I am an assistant professor at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), associated with the University of Basel. My research is currently focused on the evolution of seasonal respiratory viruses, in particular Enteroviruses and seasonal Coronaviruses. My work focuses on phylogenetics, molecular epidemiology, and evolution. As a post-doc in 2015-2017 I was previously involved in the PANGEA_HIV initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, simulating HIV epidemics.
I'm founder of CoVariants.org, the first variant-tracking website for SARS-CoV-2. In addition, I'm co-founder and chair of the Executive Board of Pathoplexus, a community-driven, open-source database to encourage more open, equitable, and accessible viral sequence sharing.
I'm also a co-developer of nextstrain. I previously was deeply involved in expanding Nextstrain to work with bacteria (doing some tuberculosis work in the process), and was part of a major 'modular' refactor of the 'augur' and 'auspice' code.
During the pandemic, I am worked full-time on SARS-CoV-2 in a number of different ways, but am proud to be part of the Nextstrain team
supporting the SARS-CoV-2 builds.
This page is currently being improved. Thank you for your patience.
(More information in 'Research' below.)
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds
the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..."
Since November 2023, I have been supported by an SNSF Starting grant focused on better understanding the evolution, spread, and persistence of endemic respiratory viruses. In particular, I'm focused on Enteroviruses, which I have been working on since 2018, and additionally on seasonal Coronaviruses. Some of the questions I'm interested in answering are how both our immunity and the viruses change over time, how these viruses recombine, what drives seasonal and non-seasonal outbreaks, and how these viruses can cause such a range of severity of disease across a variety of ages and organ systems.
Previously I have mostly focused on Enterovirus D68, a respiratory pathogen
that primarily infects young children. In recent years, it has caused more severe respiratory infections and sometimes paralysis, and seems to circulate in
in the US and Europe in the autumns of even-numbered years.
However, since the COVID-19 pandemic, this pattern has shifted, and is not yet fully understood.
You can view our live-build of EV-D68 here.
You can see more live-builds of EV-D68 as we add them on our Nextstrain Group page.
I'm a co-developer as part of the nextstrain team, headed up by Richard Neher and
Trevor Bedford, where I have
been working since November 2017.
My previous work on this was expanding it to bacterial pathogens. Some of the challenges
I've tackled include finding computationally and memory efficient ways to handle the much larger genomes, working with much slower
mutation rates, detecting drug resistance, and handling plasmids and horizontal gene-transfer.
Tuberculosis, with its lack of plasmids and recombination, huge public health impact, and rise in resistance, is serving as the 'pilot'
organism for this endevor, though we have run other bacterial pathogens, like Campylobacter.
"But all evolutionary biologists know that variation itself is nature's only irreducible essence. Variation is the hard reality, not a set of imperfect measures for a central tendency. Means and medians are the abstractions."
"My work can be taxing and hazardous, but dull? Never."
Please find an updated list of my publications on Google Scholar.
Using nearly full-genome HIV sequence data improves phylogeny reconstruction in a simulated epidemic. Yebra G, Hodcroft EB, Ragonnet-Cronin ML,
Pillay D, Leigh Brown AJ, PANGEA_HIV, and ICONIC. Scientific Reports. 2016.
link)
Using simulated sequences, the effect of using partial and whole-genome HIV sequences and different sample
depths on reconstructing phylogenies was investigated, showing that full-genome sequences allow more reliable phylogenetic reconstruction.
Phylogenetic Tools for Generalized HIV-1 Epidemics: Findings from the PANGEA-HIV Methods Comparison. Ratmann O, Hodcroft EB, et al.,
on behalf of the PANGEA-HIV consortium. Molecular Biology and Evolution. 2016.
(link)
Two models were used to create a variety of HIV epidemic simulations. Sequences and phylogenies were publicly released and
groups were invited to try and estimate epidemic parameters such as incidence, transmissions during acute stage, and migration rate.
Identifying Transmission Clusters with Cluster Picker and HIV-TRACE. Rose R, Lamers SL, Dollar JJ, Grabowski MK, Hodcroft EB,
Ragonnet-Cronin M, Wertheim JO, Redd AD, Danielle G, and Laeyendecker O. AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses. 2016.
(link)
Two different cluster-identification approaches (Cluster Picker and HIV-TRACE) were compared on different datasets and at different genetic distances. In general,
HIV-TRACE found fewer, larger clusters, while Cluster Picker grouped sequences into more, smaller clusters.
A Direct Comparison of Two Densely Sampled HIV Epidemics: The UK and Switzerland. Ragonnet-Cronin M, Shilaih M, Gunthard HF, Hodcroft EB,
Boni J, Fearnhill E, Dunn D, Yerly S, Klimkait T, Aubert V, Yang WL, Brown AE, Lycett SJ, Kouyos R, and Leigh Brown AJ.
Scientific Reports. 2016.
(link)
The UK and Switzerland have two of the most densely sampled HIV epidemics, and collect clinical and genetic information in comprehensive national databases. In a highly collaborative effort
involving confidential and clinically sensitive data, we were able to compare the two epidemics, finding similar underlying dynamics.
Transmission of Non-B HIV Subtypes in the United Kingdom Is Increasingly Driven by Large Non-Heterosexual Transmission Clusters.
Ragonnet-Cronin M, Lycett SJ, Hodcroft EB, Hue S, Fearnhill E, Brown AE, Delpech V, Dunn D, Leigh Brown AJ, on behalf of the UK HIV DRB. Journal of Infectious Diseases. 2015.
(link)
Non-B HIV subtypes are historically associated with heterosexual transmission in the UK. However, as non-B subtypes become more prevalent, there is
evidence of crossover transmission from heterosexuals to MSM and PWID risk groups.
The Contribution of Viral Genotype to Plasma Viral Set-Point in HIV Infection. Hodcroft EB, Hadfield JD, Fearnhill E,
Phillips A, Dunn D, O'Shea S, Pillay D, Leigh Brown AJ. PLoS Pathogens. 2014.
(link)
Here we implement a new phylogenetic method to estimate the heritability of viral load in subtype B in the UK, and investigate
the change in viral load over time due to selection.
Automated Analysis of Phylogenetic Clusters. Ragonnet-Cronin M, Hodcroft EB, Hue S, Fearnhill E, Delpech V,
Leigh Brown AJ, Lycett S, on behalf of the UK HIV RDB. BMC Bioinformatics. 2013.
(link)
Two new programs are introduced to allow efficient and easy analysis of phylogenetic clusters. The
ClusterPicker allows
users to 'pick' clusters of closely related sequence by specified thresholds; the
ClusterMatcher (written by myself) allows
users to 'match' clusters containing the same sequences from two different runs, and also to investigate the attributes of
the clusters.
In 2014 I had the privilege of competing in the 3 Minute Thesis competition,
presenting my work on estimating the heritability of
viral load in HIV. I advanced through the School and College levels to win both first prize and the 'people's choice' award at the
University of Edinburgh finals. I then went onto the UK Semi-Final in York, where I advanced to the UK final in Manchester alongside
five others. I also prepared a video of my presentation to compete against 17 other finalists in the world-wide
Universitas 21 competition,
where I placed 3rd.
You can view a video of my 3 Minute Thesis below!
My love of programming means I'm always eager to code something.
I'm a contributor to TreeTime and nextstrain on github,
and you can find my most recent work there.
My 'native' language is Java (which I learned in 2001), but I've recently adopted Python, and have been using R since 2009.
During my PhD and post-doc with PANGEA_HIV I also wrote a few programs (all in Java), which can be found below.
In particular, TreeCollapserCL, which collapses trees based on bootstrap support values, is the most popular program
and potentially the most useful to others.
A new, improved version of TreeCollapseCL that can root trees and find lengths of branches
and average bootstraps of nodes, as well as collapsing nodes with bootstraps
below a user-specified threshold.
Updated: Corrects an issue with the collapsing algorithm that sometimes lead to over-collapsing. It's
highly recommended that you re-run data with TreeCollapseCL4.
A basic, command-line Java program that allows users to 'pare' down their tree by either
removing unwanted sequences/leaf-nodes, removing bootstrap information, removing branch lengths - or any combination
of those three - quickly and efficiently.
Updated: Now also allows users to remove branch lengths from the tree. Also fixed a few minor bugs.
A cluster is a monophyletic group of sequences in a phylogeny that fall within specified
bootstrap support and genetic distance thresholds. In the study of infectious diseases,
especially HIV, they can represent transmission events between individuals.
Samantha Lycett's tool, ClusterPicker, is able to 'pick' clusters from a phylogeny.
The ClustMatcher tool can then be used to find clusters the contain some or all of the same
sequences between the two data sets, and outputs annotated FigTree files containing matching
clusters. This allows the change in cluster size to be compared over time.
ClustMatcher can also be used with one data set to select only clusters that contain a certain
number of sequences or have a certain attribute (clusters that contain females, for example), for
further study.
The paper detailing the ClusterMatcher and ClusterPicker software is here.
Based on the Discrete Spatial Phylo Simulator, coded by Dr. Samantha Lycett, the DSPS-HIV is a stochastic, agent-based model which has been highly modified to simulate realistic HIV epidemics. Transmission risk and disease progression rate are dependant on viral load, which is heritable, and contact networks are highly customizable. Acute, chronic, and AIDS disease stages are modelled, and treatment can be introduced at varying levels and speeds. All transmissions are tracked, so that a viral phylogeny of the epidemic is produced.
I am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.
"I’ve been travelling so long, hotels before dawn in strange cities, so long on the road that I feel the jet-speed vibration in my bones, in my body, a sense of constant motion across continents and time zones that continues long after I’m off the plane and swaying at yet another check-in desk, Hi my name is Emma."
I completed my undergraduate degree in biology at Texas Christian University (TCU), where I helped to set up and run the Purple Bike Program, a green initiative that rented free bikes to students to help reduce pollution and carbon emissions on campus. I also worked as a Java programming tutor, a job I very much enjoyed.
After graduating in December of 2008, I took a research assistant position with Dr. John Horner investigating how carnivorous Sarracenia alata pitcher plants attract their prey, as well as the genetic diversity of Sarracenia populations in the Southern US.
In the autumn of 2009, I moved from Texas to Edinburgh, Scotland, and began my master's degree at the University of Edinburgh on the Quantitative Genetics and Genome Analysis course. Though a challenging year, the course gave me an excellent introduction to the world of population and quantitative genetics.
After receiving my MSc degree with distinction in the autumn of 2010, I took a year-long research assistant position with Prof. Andrew Leigh Brown investigating virulence in HIV. Having been won-over by the wonderful world of viruses, I began my PhD with Prof. Leigh Brown in September 2011 to continue my work on HIV, and defended my thesis in May 2015.
I completed my first post-doc position with the PANGEA_HIV initiative, continuing in Andrew Leigh Brown's lab, where I devloped a realistic, stochastic agent-based model to simulate HIV epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa.
I am currently an assisant professor at Swiss TPH - you can find out more under 'Home' or 'Research'.
Born in Norway, and raised spending half the year in Scotland with my father and half the year in Texas with my mother, I'm a strange mix of two countries more similar than one might expect!
My half-and-half upbringing has given me a unique perspective on life, as well as an interesting vocabulary and an amusing accent. A fan of both kilts and cowboy boots, I feel equally at home in both places.
I'm lucky enough to have had the opportunity to travel around North and South America, Europe, and even venture a little into Asia. My bi-annual migrations between Texas and Scotland all my life mean I'm quite at home in airports and on planes, and am no stranger to travel at all.
As well as my love of biology, evolution and programming, I'm a proud feminist, and very much enjoy a good debate on any controversial topic. I love reading a wide variety of books, from popular fiction and 'pop-sci' to non-fiction and classics. Being a third-generation computer geek, I enjoy all things tech-y and have had a deep love of programming since I was 15. Back in the olden days, I built and upgraded my own gaming computer, and used to do a lot of gaming - from the old-school (SSB, Halo, CS, Zelda) to the slightly-more-recent Overwatch and Vermintide.
I played violin regularly in various orchestras from age 10 to 21 and still enjoy it, though I don't play as much as I'd like to. Finally, I have a fondness for the colour purple, cephalopods, airplanes, potatoes, and cats.
I can be contacted at the address below:
The prevalence of spam keeps me from posting my email address, but you can contact me via the feedback form.
“Science may never come up with a better office communication system than the coffee break.”