This course covers foundational topics in public health practice such as laboratory diagnostics, genomic epidemiology, antimicrobial resistance, and emerging modelling approaches. It consists of lectures from specialists in each topic. The goal is to provide students with the scientific basis to understand how laboratory techniques and innovative applications help us elucidate the epidemiology of infectious diseases, their current impact on human medicine, and their role in the detection and characterization of etiologic agents causing diseases.