Marcel Salathé (born 1975 in Basel) is a Swiss digital epidemiologist and currently an associate professor at EPFL.[1] He is the PI of the Lab of Digital Epidemiology, and co-director of the EPFL AI Center.[2] In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Salathé was the most quoted scientist in the Swiss media.[3]

Associate Professor
Marcel Salathé
Marcel Salathé at AI for Good Global Summit 2018
Born1975 (age 48–49)
Basel, Switzerland
Academic background
Alma materUniversity of Basel
ETH Zurich
Academic advisorsSebastian Bonhoeffer
Academic work
DisciplineEpidemiology
Sub-disciplineDigital epidemiology
InstitutionsEPFL
Main interestsDigital epidemiology
Applied machine learning
Health & disease
Dynamic network analysis
Websitewww.epfl.ch/labs/salathelab/
digitalepidemiologylab.org

Career

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From 1995 to 2002, Salathé studied biology at the University of Basel. In 2007, he graduated in biology and environmental sciences at ETH Zurich with a PhD on population genetics and evolutionary biology in the group of Sebastian Bonhoeffer, where he thereafter pursued postdoctoral studies for one year.[4] In 2008, Salathé was awarded with a Society in Science Branco Weiss fellowship.[5] The same year he joined group of Marcus Feldman at Stanford University as a postdoctoral researcher.[6][7] In 2010, he became assistant professor at the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Pennsylvania State University.[8]

In 2015, he was nominated associated professor at EPFL with a double appointment at School of Computer and Communication Sciences and the School of Life Sciences,[1] where he acts as a founding director of the Lab of Digital Epidemiology.[2] In 2016, he founded the EPFL Extension School, the EPFL online school for applied digital skills and has since served as its academic director.[9]

In the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Salathé became more widely known to a wider public mainly through multiple appearances in Swiss television[10] and media outlets,[11][12] and in public lectures.[13][14][15] In November 2020, he was named director of the steering committee of the Swiss COVID-19 national research program.[16]

Research

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Salathé is interested in epidemiological problems, especially in contact networks. He analyses digital data streams (e.g. Twitter or mobile phones) in order to gain epidemiological insights.[17] He is the lead author of the paper Digital Epidemiology published in 2012 introducing the term digital epidemiology (e-epidemiology).[7] In recent years, his research began to focus on nutritional epidemiology, using digital and AI-based tools to enable high-resolution food tracking in medical cohorts.[18][19]

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, his work focused also on digital contact tracing. He has been a member the group developing the Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing algorithm,[20] and the scientific lead behind the SwissCovid mobile phone application released by the Federal administration of Switzerland. The latter is the first digital contact tracing application developed by a government that is based on the Google's and Apple's Exposure Notifications System.

Salathé is a co-founder of CH++, a political action group for science-based policy development.[21]

Distinctions

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From 2008 to 2013, Salathé was a Branco Weiss Society in Science Fellow[5] and in 2018 and again in 2020, he was nominated Switzerland Digital Shaper.[22][23]

Since 2020 he has been a member of the Swiss National COVID-19 Science Task Force, the scientific corona advisory board of the Federal Council and the cantons.[24] He chairs the expert group on Digital Epidemiology.[25] In November 2020, Salathé was appointed as the president of the SNSF steering committee for the national research programme "Covid-19".[26]

He is co-founder of the startup AIcrowd that maintains a collaboration platform for data scientists specialized in crowdsourcing AI solutions.[6]

Publications

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  • Mohanty, S.P., Hughes, D.P. and Salathé, M., 2016. Using deep learning for image-based plant disease detection. Frontiers in plant science, 7, p. 1419.[27]
  • Salathé, M., Kazandjieva, M., Lee, J.W., Levis, P., Feldman, M.W. and Jones, J.H., 2010. A high-resolution human contact network for infectious disease transmission. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(51), pp. 22020-22025.[28]
  • Salathé, M. and Khandelwal, S., 2011. Assessing vaccination sentiments with online social media: implications for infectious disease dynamics and control. PLoS Comput Biol, 7(10), p.e1002199.[29]
  • Marcel Salathé, Christian L Althaus, Nanina Anderegg, Daniele Antonioli, Tala Ballouz, Edouard Bugnion, Srjan Capkun, Dennis Jackson, Sang-Il Kim, James Larus, View ORCID ProfileNicola Low, Wouter Lueks, Dominik Menges, Cedric Moullet, Mathias Payer, Julien Riou, Theresa Stadler, Carmela Troncoso, Effy Vayena, Viktor von Wyl, 2020. Early Evidence of Effectiveness of Digital Contact Tracing for SARS-CoV-2 in Switzerland. MedRXiv.[30]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Evangelista, Sandy (2015-07-15). "Welcome to our new SV professors". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  2. ^ a b "Salathe Lab". Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  3. ^ "Wissenschaft und Virus – "Corona hat mich stark politisiert"". Der Bund (in German). Retrieved 2021-02-17.
  4. ^ Switzerl, Address ETH Zürich Dep of Environmental Systems Science Prof Dr Sebastian Bonhoeffer Institut für Integrative Biologie CHN K. 12 1 Universitätstrasse 16 8092 Zürich. "Bonhoeffer, Sebastian, Prof. Dr. | ETH Zurich". usys.ethz.ch. Retrieved 2020-09-14.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  5. ^ a b "Marcel Salathé". Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  6. ^ a b "Stanford research follows spread of flu in high school | Stanford News Release". news.stanford.edu. 2010-12-14. Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  7. ^ a b Salathe, M.; Kazandjieva, M.; Lee, J. W.; Levis, P.; Feldman, M. W.; Jones, J. H. (2010-12-21). "A high-resolution human contact network for infectious disease transmission". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107 (51): 22020–22025. arXiv:1006.4622. Bibcode:2010PNAS..10722020S. doi:10.1073/pnas.1009094108. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 3009790. PMID 21149721.
  8. ^ "Messages From the Director". Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  9. ^ "Our Team". EPFL Extension School. Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  10. ^ "Zug und Tram sind nicht genug – Braucht es eine generelle Maskenpflicht, Marcel Salathé?". Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF) (in German). 2020-07-02. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  11. ^ "Swiss soldiers pick up smartphones to fight COVID-19". SWI swissinfo.ch. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  12. ^ Rhyn, Larissa. "Epidemiologe Marcel Salathé: Wie weiter nach dem Lockdown?". Neue Zürcher Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  13. ^ Papageorgiou, Nik (2020-02-27). "We need to buy time for a vaccine against the coronavirus". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  14. ^ "Coronavirus-Ausbruch: Was sagt die Wissenschaft? | reatch". www.reatch.ch. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  15. ^ "COVID-19: EPFL's Marcel Salathé course on Feb 26, 2020". YouTube. 2020-03-05. Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  16. ^ "Election of Steering Committee of NRP 78 "Covid-19" - SNF". www.snf.ch. Retrieved 2020-11-05.
  17. ^ Salathé, Marcel; Bengtsson, Linus; Bodnar, Todd J.; Brewer, Devon D.; Brownstein, John S.; Buckee, Caroline; Campbell, Ellsworth M.; Cattuto, Ciro; Khandelwal, Shashank; Mabry, Patricia L.; Vespignani, Alessandro (2012-07-26). Bourne, Philip E. (ed.). "Digital Epidemiology". PLOS Computational Biology. 8 (7): e1002616. Bibcode:2012PLSCB...8E2616S. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002616. ISSN 1553-7358. PMC 3406005. PMID 22844241.
  18. ^ "AI-assisted food tracking to revolutionize nutritional research - AI For Nutrition". www.aifornutrition.org. Retrieved 2020-09-28.
  19. ^ Lazzari, Gianrocco; Jaquet, Yannis; Kebaili, Djilani J.; Symul, Laura; Salathé, Marcel (2018-07-04). "FoodRepo: An Open Food Repository of Barcoded Food Products". Frontiers in Nutrition. 5: 57. arXiv:1801.10195. doi:10.3389/fnut.2018.00057. ISSN 2296-861X. PMC 6040205. PMID 30023359.
  20. ^ "DP-3T/documents". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  21. ^ "About". CH++. Retrieved 2024-09-02.
  22. ^ "Researchers - BILANZ". Handelszeitung (in German). Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  23. ^ "Marcel Salathé - BILANZ". Handelszeitung (in German). Retrieved 2020-09-28.
  24. ^ "ncs-tf.ch: Organisation". ncs-tf.ch. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  25. ^ "ncs-tf.ch: Topics & Expert groups". ncs-tf.ch. Retrieved 2020-09-14.
  26. ^ "Election of Steering Committee of NRP 78 "Covid-19" - SNF". www.snf.ch. Retrieved 2020-11-26.
  27. ^ Mohanty, Sharada P.; Hughes, David P.; Salathé, Marcel (2016). "Using Deep Learning for Image-Based Plant Disease Detection". Frontiers in Plant Science. 7: 1419. arXiv:1604.03169. doi:10.3389/fpls.2016.01419. ISSN 1664-462X. PMC 5032846. PMID 27713752.
  28. ^ Salathé, Marcel; Kazandjieva, Maria; Lee, Jung Woo; Levis, Philip; Feldman, Marcus W.; Jones, James H. (2010-12-21). "A high-resolution human contact network for infectious disease transmission". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107 (51): 22020–22025. arXiv:1006.4622. Bibcode:2010PNAS..10722020S. doi:10.1073/pnas.1009094108. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 3009790. PMID 21149721.
  29. ^ Salathé, Marcel; Khandelwal, Shashank (2011-10-13). "Assessing Vaccination Sentiments with Online Social Media: Implications for Infectious Disease Dynamics and Control". PLOS Computational Biology. 7 (10): e1002199. arXiv:1105.4502. Bibcode:2011PLSCB...7E2199S. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002199. ISSN 1553-7358. PMC 3192813. PMID 22022249. S2CID 966975.
  30. ^ Salathé, Marcel; Althaus, Christian L.; Anderegg, Nanina; Antonioli, Daniele; Ballouz, Tala; Bugnion, Edouard; Capkun, Srjan; Jackson, Dennis; Kim, Sang-Il; Larus, James; Low, Nicola (2020-09-09). "Early Evidence of Effectiveness of Digital Contact Tracing for SARS-CoV-2 in Switzerland". medRxiv 10.1101/2020.09.07.20189274v1.
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