Mark Woolhouse is an outstanding epidemiologist and mathematical modeller. He was appointed to the Chair of Veterinary Public Health and Quantitative Epidemiology situated in the Edinburgh veterinary school, before taking up his present post as Chair of Infectious Disease Epidemiology. For his contribution to the control of infectious disease he was awarded the OBE (2002) and elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2004). His work has influenced government health policy in Africa after modelling outbreaks in sleeping sickness in Uganda and in the UK during the BSE crisis. He has advised the UK and US governments on risk factors associated with emerging infections translating to economic forums such as the Moscow G8 summit.