On November 03 2025 by Fabiana Gámbaro
Bayesian phylogeographic inference is widely used in molecular epidemiological studies to reconstruct the dispersal history of pathogens. Discrete phylogeographic analysis treats geographic locations as discrete traits and infers lineage transition events among them, and is typically followed by a Bayes factor (BF) test to assess the statistical support. In the standard BF (BFstd) test, the relative abundance of the involved trait states is not considered, which can be problematic in the case of unbalanced sampling. Read more...
On October 03 2025 by Simon Dellicour & Marius Gilbert
On October 2, we — Simon Dellicour and Marius Gilbert — received the 2025 prize awarded by the Centre d’Etude Princesse Joséphine-Charlotte for scientific research against viral infections. This is a huge honour to receive this award and recognition for our research work integrating spatial and molecular epidemiology. This is also an opportunity for us to thank the FNRS for their support, the entire Spatial Epidemiology Lab as well as our colleagues and collaborators on these different research projects. Read more...
On October 01 2025 by Kyla Serres & Simon Dellicour
On September 29 and 30, the SpELL organised at the ULB the fourth edition of the Health Geography and Spatial Epidemiology workshop, a now yearly meeting coordinated by the homonymous FNRS contact group to federate the Belgian community of researchers and analysts working in these fields. These workshops are a great opportunity for doctoral and post-doctoral researchers to present their work in a supportive environment, as well as to stay informed about each other’s research, encourage collaborations, and plan joint projects. Read more...
On June 25 2025 by Simon Dellicour
The rapid evolution of RNA viruses implies that their evolutionary and ecological processes occur on the same time scale. Genome sequences of these pathogens therefore can contain information about the processes that govern their transmission and dispersal. Landscape phylogeographic approaches use phylogeographic reconstructions to investigate the impact of environmental factors and variables on the spatial spread of viruses. In this new study, we extend and improve existing approaches and develop three novel landscape phylogeographic methods that can test the impact of continuous environmental factors on the diffusion velocity of viral lineages. Read more...
On May 29 2025 by Fabiana Gámbaro & Simon Dellicour
African swine fever virus (ASFV) is a highly virulent DNA virus that causes African swine fever, a severe hemorrhagic disease affecting domestic and wild pigs, leading to significant animal health burdens and economic losses. Initially limited to the sub-Saharan African region, ASFV genotype II has spread globally and is now a major concern in Africa, Europe, Asia, the Pacific and, more recently, the Caribbean. In this study, we performed phylogenetic and phylogeographic analyses using newly sequenced ASFV genomes from Lithuania, combined with previously available complete genomes, to investigate the spatiotemporal dispersal dynamics of ASFV genotype II in Europe. Read more...
On May 15 2025 by Simon Dellicour
In Europe, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) virus continues to circulate in avian wildlife and undergo frequent reassortment, sporadic introductions in domestic birds, and spillover to mammals. An H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b reassortant, EA-2023-DG, affecting wild and domestic birds was detected in western Europe in November 2023. Six of its RNA segments came from the EA-2021-AB genotype, but the PB2 and PA segments originated from low pathogenicity avian influenza viruses. In this new study, we analysed the genesis and spread of this reassortant genotype in western Europe. Read more...
On May 07 2025 by Simon Dellicour
The emergence of SARS-CoV in 2002 and SARS-CoV-2 in 2019 led to increased sampling of sarbecoviruses circulating in horseshoe bats. In a new comprehensive study, we employed phylogenetic inference while accounting for recombination of bat sarbecoviruses and found that the closest-inferred bat virus ancestors of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 existed less than a decade prior to their emergence in humans. Phylogeographic analyses showed bat sarbecoviruses traveled at rates approximating their horseshoe bat hosts and circulated in Asia for millennia. Read more...
On January 30 2025 by Simon Dellicour
The Spatial Epidemiology Lab is delighted to welcome several new researchers in its interdisciplinary team: Claire Lescoat who joined the SpELL in January 2025 as a postdoctoral researcher on the ImmuReach project funded by Innoviris and conducted in collaboration with Bluesquare, Bastien De Tandt who started his PhD project in October 2024 on the response of cold-adapted pollinators to natural and anthropic climatic oscillations, Kyla Serres who just started her PhD project at the SpELL and the Interuniversity Institute of Bioinformatics (IB)2 on the environmental factors drive the emergence and circulation of dengue virus in Europe, as well as Cedric Marsboom from Avia-GIS who started in October 2024 a PhD project dedicated to an integrated approach for mitigating the impact of arbovirus invasions into Europe. Read more...
On December 03 2024 by Simon Dellicour
Our new study entitled “How fast are viruses spreading in the wild?” has just been published in PLoS Biology. Genomic data collected from viral outbreaks can be exploited to reconstruct the dispersal history of viral lineages in a two-dimensional space using continuous phylogeographic inference. These spatially explicit reconstructions can subsequently be used to estimate dispersal metrics that can be informative of the dispersal dynamics and the capacity to spread among hosts. Read more...
On October 31 2024 by Simon Dellicour
The present PhD student position and associated research project is part of the 13 PhD projects of the VIVACE Doctoral Network, funded by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie action of the Horizon Europe programme.
Context on the VIVACE doctoral network While outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses (HPAIV) in Europe used to be rare and geographically contained, the situation has dramatically changed in the last few years with thousands of outbreaks reported in domestic poultry and wild birds. Read more...