Simon Firestone

Simon Firestone is Associate Professor of Veterinary Epidemiology and Public Health in the Melbourne Veterinary School, Faculty of Science, at the University of Melbourne. He graduated from Veterinary Science at the University of Melbourne in 2000. Subsequently, he worked in mixed and small animal veterinary practice in Australia, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. Firestone also served as a veterinary and public health epidemiologist, developing zoonoses surveillance and investigating outbreaks of foodborne and zoonotic diseases with Commonwealth and State Departments of Health in Australia, and the World Health Organization in Indonesia and Cambodia. He obtained a Masters of Applied Epidemiology from the Australian National University in 2007 and a PhD from the University of Sydney in 2012, focusing on epidemiological studies of the 2007 equine influenza outbreak in Australia.

Firestone coordinates and teaches in the online Master of Veterinary Public Health program at the University of Melbourne and delivers courses on emerging infectious diseases, epidemiological methods, and diagnostic test performance evaluation in the Science and Doctor of Veterinary Medicine curricula. His research encompasses veterinary epidemiology and public health, including spatio-temporal analyses of disease spread, risk factor studies for outbreaks of zoonotic diseases such as Q fever (Coxiella burnetii), equine influenza, salmonellosis, Ross River virus, and bovine theileriosis; foodborne diseases like Salmonella in poultry; Bayesian latent class modeling for diagnostic test validation; and infectious disease modeling for animal and public health policy. He contributes to Australian biosecurity through advocacy for whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches and studies on climate change impacts on animal diseases. Firestone has received the Animal Health Australia Ralph Hood Award and the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE160100477). Key publications include 'A case-control study of risk factors for equine influenza spread onto horse premises during the 2007 epidemic in Australia' (2013), 'The prevalence of Coxiella burnetii shedding in dairy goats at the time of abortion using real-time PCR on vaginal mucus, udder swabs, milk and blood' (2017), and 'Reconstructing foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks: a methods comparison of transmission network models' (2019).

Professional Email: simon.firestone@unimelb.edu.au