The research group focuses on the study of emerging zoonotic viruses, the development of new diagnostic tests, and respiratory viruses such as coronaviruses.
Initiatives and affiliations
- Co-leader of the WHO Collaborating Center for Epidemic and Pandemic Diseases
- Co-leader of the CoViNet expert laboratory network on coronaviruses (joint appointment with the Institute of Virology and Immunology, Mittelhäusern)
- Expert at the Robert Koch Institute on pandemic respiratory infections
- Expert of the subgroup on immune escape of SARS-CoV-2 variants of the WHO Technical Advisory Groups on Virus Evolution and Vaccine Composition
- Expert of the subgroup on laboratory markers of severity of SARS-CoV-2 variants of the WHO Technical Advisory Groups on Virus Evolution and Vaccine Composition.
Current and past research funds (selection)
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) project: “Arms race between viral evolution and population immunity - Understanding the impact of antibody pressure on SARS-CoV-2 variants and human endemic coronaviruses”.
- Moderna, investigator-sponsored trial: “MIViral - Mucosal Immunity: Influence on Infectious Viral Load: a prospective observational study” (joint study with Centre de vaccinologie, PATIM, UNIGE).
- Fondation Carigest, “Establishment of an in vitro model of polarized human primary airway epithelial cells from children for the study of viral respiratory infections”
- Horizon 2020, European Union, Project: “European Alliance for Clinical Research in Infectious Diseases - ECRAID-Base”.
- National Research Program (NRP) of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF): 78 “Covid-19”, Project: “Large-scale serological profiling of SARS-CoV-2 and related human CoVs using high-throughput microfluidic immunoassays”, (joint project, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL).
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Special call on coronaviruses, Project: “Phenotypic characterization of a biobank of SARS-CoV-2 clinical strains and assessment of the risk of evolution of virus variants”.
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Special call on coronaviruses, Project: “Real-time pandemic functional characterization of SARS-CoV-2”. (Joint project, Institute of Virology and Immunology, Berne).
- Collaborating laboratory of the Foundation for Innovative Diagnostics (FIND): “Support for accurate diagnosis of 2019-nCoV”.
- Fondation privée HUG: Support for rapid response to SARS-CoV-2
- Fondation Pictet, project: “COVID-19, the new challenge for the Center for Emerging Viral Diseases - Understanding transmission and risk factors of COVID-19 in primary cell culture models”.
- Ernst and Lucie Schmidheiny Foundation: Project: “Evaluation of the host switching capacity of newly identified bat filoviruses via a single amino acid change in the tip glycoprotein”.
European Clinical research Aliance on Infectious Diseases (ECRAID), Disease X study
