Senior Fellow
Dr. Alice Latinne
Fellow
“Southeast Asia is a hotspot of both biodiversity and emerging infectious diseases. Unfortunately, a large part of this exceptional endemic biodiversity is threatened by human activities. Through my work, I aim at improving our knowledge of endangered biodiversity in Southeast Asia and other regions and its role in the emergence of zoonotic infectious diseases. I am working to improve both human health and biodiversity in this region.”
Senior Fellow Bio
As a research scientist at EcoHealth Alliance, Dr. Alice Latinne aims at better understanding the dynamics of pathogens within and among wildlife populations, livestock, and humans, with a focus on projects in Asia. Alice studies the evolutionary dynamics of host-pathogen interactions, and their co-evolution at the phylogenetic and phylogeographic scale, in order to assess the risk of zoonotic pathogens emergence at high-risk human-wildlife interfaces.
Alice’s work aims to explain patterns and likelihood of pathogen sharing among species, and to determine how the host phylogenetic and phylogeographic structure affects pathogen distribution and cross-species transmission. Alice is currently involved with our work on Nipah virus and host dynamics in S. Asia and assessing the risk of bat Coronavirus emergence in live animal markets of southern China.
Trained as an evolutionary biologist, Alice earned her M.Sc. in Animal Biology and her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at the University of Liège in Belgium. Her Ph.D. dissertation aimed at exploring the diversity and evolutionary history of murid rodents in limestone karsts of Thailand. During her doctoral research, Alice has spent a long time trapping rodents and small mammals in Southeast Asia before analysing the collected samples in genetics laboratory.
Prior to her current position at EcoHealth Alliance, Alice was a Marie Curie COFUND fellow and she conducted postdoctoral research at the Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution in Montpellier (ISEM) and at the Kasetsart University in Thailand. Her research goals were directed toward understanding the evolution of murid rodents and their associated parasites and pathogens in Southeast Asia.
