Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM)

Research Group: INPUT – Interfaculty Platform for Data and Computational Science

The INterfaculty Platform for Data and CompUTational Science (INPUT) is a collaboration between the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM) and the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH). Our aim is to foster interdisciplinary research at the interface of statistics, data science, and computational science with applications in epidemiology, medicine, and the natural sciences.

We are interested in applications of statistical and machine learning in epidemiology and use high-performance computing for simulation-based inference. A major focus of our research is infectious disease modelling and outbreak analysis.

Christian Althaus (ISPM) and Kevin Heng (CSH) explain what exoplanets have to do with the coronavirus.

Research group members

Group leader

Name / Titel: Althaus Christian L., PD PhD
Funktion: Head of Research Group
Mail: christian.althaus@unibe.ch

Phone: +41 31 684 56 71

Group members

Name / Titel: Bouman Judith, PhD
Funktion: Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Mail: judith.bouman@unibe.ch

Phone: +41 31 684 56 97

Name / Titel: Di Domenico Laura, PhD
Funktion: Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Mail: laura.didomenico@unibe.ch

Name / Titel: Lötscher Nadine, BA
Funktion: Project Manager Assistant
Mail: nadine.loetscher@unibe.ch

Phone: +41 31 684 68 82

Name / Titel: Reichmuth Martina, MSc
Funktion: PhD student
Mail: martina.reichmuth@unibe.ch

Phone: +41 31 684 68 47

Name / Titel: Wohlfender Martin
Funktion: PhD Student
Mail: martin.wohlfender@unibe.ch

Phone: +41 31 684 56 76

Ongoing projects

Early detection for early action: integrating multiple data sources for monitoring the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in near real-time
- Funding: Multidisciplinary Center for Infectious Diseases (MCID)
ESCAPE - Efficient and rapidly SCAlable EU-wide evidence-driven Pandemic response plans through dynamic Epidemic data assimilation
- Funding: Horizon Europe and State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI)
Impacts of climate change on health, well-being and performance of humans and animals and on food safety in Switzerland
- Funding: NCCS-Impacts programme - Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) and Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO)

Completed projects

EpiPose - Epidemic intelligence to minimize COVID-19’s public health, societal and economical impact
- Funding: Horizon 2020
Tracking the COVID-19 epidemic in Switzerland: phylogenetics and epidemiological modeling
- Funding: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
Social contacts and attitudes towards vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic: Insights from the CoMix study
- Funding: Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH)
LUSTRUM – Limiting Undetected Sexually Transmitted Infections to RedUce Morbidity
- Funding: National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)
What will be the impact of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination on HPV-associated cancers in Switzerland? A mathematical modelling study
- Funding: Swiss Cancer Research
Exploring response surfaces and synergistic interactions of antibiotic combination treatment for Neisseria gonorrhoeae
- Funding: SystemsX.ch
Rapid Diagnosis of Antibiotic Resistance in Gonorrhoea: RADAR-Go
- Funding: SwissTransMed - Platforms for Translational Research in Medicine
Acute and chronic dynamics of HIV and HCV infections, within-host evolution and epidemiological outcomes
- Funding: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)

Selected publications

Rapid epidemic expansion of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant in southern Africa. Viana R, Moyo S, Amoako DG, Tegally H, Scheepers C, Althaus CL, Anyaneji UJ, et al. Nature. 2022 Jan 7.
Spread of a SARS-CoV-2 variant through Europe in the summer of 2020. Hodcroft EB, Zuber M, Nadeau S, Vaughan TG, Crawford KHD, Althaus CL, Reichmuth ML, et al. Nature. 2021 Jun 7.
Early evidence of effectiveness of digital contact tracing for SARS-CoV-2 in Switzerland. Salathé M, Althaus C, Anderegg N, Antonioli D, Ballouz T, Bugnon E, Čapkun S, et al. Swiss Med Wkly. 2020 Dec 16;150:w20457.
The approximately universal shapes of epidemic curves in the Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered (SEIR) model. Heng K, Althaus CL. Sci Rep. 2020 Nov 9;10(1):19365.
Dynamic interventions to control COVID-19 pandemic: a multivariate prediction modelling study comparing 16 worldwide countries. Chowdhury R, Heng K, Shawon MSR, Goh G, Okonofua D, Ochoa-Rosales C, Gonzalez-Jaramillo V, et al. Eur J Epidemiol. 2020 May;35(5):389-399.
Pattern of early human-to-human transmission of Wuhan 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), December 2019 to January 2020. Riou J, Althaus CL. Euro Surveill. 2020 Jan;25(4):2000058.

For further publications, please visit the websites of the individual team members.