Summary
I use statistical and mathematical approaches to study the dynamics of infectious diseases and assess the impact of interventions such as vaccination.
I currently hold a Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellowship to study the emergence and spatio-temporal spread of enteroviruses, which are a major cause of neurological and other illnesses. My work aims to disentangle the role of population immunity and viral genotypic and phenotypic changes, such as increased transmission or pathogenicity, on the epidemiological dynamics of a subset of serotypes (including Enterovirus D68 and those causing hand foot and mouth disease: Enterovirus A71 and Coxsackievirus A6). A key focus of this work is on the analysis of sero-epidemiology and pathogen-sequence data.
Current research interests include: Enterovirus epidemiology and evolution; Poliovirus eradication; Development of methods for the interpretation of immuno- and sero-epidemiology data; Inequalities in vaccination; Epidemic dynamics of endemic, seasonal pathogens; Epidemic dynamics of antigenically-diverse pathogens.
From 2015-2019, I held a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship, and prior to that I was a postdoc with the Vaccine Epidemiology Research Group at Imperial College London. I completed my PhD at Institut Pasteur in Paris (2013), and I have a double degree in Mathematics from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and Applied Mathematics from Grenoble INP (2009).
Selected Publications
Journal Articles
Park SW, Pons-Salort M, Messacar K, et al., 2021, Epidemiological dynamics of enterovirus D68 in the United States and implications for acute flaccid myelitis, Science Translational Medicine, Vol:13, ISSN:1946-6234
Grassly NC, Pons-Salort M, Parker EPK, et al., 2020, Comparison of molecular testing strategies for COVID-19 control: a mathematical modelling study, Lancet Infectious Diseases, Vol:20, ISSN:1473-3099, Pages:1381-1389
Blake IM, Pons Salort M, Molodecky N, et al., 2018, Type 2 Poliovirus Detection After Global Withdrawal of Trivalent Oral Vaccine, New England Journal of Medicine, Vol:379, ISSN:0028-4793, Pages:834-845
Pons Salort M, Grassly NC, 2018, Serotype-specific immunity explains the incidence of diseases caused by human enteroviruses, Science, Vol:361, ISSN:0036-8075, Pages:800-803
Pons-Salort M, Oberste MS, Pallansch MA, et al., 2018, The seasonality of nonpolio enteroviruses in the United States: Patterns and drivers, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol:115, ISSN:0027-8424, Pages:3078-3083
Pons-Salort M, Molodecky NA, O'Reilly KM, et al., 2016, Population immunity against serotype-2 poliomyelitis Leading up to the global withdrawal of the oral poliovirus vaccine: spatio-temporal modelling of surveillance data, Plos Medicine, Vol:13, ISSN:1549-1676
Pons-Salort M, Burns CC, Lyons H, et al., 2016, Preventing Vaccine-Derived Poliovirus Emergence during the Polio Endgame, PLOS Pathogens, Vol:12, ISSN:1553-7366