Mircea Sofonea, the model epidemiologist

Epidemiology? Much more than a scientific discipline, for Mircea Sofonea it's a bridge between generations. With two mathematician parents and grandparents in the health field, no other career could have brought the family paths together so well. And with good reason: epidemiology lies at the interface between the formal sciences and health. " All my childhood I heard about viruses and antibiotic resistance ", recalls Mircea Sofonea, who showed a strong interest in microbiology from secondary school onwards, and already had a clear career choice: he was going to be a researcher. " But I was still hesitating between medical biology and population genetics, which is more mathematical. While his heart swayed between the two, a third path was soon to take shape.

"I quickly realized that to be able to study microbes from all angles, you also need to be trained in chemistry, physics, computer science ..." recalls the researcher. So he opted for the course that brought all these disciplines together: a BCPST preparatory course (Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Earth Sciences), which took him from his home town of Perpignan to Paris and its Lycée Henri IV. After passing the competitive entrance exam, Mircea Sofonea entered the École Normale Supérieure in 2010, where he chose the biology department and took parallel courses in mathematics and, at the Institut Pasteur, 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 south again, settling in Montpellier in 2014 for a thesis at the Mivegec laboratory entitled "Evolution of virulence and multiple infections". It was a special time, as Africa was then facing the largest Ebola epidemic in history. " It was the very first time that an epidemic had been analyzed in real time, and for epidemiologists it heralded the work that would be carried out a few years later with Covid...".

But for the time being, what will be a global event still resembles the scenario of Contagion, his favorite futuristic film, and Mircea Sofonea defended his thesis in 2017 in the mild ignorance of what awaited him two and a half years later. Yet time flies, as does his career progression: in May 2018, at just 27, the researcher lands a coveted position as senior lecturer at the Mivegec laboratory. A success he humbly describes as a "stroke of luck", or a "good alignment of the planets", but which also owes much to his extraordinary determination. " I built my own path by developing skills in several fields.

Mircea Sofonea spent his first year putting these skills to good use in teaching, an activity he has always found "indispensable for getting work out of a microcosm of experts ". In this regard, he quotes philosopher Patrick Tort's image that " a scientist who spoke only to his peers would be like a letter carrier who delivered mail only to Post Office employees ". A maxim that Mircea Sofonea had already embraced a few years earlier, when he applied as an independent candidate for the Capes in mathematics and the agrégation in biology, " in order to be sure of being able to teach ".

"We can't just sit back and do nothing".

At the dawn of his second year atProfessor, once his courses are well established, Mircea Sofonea is ready to devote himself to his research. Autumn 2019 rolls around, " and on December 31, 2019 we hear of cases of atypical pneumonia in China, so I remember wondering what the right criteria are for knowing early enough whether this was going to get out of hand or not ". It did, and quickly, with the introduction of containment in March 2020.

" I remember one anecdote in particular that was decisive: a methodological error in calculating the proportion of people who were going to be contaminated was published in the Lancet and taken up 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 teach epidemiology.

This was the start of a period of intense activity for Mircea Sofonea, who became a media reference: he gave 1,300 interviews in 5 years and took part in several national reports on the crisis. An experience that the researcher continues to perpetuate to this day, giving courses in epidemiology to the Association of Scientific Journalists of the News Press. He regrets, moreover, that the lever of education was not used more during the pandemic, as " it makes people less sensitive to misinformation and more receptive to barrier measures ".

Preparing for the storm

While this global crisis has put the researcher in the spotlight, it has also given new direction to his work. Since 2023, Mircea Sofonea has had a new string to his bow: he has joined the anesthesia - intensive care - pain - emergency unit at the CHU de Nîmes hospital in order to help " prepare the hospital system as effectively as possible for future health crises, with a set of specifications known as hygienocrisology ".

Anticipation is also the common thread running through its brand new project entitled PReViX, for Pandemic Preparation for Respiratory Virus X, which has just been awarded 1.4 million euros by the PEPR MIE (priority research program and equipment - emerging infectious diseases). " The project echoes a notion introduced back in 2018 by the WHO in its list of priority pathogens by including disease X, caused by an unknown pathogen with the potential to cause a serious international epidemic," says the epidemiologist.

It's this new virus that the epidemiologist and his colleagues will be trying to identify. " We'll never be able to prevent the emergence of new pathogens, but we can try to ensure that they don't cause the kind of chaos we saw with Covid," explains Mircea Sofonea.

This 3-year project, due to start in autumn 2025, is positioned at the interface of a number of disciplines: public health, virology, infectiology, genomics... but also human sciences, with contributions from health psychologists. "If we collectively define the desirable metrics, thresholds and countermeasures in calm weather, we can then react more rationally and optimally when the storm hits ", concludes Mircea Sofonea.