Chris Wymant

After a PhD and some postdoctoral research in theoretical particle physics, I joined the group of Christophe Fraser, at Imperial College London 2014-2016, and at the Big Data Institute since. I do research on the evolutionary epidemiology of viruses: how they spread, how they change, and how they damage our health. I use statistical modelling, mathematical modelling and genomic methods.

Educational/explanatory material I've written for students and researchers is here.

My publications are listed here*. Some highlights:

• In Ferretti & Wymant et al., Science 2020 we provided the initial proposal to use 'digital' contact tracing (with proximity-detecting phone apps) to reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission, based on mathematical modelling. This novel public health intervention was rapidly developed and used in many countries. Read more about our group's COVID-19 work here.
• In Wymant & Ferretti et al., Nature 2021 we provided the first evaluation of the epidemiological impact of digital contact tracing.
• In Ferretti & Wymant et al., Nature 2023 we quantified the interplay of proximity and duration of exposure to COVID-19 cases for determining transmission risk. More explanation is here.
• In Wymant et al., Science 2022 we reported on the discovery of a highly virulent variant of HIV-1. Accessible explanations and links to popular media coverage are here.
• In Wymant et al., Virus Evolution 2018 we presented the computational method shiver for assembling HIV (and other viral) genomes from the short fragments of DNA produced by next-generation (high-throughput) sequencing methods.
• In Wymant & Hall et al., MBE 2017 we presented the computational method phyloscanner for phylogenetic analysis of pathogen genetic sequence data at the within- and between-host level, for example to infer transmission.

Outside of the pandemic I've mostly worked on the BEEHIVE project: analysing HIV genetic data, together with clinical data about the individuals with those viruses, to better understand how the virus affects infection severity. I've helped a little in BEEHIVE's sister projects PANGEA and AMPHEUS.

If you're not a robot, you can email me at chris wymant bdi ox ac uk, replacing those five spaces with . @ . . . respectively

* this link provides access to the only publication that's not open acces: Jean & Wymant, Science 2019, on academic institutional policy for flying.