Transmission, Infection, Diversification & Evolution Group (tide)
tide is a Max Planck Independent Research Group started in June 2018. The group is headed by Denise Kühnert.
The tide group's main scientific goal is a broader understanding of infectious disease dynamics of modern and ancient pathogen outbreaks, as well as the dynamics of culture and language throughout history, and the potential demography-driven interactions between pathogen outbreaks and language evolution that shaped human history.
tide is at the interface of mathematical epidemiology, evolution, ecology and infectious diseases. We develop phylogenetic tools to address important questions in the fields of epidemiology, pathogen evolution and language evolution.
The pandemic of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has been and will continue to be a challenge
more
The Sarbecoviruses are a group of single-stranded RNA viruses with a positive-sense genome, members of the Family Coronaviridae and the genus Betacoronavirus
more
The gram-negative bacterium Yersinia pestis is the causal agent of the plague, a zoonotic disease transmitted by hematophagous vectors (mainly fleas)
more
Since the evolutionary relationships among languages can be seen analogously to the genealogical relationships of different species, phylogenetic models and methods developed originally for biological evolution are increasingly being applied to the reconstruction of past dynamics of language evolution
more
