100411, 1-9. Cheng, Y., Tjaden, N. B., Jaeschke, A., Thomas, S. M. & Beierkuhnlein, C.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epidem.2020.100411

Research profiles

Address

University of Twente

Langezijds (building no. 19), room 1209
Hallenweg 8
7522 NH Enschede
Netherlands

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