On July 2nd, 1992, exactly 30 years ago, I landed in Dover. Although originally planned as a 12-month research post at Cambridge, it turned out to be a permanent move to the United Kingdom.
I came to Cambridge on a Royal Society-Wolfson Foundation fellowship. The idea was to work on modelling large animal populations in Africa, working with Nigel Leader-Williams and Phyllis Lee @pili_scotland.
However, due to a change of plans, the project was converted into epidemiological modelling. I had done modelling of measles dynamics in 1990-91, and the Cambridge fellowship was a return to this research topic.
In 1992/93 I had the tremendous privilege of working with Bryan Grenfell (he very kindly offered me a house sit in the first two months and on whose door I knocked at 2am on 3rd July 1992), Ben Bolker @bolkerb, and many others.
From this period, I will always remember sitting in Parkside Police Station Aliens Department, waiting to be registered as a visiting Alien.
I must confess, I half expected to see there somebody with green skin, a large head, and several eyes on stalks. Knowing Cambridge, I do not think this would have surprised the very kind lady at the Aliens Department.
