About the role

The post is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and aims to investigate the drivers and pathways of nosocomial transmission of respiratory viruses among patients and healthcare workers (HCWs). It forms part of a three-year project which will prospectively collect epidemiological and genomic sequencing data on SARS-CoV-2, influenza virus A/B and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) A/B in both acute and geriatric care settings across two Swiss hospitals.

The primary objective of the project is to integrate epidemiological and genomic sequencing data to reconstruct who infected whom, thereby characterising transmission dynamics between patients and HCWs. The findings will inform improved infection-control strategies for respiratory viruses in high-risk healthcare environments, ultimately contributing to reduced morbidity and mortality associated with nosocomial infections.

What you would be doing

The post-holder will lead the data analysis and modelling components of the project. They will build on existing methodologies, including outbreaker2, an R package developed by the team to reconstruct who infected whom by combining epidemiological information and whole genome sequences in a Bayesian inference framework.

The post-holder will extend these methods to incorporate features specific nosocomial transmission and the hospital setting and will apply the enhanced tools to analyse the data collected as part of the project.

What we are looking for

Hold a PhD in infectious disease epidemiology, mathematical modelling, statistics or a closely related quantitative discipline *Candidates who have not yet been officially awarded their PhD will be appointed as Research Assistant.
Research experience in analysing epidemiological and/or pathogen genomic data
Research experience in developing or implementing statistical inference methods
Experience using R software or coding in C++ or similar languages