Emma B. Hodcroft

Emma Hodcroft (born 1986) is a British-American molecular epidemiologist at the Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Bern. Her research focuses on the phylogenetics of viruses and other pathogens, mapping the spread and evolution of different genetic variants. Hodcroft is a developer on the Nextstrain project, an open science project that tracks the transmission chains of SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens. In 2020, she originated CoVariants.org, a project tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Nextstrain's work gained global prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic and have been cited widely in scientific and media coverage. As a scientist tracking the spread of the virus across the globe, Hodcroft has co-authored papers on topics including how the early pandemic spread from country to country, the potential for seasonality, and the prevalence and spread of variants of concern.

Early life and education Hodcroft was born to an American mother, Ellen Louise Boyer, and British father, Ken Hodcroft. After her parents divorced, she and her two younger siblings split their year between Texas and Scotland. Her three-minute summary of her thesis won the school- and country-level award in the 3 Minute Thesis Competition and placed third in the global competition.

Nextstrain Hodcroft is a developer on the Nextstrain project,

SARS-CoV-2 During the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific and public interest in viral dynamics soared. Hodcroft made significant contributions maintaining ongoing analysis of the outbreak in Nextstrain, starting a new site to track SARS-CoV-2 variants, and explaining the outbreak dynamics to the public.

Over the following months, phylogenetic analysis and open science platforms like Nextstrain played a key role in efforts to understand the epidemic. This work helped to understand transmission patterns, track key mutations, and estimate the speed of epidemic spread. Hodcroft has published on the history of competing SARS-CoV-2 strains to better understand the emergence of variants of concern. Hodcroft has written about the round-the-clock nature of gathering, analysing, error-checking, and annotating the flood of genomic data from around the world. The article recommended ways to "fix the bioinformatics bottleneck," including improving the rules and incentives for data sharing, rethinking incentives for midcareer academics, and accommodating the challenges of analysing vast volumes of data, often from labs that have not previously collected and reported data in such volumes. It pointed out that much of the genetic tracking of SARS-CoV-2 had not been performed by public health authorities, but rather by mid-career academics who set aside their research to help the pandemic efforts. The article called on the scientific community to rethink the incentives for these researchers, so their efforts would not set back their careers. Similarly, the article called on the community to find ways to standardize data sharing, and to ensure that researchers can share data prior to publication without having their own findings pre-empted.

In 2020, she originated CoVariants.org, a project tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants. about the debunking of the theory that the virus was artificially created, and describing the role of holiday travel in spreading the virus, and the impact of emerging variants of concern.

Presentations Hodcroft has presented her work on HIV at Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) 2012 in Seattle, Washington, and CROI 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia, and at many conferences, including the 45th Population Genetics Group Conference in Nottingham, England, and the 19th, 20th, and 21st HIV Dynamics and Evolution Conferences in Asheville, North Carolina; Utrecht, the Netherlands; and Tucson, Arizona.

The Nextstrain tool, co-developed by Hodcroft, received a Webby Special Achievement Award in May 2020.

In March 2021, The New York Times listed Hodcroft as a scientist in a new generation "changing the landscape of leadership" for women in science.