Jonas Asprion and Mansur Akbari share ideas in one of the ETH landmarks, the Semper Aula, named after the famous German professor of architecture Gottfried Semper who developed the plans for the ETH main building.

Dr. Marcel Salathé

As a Branco Weiss Society in Science Fellow, Dr. Marcel Salathé is studying disease dynamics in human populations. He uses wireless sensors to study human interaction networks at a very high resolution. He also uses online social media such as Twitter to study large scale interaction patterns and disease dynamics.

Background

Born

Switzerland

Studies

  • Undergraduate studies in Biology at the University of Basel, Switzerland
  • PhD in environmental sciences at ETH Zurich, Switzerland
  • Postdoctoral researcher studying human interaction patterns and disease dynamics at Stanford University, USA 2008-2010
  • Assistant Professor of Biology in the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics (CIDD) at the Pennsylvania State University, USA

Marcel's dissertation examined the evolution of complexity at the level of genes, individuals, and populations, focusing on three complex biological systems: host-parasite interactions, gene and protein interaction networks, and sexual reproduction. His work has resulted in numerous scientific publications.

Major Awards

The ETH medal

In the News

How Diseases Spread through Communities

Research

Society in Science Fellow Since

2008

Research Category

Biology

Research Location

Department of Biology
Pennsylvania State University, USA

 

Background

In the past century, science has made enormous progress in understanding the evolution and ecology of diseases, a topic that is of fundamental importance to human health. Although research of human genetic evolution has proven fruitful in this context, many pressing problems about human health are influenced by human culture, and are on such a short time scale that genetic change in humans is largely irrelevant. However, evolutionary thinking and in particular its methodology have the potential to be very useful in understanding the effect of human culture on human diseases.

A substantial proportion of morbidity and mortality in high income countries is caused by personal behavior that affects health outcomes. A few examples are:

  • smoking affecting susceptibility to lung cancer and other diseases
  • diet and exercising affecting susceptibility to various cardiovascular diseases
  • vaccination affecting susceptibility to infectious diseases

Despite the overwhelming evidence on behavior affecting health outcomes, a severe knowledge gap exists regarding how such behaviors spread, where they originate, how they are transmitted, how they change over time, why they are adopted or rejected, etc. In order to predict and improve health outcomes affected by health behavior, understanding the dynamics of the spread of health behavior is necessary.

Details of Research

Marcel investigates the dynamics of human behavior and its effect on both infectious and non-infectious diseases. In this context, understanding topologies of two types of social networks - those on which pathogens spread, an those on which behaviors spread - is required for understanding how these networks affect health outcomes. Modern technologies and methods such as online social networks, wireless sensor technology, machine learning etc. are used to collect and analyze data.