Finding solutions to veterinary diseases that increase agricultural productivity and maximize animal welfare is crucial to feeding the global population in the coming century. In this project we want to understand antigenic diversity in African trypanosomes, important parasites of cattle worldwide. This is a difficult challenge. Antigenic variation in trypanosomes is a complex genetic system that we are only beginning to fathom with DNA sequencing methods. We now need a rigorous mathematical description of the molecular variation we observe in experiments, which can explain how new variants evolve. We will use the latest DNA sequencing technologies in combination with sophisticated phylogenetic analyses to understand how antigenic diversity evolves in parasite genomes. The successful student will produce probabilistic models of how molecular diversity is generated and test these ideas on genetic data generated from both natural and experimental infections. This project will improve our knowledge of how parasites interact with their hosts, crucial to understanding disease outcome and to developing vaccines. It is an opportunity to make a real impact on our understanding of an important veterinary disease, while obtaining the skills for a career at the forefront of computational or mathematical biology.