Welcome to the course website for Molecular Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases being taught Spring 2024 at NC State. This course will focus on how phylogenetic and population genomic methods are used to track the spread of infectious diseases using pathogen genomic data. We will explore how models and methods can be adapted to the epidemiology and natural history of different pathosystems, including viral, bacterial and fungal pathogens in plants, animals and humans. Topics include reconstructing epidemic dynamics, spatial movement (phylogeography), transmission networks, recombination and adaptive evolution. The final part of the course will focus on phylodynamics and how combining epidemic modeling with phylogenetic methods is giving molecular epidemiology increased power to track the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of pathogens.

Instructor: David Rasmussen (drasmus@ncsu.edu)

Listing: PP 590/790

Schedule: Mondays and Wednesdays, 1:30-2:45pm in Gardner Hall 2211

Structure: The course will meet twice per week. The first session will generally be a lecture or discussion. The second session will be tutorial-based and will give you the opportunity to apply methods to real data. While no programming experience is assumed or required, a few tutorials will give you the option of writing your own code to analyze data and visualize results. Students will be evaluated based on in-class participation and a short written report based on an independent, team-based project analyzing a dataset of your choice.

See the Syllabus for more info.