Testing viral evolutionary hypotheses using Bayesian phylogenetic inference and visualization.

In this project, I propose to work on state-of-the-art Bayesian phylogenetic inference and visualisation techniques to investigate the phylodynamics of pathogens.Specifically, I will advance a model to capture how evolutionary processes change through time by implementing the capability to incorporate and test covariates. I will design a stochastic modeling approach with associated inference machinery to detect variation in natural selection dynamics throughout evolutionary history. Both approaches will be implemented in a dedicated software package and will be supported by massively parallel computations on specialized devices. Finally, I will generalize the visualization of spatiotemporal history to any trait of interest resulting from such analyses and support flexible, interactive visualizations.