Dr Emmanuel James San

Dr. San is a bioinformatician, molecular biologist and data scientist with specialist expertise in genomics, phylogenetics, statistical genetics and software development. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, South Africa at the KwaZulu Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform (KRISP). He holds a PhD in Medicine and research experience in infectious diseases with a strong track record of combining molecular epidemiology with statistical analysis of pathogen genomic variation and the development of bioinformatics software. He is a member of several professional research bodies and collaborations including the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa (NGS-SA), The Public Health Alliance for Genomic for Genomic Epidemiology (PHA4GE), Africa COVID-19 Genomics consortium, Climate Amplified Diseases and Epidemics (CLIMADE) consortium, Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Pathogen Genome Initiative (PGI) Vaccine Preventable Diseases Focus Group (VPD FG), Phylogenetic Analysis for Generalized Epidemics in Africa (PANGEA_HIV) consortium and a fellow of the H3Africa Bioinformatics Network (H3ABionet). Dr. San has published over 45 manuscripts in high-ranking international journals (including Nature, Science, The Lancet, Lancet Infectious Diseases). His work has been cited over 7,000 times. He has an H-index of over 30. His current research interests include the use of phylogenetic models to understand the drivers of infection transmission of SARS-CoV-2, HIV, Influenza, Arboviruses and vaccine preventable diseases in Africa. He is also interested in the microbiome, transcriptomics and metagenomics to characterize niche viral and bacterial communities and to investigate their impact on host responses and perturbations.