Abstract:
The environment shapes infectious disease by altering microbial survival, host behavior, and which strains or genes cause disease. By integrating environmental, epidemiological, and genomic data, we can try to understand the global distribution of Streptococcus pneumoniae, a human obligate bacterium with a large global disease burden (e.g. pneumonia or meningitis). We present work spanning long-range transmission dynamics to local effects, including estimating the rate and path of geographic spread, how the local environment influences disease risk, how this risk can be modified by the underlying bacteria, and how the environment shapes the fitness of circulating microbes. Understanding these relationships enhances our ability to anticipate how environmental changes (e.g. increasing temperatures, prolonged drought, wildfire smoke) shape microbial populations (e.g. antimicrobial resistance, virulent strains, or genes under selection) and focus our public health strategies on the most vulnerable regions and populations.
Biography:
Dr. Sophie Belman is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. Her research brings together pathogen genomic, earth systems, and epidemiological datasets across different spatiotemporal scales and geographic regions. Using computational models she currently focuses on bacterial respiratory diseases and the interaction between air pollution, climate, and microbial diversity. During her Schmidt Science Fellowship at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Dr. Belman advanced research at the intersection of pathogen genomics and environmental epidemiology identifying environmental risk depends upon circulating pathogen population structure (Nature Microbiology, 2026). She completed her PhD at the Wellcome Sanger Institute (University of Cambridge, UK) where she leveraged microbial genomic data together with human mobility and other data types to quantify the extent and mechanisms of long range microbial transmission. She also holds a MSc in Medical Microbiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
