Research interests

Jean-François Guégan received his Ph.D. in community ecology and population dynamics of host-parasite interactions in 1990 from the University of Montpellier (France), and carried out his postdoctoral studies with Professor Clive Kennedy at the University of Exeter in Great Britain.

He is currently Senior Research Fellow-Director of Research at the French Research Agency for Development (I.R.D.) in the Genetics and Evolution of Infectious Diseases Unit (U.M.R. # 2724) hosted conjointly by I.R.D., C.N.R.S. and the University of Montpellier 1, in Montpellier, Southern France. He is co-directing this research team (around 30 permanent faculty and 20 Master and PhD degrees students) with Dr. François Renaud, and is leading the research group on Systems Dynamics and Infectious Diseases (around 10 people).

He is currently involved in studies on the ecology of infectious diseases, specifically with respect to

• the temporal and spatial dynamics of diseases (pertussis, measles, cholera fever, dengue fever), and their associations with climate variability
• the re-emergence of infectious and parasitic diseases ( Buruli Ulcer, cholera...) and the linkages between biodiversity alteration and ecosystem changes on disease emergence,
• the macroecology of parasitic and infectious diseases with a special interest in emerging patterns,
• the coevolutionary processes between humans and their parasitic and infectious diseases.

He is associate professor at University of Montpellier 2, in charge of courses on quantitative epidemiology, and global environmental change and health. He is also an associate professor at the new French School of Public Health, where he is in charge of developing an International Center on Globalization and Health. He is an international scientific expert for the U.N.E.P. Earth System Science Partnership (joined Diversitas, IGBP, WCRP and IHDP programmes) in human health and ecosystem health, and WHO ( Global Buruli Ulcer initiative), a member of the scientific council of both Afsset (the French agency for environmental health), and HCSP (the French Council on Public Health). Within the E.D.E.N. (Emerging Diseases in a changing European eNvironment) Integrated Research Programme, he is in charge of studying the linkages between population and community ecology and disease emergence, with the aim to assess on the effects of ecosystem dynamics, and biodiversity composition and changes on disease dynamics.

He is a referee for up to 25 different international journals in epidemiology, parasitology and theoretical ecology (PLoS Biology, Ecology Letters, Trends in Microbiology, EcoHealth, among others), and an associated editor of the international monthly journal Parasitology. He is responsible for the coedition of 5 hard books (Oxford University Press, Springer Verlag, de Boeck) and 3 special issue as a guest editor. He has authored up to 105 articles in international journals (Nature, PloS Biology, PloS Medicine, Current Biology, Trends in Microbiology, Trends in Parasitology, Ecology Letters, American J. Epidemiology, Evolution, Ecology, International Journal of Microbiology, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Proceedings B, Trends in Parasitology, Parasitology, International Journal of Parasitology, among others) and 60 oral communications (up to 40 as an invited speaker) in international meetings.

He likes Irish celtic music, (red) wine tasting and cooking.

Simulations, modelisation, phylogeny-based comparative analyses, meta-analyses (macro-ecology), neuronal networks, GLIM stats.

• Vitae
• supervised PhDs
• Books
• Papers