Neal is a PhD candidate at the School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine at Monash University. His PhD project explores the role of agent-based and spatial modelling of infectious diseases, including developing a novel, agent-based, Bayesian, spatiotemporal model of the 2013-16 West Africa Ebola outbreak. He is passionate about extending the role mathematics can play in real-time health policy and management, and plans to apply these skills upon returning to the Monash MD program after his PhD.