Abstract
This paper focuses on the experiences of computational social scientists working with public health researchers and describes challenges faced in bringing these two disciplines together. These reflections aim to capture the experience of interdisciplinary research between two select fields, highlighting differences in expectations and understandings of research aims and methodologies, the presence of ‘agendas’, the role of the modeler in the research, and the effect of differing understandings of the meaning of ‘data’. The aim of this paper is to summarise and share these experiences with the modelling and social simulation community for the benefit of improving the experience and impact of future interdisciplinary research.