Dr Emma Hodcroft began working in molecular epidemiology, phylogenetics, and modelling in HIV at the University of Edinburgh, where she investigated the heritability of viral load and developed an agent-based model simulating HIV phylogenies during her MSc, PhD, and a post-doc. In 2017, she moved to Basel as a post-doc and joined the Nextstrain project, becoming a co-developer of the project. Prior to the pandemic, Dr Hodcroft worked on projects with tuberculosis, campylobacter, influenza, and RSV, but primarily studied Enterovirus D68, where she has formulated new hypotheses about its evolution and transmission patterns. 

From February 2020, Dr Hodcroft worked full-time on SARS-CoV-2, including identifying a key variant that dominated Europe in the summer of 2020 despite not being more transmissible (EU1). This work led her to develop the first variant-tracking website, CoVariants.org. Her work also focused on better combining modelling & phylogenetics and the post-pandemic-restriction re-emergence of other respiratory viruses. Dr Hodcroft was additionally very active in science communication during the pandemic, and was featured regularly in the media.  

Thanks to a successful Swiss National Science Foundation Starting Grant application, Dr Hodcroft started her own lab at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in November 2023, where she’s switching back to her pre-pandemic work on endemic respiratory viruses. In August 2024, she co-founded Pathoplexus.org, an open-source database to encourage and enable viral genome data sharing while protecting and better crediting data generators. In December 2024, she was recognised as one of Nature’s ‘Ones to Watch’ in 2025