rocheben

I am a Research Director at the Research Institute for Development (IRD), based in Mexico City. I'm focusing on understanding what key inter-disciplinary insights can be gleaned from bringing together the fields of evolutionary ecology and public health. To do so, I have studied how host and pathogen diversity may affect infectious disease transmission. I have also worked to understand the interactions between ecological and societal processes in pathogen propagation. Synergistically, I have also worked on the interactions between infectious diseases transmission and cancerous cells proliferation through the share of a common enemy (our immune system) at an individual scale. Finally, I have tried to understand how cancerogenesis may impact evolution of species life-history traits, and the potential consequences of cancer for the structure of ecological communities.

In coming years, I will pursue these efforts by understanding how both host and pathogen diversity, largely studied separately thus far, may interact and the potential impact of such interactions on public health outcomes. I also aim to continue studying the links between infectious diseases and cancer by scaling up our current studies. The unifying goal for all these research projects is to gain a better understanding of, and ideally find ways to help improve, public health situations in low-income countries.

Main fundings:

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