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...
On October 30 2024 by Kyla Serres
Our new study on integrating indicator-based and event-based surveillance data to improve risk mapping has just been published in Eurosurveillance. West Nile virus (WNV) has an enzootic cycle between birds and mosquitoes, humans being incidental dead-end hosts. Circulation of WNV is an increasing public health threat in Europe. While detection of WNV is notifiable in humans and animals in the European Union, surveillance based on human case numbers presents some limitations, including reporting delays. Read more...
On October 18 2024 by Marie-Cécile Dupas
Our new study on modelling farm distribution has been published in PLoS Computational Biology. We have developed a model to predict the location and size of poultry farms in countries or regions with limited data. This is important because knowing the distribution of farms helps in understanding how diseases spread, especially in areas with rapidly growing farm populations. Our model uses advanced statistical methods and is calibrated with environmental and human activity data to simulate farm locations and sizes, which we tested on farms in Bangladesh, Gujarat (India), and Thailand. Read more...
On June 02 2024 by Fabiana Gámbaro
Our new study on the emergence and dissemination of the SARS-CoV-2 variant XBB.1.5 in New York has been published in Virus Evolution. The recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Omicron XBB.1.5 variant was first detected in New York City (NYC) and rapidly became the predominant variant in the area by early 2023. The increased occurrence of circulating variants within the SARS-CoV-2 XBB-sublineage prompted the modification of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. This update, implemented in mid-September 2023, involved the incorporation of a monovalent XBB. Read more...
On May 14 2024 by Simon Dellicour
Description A 2-year post-doc position is open at the Spatial Epidemiology Lab of the University of Brussels (ULB) to work on spatial models helping to target under-immunised communities during vaccination activities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The position should start between October 1, 2024, and January 1, 2025. The researcher will work on a project funded by Innoviris, the public organisation that funds and supports research and innovation in the Brussels-Capital Region (Belgium). Read more...
On March 19 2024 by Jean-Claude Grégoire
In 2018, for the first time in the British history, reproducing populations of the spruce bark beetle Ips typographus, the most damaging pest in Europe, were found in Kent, in southern England. Our study, carried out with Forest Research in Britain, relied on networks of pheromone traps deployed from an outbreak hotspot in the French and Belgian Ardenne to the English coast. We show that, contrary to the hypothesis that the pest entered Britain with infested wood, the insects managed to fly over the English Channel. Read more...