Microbial genomics as a public health borderless compass for the detection and monitoring of emerging infectious agents and outbreak control

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João Paulo Gomes (JPG) obtained the PhD degree in 2006 in Biology, under the collaboration of Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (California, USA) with the Portuguese National Institute of Health (INSA). He works in the field of microbial genomics and is the Head of the Genomics and Bioinformatics Unit at INSA. He was designated by the Ministry of Health as the national coordinator of the genetic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and is also the national coordinator of the genomic surveillance of the mpox virus on behalf of the multi-country mpox outbreak. He published about 160 peer-reviewed scientific papers, including in high impact journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Medicine and Nature Microbiology. JPG has been a member of the evaluation panel of multiple International funding programs, and was the main supervisor of 14 PhD students.