People
People
Faculty
Henrik Salje
Core Faculty
Henrik Salje established the Pathogen Dynamics Group in 2020. He and his team were previously at Institut Pasteur in Paris, France. His research combines the development of analytical approaches with empirical research to better understand the transmission dynamics of different infectious diseases with the ultimate goal of helping guide control efforts. In particular, this involves working with genetic, antigenic, and epidemiological data alongside information on how populations behave, interact with their environment. He has an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from Oxford University, a Master's degree in Biostatistics from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a PhD in Epidemiology, also from Johns Hopkins.
PostDocs
Lin Wang
PostDoc
Research Associate in the Pathogen Dynamics Group. He is studying the role of antigenic and genetic diversity of dengue virus in driving the transmission and population risk in Thailand. He is interested in system immunology, metagenomics, serology, statistical epidemiology, and mathematical modeling, with applications in arbovirus (e.g. dengue) and emerging diseases (e.g. A/H1N1, COVID-19). He was a chargé de recherche in the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Disease Unit, Institut Pasteur, and postdoc fellow in the School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong. He has a PhD in Electronic Engineering from Fudan University, MSc, and BSc in Physics from Nankai University and Southeast University.
Angkana T. Huang
PostDoc
Angkana, aka Hat, studies factors that shape infectious disease transmission through computational methods to inform public health policies. These include characteristics of the infectious disease agents, characteristics and changes in the host population, as well as interactions between multiple infectious agents. She has an undergraduate degree in Industrial Design from Chulalongkorn University, a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Mahidol University, a PhD in Biology from University of Florida, and was a Data Analyst and Bioinformatics Technologist at Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences.
PhD Students
Sophie Belman
PhD student
Sophie is a PhD student co-supervised by Stephen Bentley at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Henrik Salje at the University of Cambridge. She is working towards understanding global spatiotemporal dynamics of Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcal) populations. The migratory pathways and connectivity of pneumococcal populations has implications for vaccine implementation and development. Sophie obtained her MSc in Medical Microbiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Oscar Cortés Azuero
PhD student
Oscar's work focuses on studying the spatial spread and the diversity of different pathogens using genetic data. One of his main interests is integrating vector and/or host mobility data to phylogeographic questions. He studies Nipah virus and arboviruses in South and Southeast Asia. Oscar obtained his Master's degree in Engineering from the École Centrale de Lille in France.
Noémie Lefrancq
PhD student
Noemie's work focuses on the integration of genetic and spatial data to better understand the spread, maintenance, and control of pathogens. She is co-supervised by Henrik Salje at the Department of Genetics and Julian Parkhill at the Department of Veterinary Medicine. She is working with datasets of Bordetella pertussis genomes from throughout France as well as other European countries in a collaborative project with the national reference center for Pertussis in France. She also works with Listeria monocytogenes, Streptococcus pneumoniae and dengue virus.
Megan O'Driscoll
PhD student
Megan's work involves the development and application of mathematical models to aid the interpretation of serological data, with a focus on arbovirus transmission and immune dynamics. She is also interested in the challenges posed for robust epidemiological analysis of emerging pathogens.
Gabriel Ribeiro dos Santos
PhD student
PhD student in the Pathogen Dynamics Group, Gabriel is interested in public health policies. He focuses on developing tools to better understand the impact of interventions on the transmission of arboviruses. He is also studying the contribution of different data types (geolocated case data, virus genetic sequences, serology data, etc.) to these methods. He previously worked at the Institut Pasteur on the same topics.
Nayantara Wijayanandana
PhD student
Nayantara is a visiting student in the Pathogen Dynamics Group, co-supervised by Henrik Salje. She is doing her PhD at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on transmission dynamics of dengue in Sri Lanka, applying statistical and mathematical models to geolocated case data to understand the spatio-temporal heterogeneity of transmission. She is also interested in incorporating genetic and mobility data in her research to describe transmission patterns. Her experience is in vector-borne diseases - specifically dengue and malaria - and she has previously done field surveys and established sentinel surveillance to describe malaria transmission in distinct endemic settings in Nigeria, Uganda, Southern Sudan, and Zambia.
Mariana Perez Duque
PhD student
Mariana is a medical doctor, specialised in Public Health Medicine, and a field epidemiologist, having previously worked with MSF. She is working on chikungunya disease dynamics, with a focus on the Asian continent. She has a strong expertise in field epidemiology and travel medicine and is interested in designing and evaluating strategies for public health response to (re-) emerging pathogens.
Natcha C. Jitsuk
PhD student
Natcha is a visiting student in the Pathogen Dynamic Group for 12 months. She is doing her Ph.D. at Mahidol University. Her previous work is an investigation of the impact of vaccination strategies on the probability of outbreak extinction by employing COVID-19 transmission as a case study. Currently, her work focuses on the reconstruction of unseen COVID-19 transmission events from viral sequences. She will apply the spatiotemporally structured phylogenetic framework to consider the individual transmission events by using the generation time distribution for COVID-19.
Raymond Cheng
PhD student
Raymond is a PhD student co-supervised by Stephen Bentley at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, John Lees at the EBI and Henrik Salje at the University of Cambridge. He is interested in studying various modes of evolution in pathogenic bacteria and how they shape different population structure. He is working on identifying genetics variants on the invasiveness of Streptococcus pneumoniae and forecasting disease population from carriage population.
Interns
Lorena Duret
Intern
Loréna is a master student here for a 6-month internship. HerZ work focuses on the impact of vaccination and borders on the genetic diversity of viruses. She is supervised by Noémie Lefrancq and is working with datasets of dengue virus genomes from Thailand and neighboring countries.
Lab Management
Fariha Jawed
Lab Manager
Fariha is a lab manger at PDG cambridge. She is responsible for managing the finance and funding of the group. She work closely with Gabriel in his project for 'Characterizing the impact of vaccine in combatting chikungunya in low- and middle-income countries'.
Past Lab Members
Theodora Anderson
Lab Manager
2020-2021
Sohaib Ansari
Part II Student
2021
Etienne Dean
Part II Student
2021
Raina Jia
Master's student
2020-2021
Zheyuan Yang
Part III Student
2021
Rachel Sippy
Post Doc
2020-2022
Francesca Edrich
Masters Student
Adrien Mitard
Intern
Adrien's work focuses on the B-cell, T-cell and antibody responses facing an infection. It will require statistical analysis of data coming from a dengue epidemic in Thailand. Adrien obtained his Master's degree in biomedical Engineering from the Ecole CentraleSupelec in Paris.
Wei Wang
Post Doc
Wei’s research interests include the transmission dynamics, epidemiological parameters, and evaluation of interventions for emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases with public health importance, e.g., COVID-19, measles and human with infection of novel animal influenza virus.
MPhil Student
Sam Allen
MPhil Student
Sam is an MPhil student in Population Health Sciences who is currently working on his dissertation project alongside with supervisors, Dr. Henrik Salje and Gabriel Riberio dos Santos.
Sam's research is focused on estimating the dynamics and risk of Chikungunya virus in Bangladesh using a nationally representative seroprevalence survey. By analyzing the data, Sam hopes to gain insights into the prevalence and transmission patterns of this mosquito-borne disease, which is becoming an increasing public health concern in the country.