Grubaugh Lab | Yale School of Public Health

Yale School of Public Health

The Grubaugh Lab is located within the Yale School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases. Our department uniquely combines clinical, computational, and laboratory-based approaches to combat infectious diseases around the world.

Genomics to study virus emergence

We are using pathogen genomics to study how mosquito- and tick-borne viruses, like Zika, West Nile, chikungunya, and Powassan emerge into new areas, cause disease, and adapt to novel environments. Ultimately, our goal is to better understand and respond to outbreaks.

learn more about our research

Novel methods to detect oubreaks

West Nile virus Nextstrain

Nextstrain is an open-source project created by Trevor Bedford and Richer Neher to harness the scientific and public health potential of pathogen genome data. We recently teamed up with the Nextstrain team, including James Hadfield, to create a portal to visualize West Nile virus spread and evolution during the last 20 years in North America. We will continually update this site with publicly available data to provide teaching and research tools, as well as improve our outbreak response capabilities.

see Nextstrain in action

WestNile 4K Project

By partnering with Kristian Andersen, Ryan Smith, and 40+ surveillance labs from across the country, we are planning to sequence more than 4,000 virus genomes to reconstruct a high definition picture of West Nile virus spread and evolution during the last 20 years in the United States. The data that we generate will be immediately released and, along with other entomological data, will be used to uncover local transmission dynamics.

see our progress