Francois Balloux

Francois Balloux is the Director of the UCL Genetics Institute,[1] and a Professor of Computational Biology at University College London.[2]

Francois Balloux

Education

He earned a Master's degree in 1996 and a Doctorate in 2000 from the University of Lausanne. He then completed postdoctoral research at the University of Edinburgh. Balloux was an Assistant Professor at the University of Cambridge, between 2002 and 2007, before taking a position as an Associate Professor in Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London. In 2012, Balloux became a full Professor at University College London.[2]

Research

His research lies at the interface of Genomics, Epidemiology, Evolution and Ecology. The main focus of his work is on the reconstruction of disease outbreaks and epidemics of human and wildlife pathogens,[3][4][5] and the emergence of antimicrobial resistance.[6][7][8] He has contributed to our understanding of the emergence and spread of drug resistance in tuberculosis,[9][10] and Gram-negative bacteria,[11][12] and the distribution of zoonotic pathogens in vertebrates.[13]

Together with his colleague Dr Lucy Van Dorp,[14] they led a team of researchers in the analysis of the first large-scale analysis of 7666 complete SARS-Cov-2 genomes, the agent of the COVID-19 pandemic. The work supported a host jump of SARS-Cov-2 into the human population in October or November 2019, extensive global transmission from early on in the pandemic.[15]

His work has been cited over 23,000 times on Google Scholar.[16]

Teaching and Training

Balloux has an excellent track record with former group members becoming successful independent scientists. Over half the PhD students and Postdoctoral Researchers he supervised to date have already secured positions as independent research group leaders. Formers mentees include Dr Vegard Eldholm,[17] Dr Thibaut Jombart,[18] Prof Laurent Lehmann,[19] and Dr Lucy Weinert.[20]

References
  1. UCL (2019-02-08). "UCL Genetics Institute". UCL Division of Biosciences. Retrieved 2020-04-07.
  2. "Professor Francois Balloux | UCL Division of Biosciences - UCL - London's Global University". ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020-03-15.
  3. Wang, Ruobing; van Dorp, Lucy; Shaw, Liam P.; Bradley, Phelim; Wang, Qi; Wang, Xiaojuan; Jin, Longyang; Zhang, Qing; Liu, Yuqing; Rieux, Adrien; Dorai-Schneiders, Thamarai (2018-03-21). "The global distribution and spread of the mobilized colistin resistance gene mcr-1". Nature Communications. 9 (1): 1179. Bibcode:2018NatCo...9.1179W. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-03205-z. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 5862964. PMID 29563494.
  4. O’Hanlon, Simon J.; Rieux, Adrien; Farrer, Rhys A.; Rosa, Gonçalo M.; Waldman, Bruce; Bataille, Arnaud; Kosch, Tiffany A.; Murray, Kris A.; Brankovics, Balázs; Fumagalli, Matteo; Martin, Michael D. (2018-05-11). "Recent Asian origin of chytrid fungi causing global amphibian declines". Science. 360 (6389): 621–627. Bibcode:2018Sci...360..621O. doi:10.1126/science.aar1965. ISSN 0036-8075. PMC 6311102. PMID 29748278.
  5. Eldholm, Vegard; Pettersson, John H.-O.; Brynildsrud, Ola B.; Kitchen, Andrew; Rasmussen, Erik Michael; Lillebaek, Troels; Rønning, Janne O.; Crudu, Valeriu; Mengshoel, Anne Torunn; Debech, Nadia; Alfsnes, Kristian (2016-11-29). "Armed conflict and population displacement as drivers of the evolution and dispersal of Mycobacterium tuberculosis". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113 (48): 13881–13886. doi:10.1073/pnas.1611283113. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 5137683. PMID 27872285.
  6. Balloux, Francois; Brønstad Brynildsrud, Ola; van Dorp, Lucy; Shaw, Liam P.; Chen, Hongbin; Harris, Kathryn A.; Wang, Hui; Eldholm, Vegard (2018). "From Theory to Practice: Translating Whole-Genome Sequencing (WGS) into the Clinic". Trends in Microbiology. 26 (12): 1035–1048. doi:10.1016/j.tim.2018.08.004. PMC 6249990. PMID 30193960.
  7. Shaw, Liam P.; Bassam, Hassan; Barnes, Chris P.; Walker, A. Sarah; Klein, Nigel; Balloux, Francois (2019). "Modelling microbiome recovery after antibiotics using a stability landscape framework". The ISME Journal. 13 (7): 1845–1856. doi:10.1038/s41396-019-0392-1. ISSN 1751-7370. PMC 6591120. PMID 30877283.
  8. Eldholm, Vegard; Rieux, Adrien; Monteserin, Johana; Lopez, Julia Montana; Palmero, Domingo; Lopez, Beatriz; Ritacco, Viviana; Didelot, Xavier; Balloux, Francois (2016-08-09). Jit, Mark (ed.). "Impact of HIV co-infection on the evolution and transmission of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis". eLife. 5: e16644. doi:10.7554/eLife.16644. ISSN 2050-084X. PMC 4978521. PMID 27502557.
  9. Eldholm, Vegard; Monteserin, Johana; Rieux, Adrien; Lopez, Beatriz; Sobkowiak, Benjamin; Ritacco, Viviana; Balloux, Francois (November 2015). "Four decades of transmission of a multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis outbreak strain". Nature Communications. 6 (1): 7119. Bibcode:2015NatCo...6.7119E. doi:10.1038/ncomms8119. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 4432642. PMID 25960343.
  10. Eldholm, Vegard; Rieux, Adrien; Monteserin, Johana; Lopez, Julia Montana; Palmero, Domingo; Lopez, Beatriz; Ritacco, Viviana; Didelot, Xavier; Balloux, Francois (2016-08-09). "Impact of HIV co-infection on the evolution and transmission of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis". eLife. 5: e16644. doi:10.7554/eLife.16644. ISSN 2050-084X. PMC 4978521. PMID 27502557.
  11. Wang, Ruobing; van Dorp, Lucy; Shaw, Liam P.; Bradley, Phelim; Wang, Qi; Wang, Xiaojuan; Jin, Longyang; Zhang, Qing; Liu, Yuqing; Rieux, Adrien; Dorai-Schneiders, Thamarai (December 2018). "The global distribution and spread of the mobilized colistin resistance gene mcr-1". Nature Communications. 9 (1): 1179. Bibcode:2018NatCo...9.1179W. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-03205-z. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 5862964. PMID 29563494.
  12. Acman, Mislav; van Dorp, Lucy; Santini, Joanne M.; Balloux, Francois (December 2020). "Large-scale network analysis captures biological features of bacterial plasmids". Nature Communications. 11 (1): 2452. Bibcode:2020NatCo..11.2452A. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-16282-w. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 7229196. PMID 32415210.
  13. Shaw, Liam P.; Wang, Alethea D.; Dylus, David; Meier, Magda; Pogacnik, Grega; Dessimoz, Christophe; Balloux, François (2020). "The phylogenetic range of bacterial and viral pathogens of vertebrates". Molecular Ecology. 29 (17): 3361–3379. doi:10.1111/mec.15463. ISSN 1365-294X. PMID 32390272. S2CID 218586409.
  14. "Home". www.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020-11-21.
  15. van Dorp, Lucy; Acman, Mislav; Richard, Damien; Shaw, Liam P.; Ford, Charlotte E.; Ormond, Louise; Owen, Christopher J.; Pang, Juanita; Tan, Cedric C. S.; Boshier, Florencia A. T.; Ortiz, Arturo Torres (2020-05-05). "Emergence of genomic diversity and recurrent mutations in SARS-CoV-2". Infection, Genetics and Evolution. 83: 104351. doi:10.1016/j.meegid.2020.104351. ISSN 1567-1348. PMC 7199730. PMID 32387564.
  16. "Francois Balloux - Google Scholar Citations". scholar.google.co.uk. Retrieved 2020-04-07.
  17. "Vegard Eldholm". Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Retrieved 2020-11-21.
  18. "Thibaut Jombart website". thibautjombart.netlify.app. Retrieved 2020-11-21.
  19. "Laurent Lehmann - Professor". www.unil.ch. Retrieved 2020-11-21.
  20. [email protected]. "Lucy Weinert — Research in the Department of Veterinary Medicine". www.research.vet.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2020-11-21.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.