Mircea Sofonea, the model epidemiologist

Epidemiology? For Mircea Sofonea, it is much more than a scientific discipline; it is a bridge between generations. With both parents being mathematicians and grandparents working in the healthcare field, no other career could have brought the family’s paths together so seamlessly. And for good reason: epidemiology lies at the intersection of the formal sciences and healthcare.“All through my childhood, I heard about viruses and antibiotic resistance,” recalls Mircea Sofonea, who showed a strong interest in microbiology as early as middle school and already had a firm career choice: he would become a researcher.“But I was still torn between medical biology and population genetics, which is more math-oriented. ” While his heart was torn between the two, a third path would soon emerge.

“I quickly realized that to study microbes from every angle, you also need training in chemistry, physics, computer science…” the researcher recalls. He therefore chose the program that brings all these disciplines together: a BCPST preparatory course (biology, chemistry, physics, and Earth sciences), which led him to leave his hometown of Perpignan for Paris and the Lycée Henri IV. After passing the entrance exam, Mircea Sofonea enrolled in 2010 at the École normale supérieure, where he chose the biology department and simultaneously took courses in mathematics and, at the Pasteur Institute, in epidemiology and infectious disease modeling. This experience put an end to his indecision: he would become an epidemiologist.

Facing Ebola

After graduating from the ENS, he headed back south and settled in Montpellier in 2014 to work on his dissertation at the Mivegec laboratory, titled “Evolution of Virulence and Multiple Infections.” It was a pivotal moment, as Africa was then facing the largest Ebola outbreak in history.“It was the very first time an epidemic had been analyzed so extensively in real time; for epidemiologists, it foreshadowed the work that would be carried out a few years later with COVID…”

But for now, what would become a global event still resembles the plot of *Contagion*, his favorite science-fiction film, and Mircea Sofonea defended his dissertation in 2017, blissfully unaware of what lay ahead two and a half years later. Yet time flies, just like his career progression: in May 2018, at just 27 years old, the researcher landed a highly coveted position as a lecturer at the Mivegec laboratory. A success he humbly describes as “a stroke of luck” or “the stars aligning,” but one that also owes much to his extraordinary determination. “I carved out my own path by developing skills across multiple fields.”

Mircea Sofonea spent his first year putting these skills to use in teaching, an activity he has always considered “essential for bringing research out of a microcosm of experts.” On this subject, he quotes the philosopher Patrick Tort,who likened “a scientist who speaks only to his peers to a mail carrier who delivers mail only to postal workers.” A maxim that Mircea Sofonea had already adopted a few years earlier when he sat the CAPES exam in mathematics and the agrégation in biology as an independent candidate,“to ensure he could teach.”

“We can’t just sit idly by”

As he entered his second yearProfessor, with his courses now well established, Mircea Sofonea was preparing to devote himself to his research. Fall 2019 passes,“and on December 31, 2019, we hear about cases of atypical pneumonia in China; I remember wondering then what the right criteria were for knowing early enough whether this was going to get out of hand or not.” It does get out of hand, and quickly at that, with the lockdown imposed in March 2020.

“Even before the lockdown, our team—led at the time by Samuel Alizon—had decided we couldn’t just sit idly by. I particularly remember one incident that was decisive: a methodological error in calculating the proportion of people who would be infected was published in The Lancet and cited a few days later by Angela Merkel. We then decided as a team to use our Covid-dedicated website to share our research but also to educate the public about epidemiology.”

This marked the beginning of a period of intense activity for Mircea Sofonea, who became a media figure: he gave 1,300 interviews over five years and contributed to several national reports on the crisis. An experience the researcher continues to build on today by teaching epidemiology courses at the Association of Science Journalists in the News Media. He also regrets that education wasn’t leveraged more during the pandemic, because“it makes people less susceptible to misinformation and more receptive to preventive measures.”

Preparing for the storm

While this global crisis has brought the researcher into the spotlight, it has also given his work a new direction. Since 2023, Mircea Sofonea has indeed added a new string to his bow: he joined the Anesthesia–Intensive Care–Pain–Emergency Medicine division at Nîmes University Hospital to help“better prepare the hospital system for future health crises, using a set of guidelines known as hygiocrisology.”

Anticipation is also the central theme of his brand-new project, titled PReViX ( Pandemic Preparedness for Respiratory Virus X), which has just received 1.4 million euros in funding from the PEPR MIE (Priority Research Programs and Equipment – Emerging Infectious Diseases).“The project echoes a concept introduced by the WHO in 2018 in its list of priority pathogens by including Disease X, caused by an unknown pathogen capable of triggering a serious international epidemic,” explains the epidemiologist.

It is this new virus that the epidemiologist and his colleagues will attempt to profile.“We can never prevent the emergence of new pathogens, but we can try to ensure that they do not cause the kind of chaos we experienced with COVID,” explains Mircea Sofonea.

This three-year project, set to begin in the fall of 2025, lies at the intersection of numerous disciplines: public health, virology, infectious diseases, genomics… as well as the humanities, with contributions from health psychologists.“If we collectively define the metrics, thresholds, and countermeasures we want in calm times, we can then respond more rationally and effectively when the storm hits,”concludes Mircea Sofonea.