Louis Du PlessisView profile
Lecturer
Louis Du Plessis is a Lecturer at ETH Zürich's Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel, Switzerland. His research focuses on computational evolution with particular emphasis on infectious disease dynamics and genomic analysis. He maintains an active research profile with numerous high-impact publications in top-tier journals. Dr. Du Plessis completed his doctoral studies at ETH Zürich in 2016 with a thesis titled 'Understanding the spread and adaptation of infectious diseases using genomic sequencing data,' building upon his 2011 Master's work on evolutionary rate variation. His current research sits at the intersection of computational biology, epidemiology, and evolutionary genetics. His research interests span computational epidemiology, phylodynamics, viral evolution, and infectious disease modeling. He has made significant contributions to understanding pandemic dynamics, particularly regarding influenza and SARS-CoV-2, using genomic and epidemiological data integration. His methodological work includes developing computational approaches for estimating epidemic dynamics and viral transmission patterns. Analysis of his recent publications reveals a strong focus on how pandemics disrupt normal viral circulation patterns, with particular attention to influenza evolution during the 2009 H1N1 and COVID-19 pandemics. His work often combines phylogenetic analysis with epidemiological modeling to extract maximum information from genomic and case count data. Dr. Du Plessis has received research funding from European Commission projects including 'From Foundations of Phylodynamics to new applications in Cell Biology' (grant 101001077) and 'MOnitoring Outbreak events for Disease surveillance in a data science context' (grant 874850). He is actively involved in developing computational tools for analyzing pathogen genomic data and has contributed to several software packages used in the field. His work has significant implications for public health surveillance and pandemic preparedness.










