DrDarlan Da Silva Candido

I am a Research Associate in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology. My research focuses on using epidemiological and genomic data to understand virus spread, transmission and evolution. Currently, my work is developed in the Vaccine Epidemiology Research Group, under the supervision of Dr Isobel Blake and Prof Nick Grassly, applying mathematical models and phylogenetic tools to explore the dynamics of spread of vaccine-derived polio virus in African countries.

I hold a Bachelor’s in Pharmacy from the Federal University of Ceará and a Master’s in Allergy and Immunopathology from the University of São Paulo. In 2022, I was awarded a PhD in Zoology from the University of Oxford following my work on the epidemiology and genomics of arboviruses and SARS-CoV-2 in Brazil and other Latin American countries. My PhD research was developed within the scope of the Brazil-UK Centre for Arbovirus Discovery, Diagnosis, Genomics and Epidemiology (CADDE) and explored the initial spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Brazil and its evolution, including the identification, reporting and description of the P.1/Gamma variant of concern in Manaus in January 2021. I also investigated the within-hospital spread of SARS-CoV-2 in São Paulo using both epidemiological and genomic data from patients and healthcare workers.

I have previously worked on other pathogens, such as Trypanosoma cruzi, causative agent of Chagas’ disease and have done extensive wet lab work, especially Nanopore sequencing.