Chris Wymant

Chris Wymant is a Senior Researcher in Statistical Genetics and Pathogen Dynamics at the Big Data Institute, University of Oxford, and holds an honorary position as a Research Associate in the School of Public Health at Imperial College London. His primary affiliation is with the Pandemic Sciences Institute. He transitioned from theoretical particle physics to epidemiological and evolutionary virology, focusing on virus spread dynamics, genomic methods, and public health interventions.

Education: PhD in theoretical particle physics, followed by postdoctoral research in infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College (2014–2016). Research interests include HIV and SARS-CoV-2 epidemiology, viral evolution, computational modeling (e.g., digital contact tracing efficacy), and genomic tools like shiver and phyloscanner.

Notable contributions include proposing digital contact tracing for SARS-CoV-2 (Science 2020), evaluating its epidemiological impact (Nature 2021), and discovering a highly virulent HIV-1 variant (Science 2022). He co-developed shiver for HIV genome assembly and phyloscanner for transmission inference.

His work spans projects like BEEHIVE (HIV surveillance), PANGEA, and AMPHEUS. No scientific awards are explicitly listed.

Labs/teams: Active in the Big Data Institute and Pandemic Sciences Institute, collaborating internationally on infectious disease modeling and genomic epidemiology.