Emma Hodcroft

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Emma Hodcroft

Emma Hodcroft (born July 28, 1986 in Stavanger , Norway ) is a genomic epidemiologist at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel and a pioneer in the field of open science . She helped develop the Nextstrain computer program, which tracks the mutations and thus the transmission chains of SARS-CoV-2 . In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic , she is called upon as an expert by numerous media.

Live and act

Emma Hodcroft is the daughter of the American Ellen Louise Boyer and the British Kenneth Joseph Hodcroft . She spent her childhood alternately every six months with her father in Scotland and with her mother in Texas. She has a fascination for biology, evolution and programming and, by her own admission, is a proud feminist and likes debates on controversial topics.

Hodcroft is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Basel in Switzerland and works with Richard Neher . Most of her research to date has focused on phylogenetics, molecular epidemiology, and the simulation of HIV. Previously, Hodcroft was involved in the PANGEA_HIV initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation .

Currently (2020) Emma Hodcroft is working on Nextstrain. Previously, she was heavily involved in expanding Nextstrain to work with bacteria (and did some tuberculosis work in the process) and was part of a large modular refactor of the Augur and Auspice codes. She has recently been working on Enterovirus -D68.

At the time of the pandemic, she is working full-time on SARS-CoV-2 and is part of the Nextstrain team.

Career

Emma Hodcroft graduated from Texas Christian University (TCU) with a bachelor's degree in biology in 2008 . There she helped set up the Purple Bike Program - a green initiative that provides students with free bikes. She also worked as a tutor for Java programming.

She then worked as a research assistant at John Horner, studying how carnivorous Sarracenia alata pitcher plants attract their prey and the genetic diversity of the Sarracenia populations in the southern United States.

In 2009 she moved from Texas to Edinburgh , Scotland, and in 2010 received her Masters Degree with Honors from the University of Edinburgh in Quantitative Genetics and Genome Analysis .

In 2010, she accepted a year-long research assistantship with Andrew Leigh Brown to study HIV virulence . In 2011 she started her doctoral thesis with him and defended it in May 2015. For this purpose, she developed a new technology with which 8500 sequences from HIV-positive people can be viewed. She also presented her doctoral thesis in a 3-minute video - an idea from the University of Queensland .

She completed her first postdoctoral position with the PANGEA_HIV initiative. They continued it in the laboratory of Andrew Leigh Brown, where Hodcroft a realistic stochastic, agent-based model for the simulation of HIV epidemics in Africa developed south of the Sahara.

COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic , Hodcroft became known to the general public. In numerous interviews and TV reports, she provided information about the mutation and spread of the virus and, on this basis, made assessments of the global measures. In particular, it calls for more tests to better assess the situation.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mark Zastrow: Open science takes on the coronavirus pandemic . In: Springer Nature Limited (Ed.): Nature . April 24, 2020, doi : 10.1038 / d41586-020-01246-3 .
  2. ↑ auspice. Nextstrain, April 30, 2020, accessed on May 1, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Andreas Maurer: The virus hunter: Epidemiologist Emma Hodcroft visualizes the pandemic in real time. CH Media - Aargauer Zeitung, March 12, 2020, accessed on May 1, 2020 (Swiss Standard German).
  4. ↑ a b Coronavirus: How does the virus spread - TV. In: SRF Tagesschau. Swiss Radio and Television (SRF), March 16, 2020, accessed on May 1, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Ana Maria Montero, Kasmira Jefford: Technology powers unprecedented scientific collaboration against virus. In: CNN Money Switzerland. CNNMoney Switzerland AG, March 4, 2020, accessed on May 1, 2020 (English).
  6. ↑ a b c d Emma Hodcroft: Emma Hodcroft - PhD. Emma Hodcroft, May 1, 2020, accessed May 1, 2020 .
  7. ↑ a b c d e Emma Hodcroft: Emma Hodcroft - PhD. Emma Hodcroft, May 1, 2020, accessed May 1, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Emma Hodcroft: U21 3MT® Finalist - Emma Hodcroft. In: Youtube. University of Queensland, September 27, 2014, accessed May 1, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Gonzalo Yebra, Emma B. Hodcroft, Manon L. Ragonnet-Cronin, Deenan Pillay, Andrew J. Leigh Brown: Using nearly full-genome HIV sequence data improves phylogeny reconstruction in a simulated epidemic . In: Scientific Reports . tape 6 , no. 1 , December 23, 2016, ISSN  2045-2322 , p. 1-6 , doi : 10.1038 / srep39489 .
  10. ↑ Christoph Bernet: Corona researcher is satisfied with the Federal Council's strategy, but warns: "We have not yet defeated the virus". CH media Basler Zeigung, April 16, 2020, accessed on May 1, 2020 (Swiss Standard German).
personal data
SURNAME Hodcroft, Emma
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-American genomic epidemiologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 28, 1986
PLACE OF BIRTH Stavanger , Norway