Tanja Stadler
Stadler in 2023
Born1981 (1981)
Stuttgart, Germany
NationalitySwiss, German
Scientific career
FieldsPhylogenetics
InstitutionsETH Zürich

Tanja Stadler is a mathematician and professor of computational evolution at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). She’s the current president of the Swiss Scientific Advisory Panel COVID-19.

Career

Tanja Stadler studied applied mathematics and statistics at the Technical University of Munich, University of Cardiff, and the University of Canterbury.[1] She continued at the Technical University of Munich to obtain a PhD in 2008 on the topic 'Evolving Trees – Models for Speciation and Extinction in Phylogenetics' (with Prof. Anusch Taraz and Prof. Mike Steel).[2] After a postdoctoral period with Prof. Sebastian Bonhoeffer in the Department of Environmental Systems Sciences at ETH Zürich, she was promoted to Junior Group Leader at ETH Zürich in 2011. In 2014, she became an assistant professor at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering of ETH Zürich, where she was promoted to associate professor in 2017 and to full professor in 2021.[3]

Research

Scientific Contributions

Tanja's research addresses core questions in the life sciences through an evolutionary perspective, in particular in macroevolution, epidemiology, developmental biology and immunology. Her research questions include fundamental aspects such as how speciation processes led to the current biodiversity, as well as questions directly relevant to human societies, such as the spread of pathogens like COVID-19 or Ebola. Tanja assesses these questions by developing and applying statistical phylodynamic tools[4] to estimate evolutionary and population dynamics from genomic sequencing data while in parallel leading consortia to produce such data. Her unique approach is an innovative mix of mathematics, computer science and biology.

Tanja made major theoretical contributions to the field of phylodynamics by developing statistical frameworks to use birth-death processes in the context of phylogenetic trees.[5] In particular, she laid the foundations to account for sampling through time in birth-death models – enabling coherent analysis of genetic sequencing data collected through time during epidemics as well as coherent analysis of fossil (collected sequentially through time) and present-day species data.[6]

Tanja used this framework for example to quantify HCV spread, the spread of Ebola during the 2014 outbreak, assess Zika spread, to show that influenza waves in a city are majorly driven by travel patterns, and to provide real-time information during the COVID-19 pandemic.[7][8][9] In macroevolution, Tanja explored in particular the impact of dinosaur extinction on mammal diversification.[10] Most recently, she is introducing statistical tree thinking into developmental biology.[11]

Her group founded “Taming the BEAST”, in 2016. BEAST 2 is a widely used Bayesian phylogenetic software platform allowing to infer evolutionary and population dynamics from genomic sequencing data to which Tanja’s team contributed many package. “Taming the BEAST” is both an international workshop series and an online resource, to teach the usage of BEAST 2.[12][13]

In the field of epidemiology, Tanja is currently spear-heading the use of wastewater information to understand pathogen spread. She is principal investigator of a project between ETH Zürich and Eawag. Her team is estimating the reproductive number for SARS-CoV-2 and influenza from wastewater and contributes to understanding variant dynamics.[14]

Outreach and political engagement

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tanja was president of the Swiss National COVID-19 Science task force advising the authorities and decision makers of Switzerland from August 2021 until the termination of the task force in March 2022.[15] She started the presidency after having been a member and later chaired the data & modelling group of the task force. She was responsible for the weekly communication of the pandemic situation to the Swiss Federal Government and the corresponding authorities. In addition, she presented scientific insights in briefings with the complete Federal Government and with members of the executive branches of the Federal and Cantonal Governments, as well as with different divisions of the Swiss Parliament.

Tanja actively contributed core scientific insights to the Task Force. Her daily calculations of the reproductive number became a key part of the epidemic monitoring.[16] The reproductive numbers were employed in the national „Ordinance of 19 June 2020 on Measures during the Special Situation to combat the COVID-19 Epidemic”. Further, the reproductive number dashboard was highlighted when the South Africa Health department informed the world about the new variant Omicron. Tanja also lead the most extensive Swiss-based SARS-CoV-2 sequencing effort providing results on the emergence and spread of new variants.[17] Through this effort, the first beta, gamma, and delta variants in Switzerland were detected.[18][19]

The platform cov-spectrum is developed by Tanja’s team and became essential in SARS-CoV-2 variant tracking.[20] It is widely used to facilitate SARS-CoV-2 lineage designation and used in policy such as the FDA advisory committee meeting discussing possible SARS-CoV-2 strains for a vaccine update. During the mpox outbreak, the team launched mpox-spectrum within days to track the newly spreading virus.[21]

In addition to advising the government and informing policy makers, she became actively involved in informing the public about the situation of the pandemic. Tanja communicated the scientific insights often on national news and national TV shows in Switzerland, as well as through Federal press conferences.[22]

Personal life

Stadler lives with her partner and their two daughters in Basel.[23]

Awards and honors

References

  1. 1 2 "CV Tanja Stadler". Retrieved 1 January 2020.
  2. ↑ "PhD thesis Tanja Stadler" (PDF). Retrieved 1 January 2019.
  3. 1 2 3 "ETH Latsis Prize 2013". 8 November 2013. Retrieved 30 December 2018.
  4. ↑ Tanja Stadler (July 2015), "Getting to the root of epidemic spread with phylodynamic analysis of genomic data", Trends in Microbiology, 23 (7): 383–386, doi:10.1016/j.tim.2015.04.007, PMID 26139467
  5. ↑ Tanja Stadler (November 2009), "On incomplete sampling under birth–death models and connections to the sampling-based coalescent", Journal of Theoretical Biology, 261 (1): 58–66, Bibcode:2009JThBi.261...58S, doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2009.07.018, PMID 19631666
  6. ↑ Tanja Stadler (July 2014), "The fossilized birth–death process for coherent calibration of divergence-time estimates", PNAS, 111 (29): E2957–E2966, arXiv:1310.2968, Bibcode:2014PNAS..111E2957H, doi:10.1073/pnas.1319091111, PMC 4115571, PMID 25009181
  7. ↑ Tanja Stadler (December 2012), "Birth–death skyline plot reveals temporal changes of epidemic spread in HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV)", PNAS, 110 (1): 228–233, doi:10.1073/pnas.1207965110, PMC 3538216, PMID 23248286
  8. ↑ Tanja Stadler (November 2020), "Characterising the epidemic spread of influenza A/H3N2 within a city through phylogenetics", PLOS Pathogens, 16 (11): e1008984, doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1008984, PMC 7676729, PMID 33211775
  9. ↑ Tanja Stadler (February 2021), "The origin and early spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Europe", PNAS, 118 (9), Bibcode:2021PNAS..11812008N, doi:10.1073/pnas.2012008118, PMC 7936359, PMID 33571105
  10. ↑ Tanja Stadler (March 2021), "Mammalian phylogeny reveals recent diversification rate shifts", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (15): 6187–6192, doi:10.1073/pnas.1016876108, PMC 3076834, PMID 21444816
  11. ↑ Tanja Stadler (March 2021), "Phylodynamics for cell biologists", Science, 371 (6526), doi:10.1126/science.aah6266, PMID 33446527, S2CID 231606785
  12. ↑ Tanja Stadler (June 2017), "Taming the BEAST", Systematic Biology, 67 (1): 170–174, doi:10.1093/sysbio/syx060, PMC 5925777, PMID 28673048
  13. ↑ Tanja Stadler (April 2019), "BEAST 2.5: An advanced software platform for Bayesian evolutionary analysis", PLOS Computational Biology, 15 (4): e1006650, Bibcode:2019PLSCB..15E6650B, doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006650, PMC 6472827, PMID 30958812
  14. ↑ Tanja Stadler (May 2022), "Wastewater-Based Estimation of the Effective Reproductive Number of SARS-CoV-2", Environmental Health Perspectives, 130 (5), doi:10.1289/EHP10050, PMC 9135136, PMID 35617001
  15. ↑ "Swiss National COVID-19 Science task force".
  16. ↑ Scire, Jérémie; Huisman, Jana S.; Angst, Daniel C.; Li, Jinzhou; Neher, Richard A.; Maathuis, Marloes H.; Bonhoeffer, Sebastian; Stadler, Tanja (2022). "Estimation and worldwide monitoring of the effective reproductive number of SARS-CoV-2". eLife. 11. doi:10.7554/eLife.71345. PMC 9467515. PMID 35938911.
  17. ↑ "Swiss SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing Consortium (S3C)".
  18. ↑ Tanja Stadler (August 2022), "Estimation and worldwide monitoring of the effective reproductive number of SARS-CoV-2", eLife, 11, doi:10.7554/eLife.71345, PMC 9467515, PMID 35938911
  19. ↑ Tanja Stadler (June 2022), "Advancing genomic epidemiology by addressing the bioinformatics bottleneck: Challenges, design principles, and a Swiss example", Epidemics, 39, doi:10.1016/j.epidem.2022.100576, PMC 9107180, PMID 35605437
  20. ↑ "CoV-Spectrum: analysis of globally shared SARS-CoV-2 data to identify and characterize new variants".
  21. ↑ "genspectrum".
  22. ↑ "COVID-19 Pandemic".
  23. ↑ "Die Datenjägerin ETH Zürich Foundation". ETH Zürich Foundation (in German). 27 January 2023. Retrieved 2 December 2023.
  24. ↑ "John Maynard Smith Prize". Retrieved 1 January 2019.
  25. ↑ "Prix Zonta". Retrieved 1 January 2019.
  26. ↑ "ETH Golden Owl". Retrieved 1 January 2019.
  27. ↑ "Leopoldina verleiht Carus-Medaillen an Tanja Stadler und Dominic Bresser". Nachrichten aus der Wissenschaft » idw (in German). 2021-09-01. Retrieved 2023-12-02.
  28. ↑ Tanja Stadler erhält Rössler-Preis. ETH News, ethz.ch. Retrieved 23 June 2022.
  29. ↑ "Mitglieder". Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina (in German). 29 June 2023. Retrieved 2 December 2023.
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