Speakers

Jayna Raghwani

Senior Researcher in Phylodynamics
Pybus group; The Royal Veterinary College
Department of Biology at the University of Oxford

“How do viruses persist in changeable environments?”

Dr. Jayna Raghwani is a computational biologist and uses empirical and theoretical approaches from evolutionary genetics, genomics, and ecology to study viral evolution and transmission at multiple scales. Currently, her research focuses on avian influenza transmission dynamics in Southeast Asia as part of the One Health One Poultry Hub. She is also part of the national consortium led by the APHA to better understand how to prevent and control avian influenza outbreaks in the UK.

Before her current post, her postdoctoral research at Oxford and Duke focused on the infection and epidemic behaviour of rapidly evolving human viruses, particularly HIV-1, HCV, and seasonal influenza. However, as sequencing technologies become more affordable, she is also interested in developing new methods to analyze metagenomic data sampled from wild animal populations across spatiotemporal scales.

Iris Holmes

Postdoctoral Fellow
Cornell Institute of Host-Microbe Interactions and Disease (CIHMID)
Cornell University

“Will Pathogen X follow the path of other spillovers?”

Iris Holmes is interested in using microbial community ecology to understand the process of disease emergence. She focuses on identifing the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms driving host generalism in microbes, as generalists can more easily switch host species and emerge as novel pathogens. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the Cornell Institute of Host-Microbe Interactions and Disease, and will be joining Dr. Raina Plowright’s lab in August. She received her Ph.D. in 2020 from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan, and her undergraduate degree in Biology from Cornell University in 2010.

Katia Koelle

Professor, Department of Biology
The Koelle Research Group
Emory University

“Viral traits and pandemic emergence: can we bridge the disconnect with multiscale models”

Katia Koelle is interested in the population dynamics and evolutionary dynamics of infectious diseases. Her research focuses on using modeling approaches to shed light on the drivers of evolutionary change in endemically circulating viral populations, most notably SARS-CoV-2, influenza viruses, and noroviruses. Her work includes both model development and interfacing models with data. She is interested in viral dynamics at multiple scales, including at the epidemiological level, at the transmission pair level, and at the within-host level.

Raina Plowright

Rudolf J. and Katharine L. Steffen Professor of Veterinary Medicine
Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability
BatOneHealth
Department of Public & Ecosystem Health
Cornell University

Lab Website: https://plowrightlab.org/

“Determinants of spillover from virus and host perspectives”

Raina Plowright is the Rudolf J. and Katharine L. Steffen Professor at Cornell University where she also serves as a Cornell Atkinson Scholar at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. Dr. Plowright received her veterinary degree from the University of Sydney, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis.

Her research develops the science of pandemic prevention through transdisciplinary science leadership and translation. She focuses on four areas of investigation: mechanisms of cross-species transmission (commonly known as spillover), how environmental stressors drive spillover events, the dynamics of viral pathogens in reservoir hosts, and the implementation of ecological interventions to mitigate spillover. Her work advances a One Health approach by bridging the best available science in disease dynamics with effective public health practice and meaningful policy.

Dr. Plowright is dedicated to fostering excellence in transdisciplinary collaboration to tackle the complex challenges of zoonotic disease emergence. She leads Bat One Health, a research consortium investigating WHO priority pathogens in bats, with field efforts in Australia, Bangladesh, and Ghana. Their work aims to unravel the biological mechanisms underpinning spillover events to inform development of targeted prevention strategies.

Dr. Plowright is co-chair of the Lancet Commission on Prevention of Viral Spillover and holds roles on several advisory boards, including the National Science Foundation Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education, and the US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine committee for Countering Zoonotic Spillover of High Consequence Pathogens.

She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has been an Australian-American Fulbright Fellow, an Australian Centenary Scholar, a DARPA Young Faculty Awardee, the recipient of a WIMU teaching award and the Wiley Research Award, and a David H. Smith Fellow in Conservation Research.

Dr. Plowright has contributed to over 120 peer-reviewed publications and given over 120 invited talks including plenaries and keynotes on zoonotic spillover. Her research has been featured in over 120 interviews and reports in the popular media, including in the New York Times, Scientific American, The Washington Post, The Economist, Le Monde, National Public Radio, Newsweek, Reuters, ProPublica, and Rolling Stone.

Colin Carlson

Assistant Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases)
Yale University School of Public Health
Carlson Lab
Verena: an NSF Biology Integration Institute

“Looking for biochemistry in all the wrong places: the dimensionality-interpretability tradeoff and embedding-based shortcuts.”

Colin Carlson is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Yale University School of Public Health. His work explores the challenges faced by health systems in the Anthropocene, with a focus on how climate change increases risks from both infectious diseases of poverty and pandemic threats. His research also explores problems in global health governance, with several ongoing projects focused on the legal, political, and scientific determinants of outbreak reporting and scientific data sharing.

Dr. Carlson is also the co-founder and executive director of Verena, a cross-university collaboration of over a dozen early career scientists developing a data science-driven approach to assessing which viruses pose a risk to human health, and where, when, and why they might emerge in human populations. In 2019, Verena was selected as an NSF Biology Integration Institute, a five-year, $12.5m cooperative agreement that has supported a global study of bat immunology, a cohort of eight doctoral students at five universities, and new open platforms for data sharing.

Prior to joining Yale University, Dr. Carlson was research faculty at Georgetown University’s Center for Global Health Science and Security, and earlier, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Socioenvironmental Synthesis Center at the University of Maryland. He has also contributed to reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from the University of California, Berkeley.

Angel Desai

Assistant Clinical Professor
UC Davis Health
Director, Global Health for Medical Students
Division of Infectious Diseases
University of California, Davis

“Spillovers 2.0: Assessing the Risk and Preparing for Disease X.“

Angel Desai is an assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at UC Davis Health. Apart from her clinical responsibilities, her research focuses on using non-traditional epidemiological data for emerging diseases and outbreaks, particularly among displaced and other vulnerable populations. She is also interested in policy implications of communicable surveillance among refugees and IDPs, and global governance of public health systems for these populations.

She completed her internal medicine residency at the University of Washington in 2016 and infectious diseases fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2019 where she concurrently received a Master of Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Christine Kreuder-Johnson

Professor, Medicine & Epidemiology
Director, EpiCenter for Disease Dynamics
Director, EpiCenter for Emerging Infectious Disease Intelligence, NIAID CREID Network
School of Veterinary Medicine
University of California, Davis

“On the Frontlines: Surveillance for Emerging Viruses”

Christine Kreuder Johnson is Professor of Epidemiology and Ecosystem Health and Director of the EpiCenter for Disease Dynamics. Her work is committed to transdisciplinary research to characterize impacts of environmental change on animal and human health, inform preparedness for emerging threats, and guide public policy at the intersection of emerging disease and environmental health.

Professor Johnson’s research has pioneered new approaches to characterization of emerging threats and disease dynamics at the animal-human interface in rapidly changing landscapes that constitute “fault lines” for disease emergence, disease spillover and subsequent spread. This work involves surveillance in wildlife and people with acute febrile illness in close contact with wildlife that are potential reservoirs for infectious disease. Her activities serve pressing research needs at the boundaries of science and policy, such as investigations into early indicators of unusual morbidity and mortality in wildlife, impacts of land use and climate change on disease in populations, and conservation and public health implications of harmful algal blooms and land-to-sea movement of pathogens in coastal systems.

To advance an understanding of environment and climate-related drivers for spillover and spread of ebolaviruses, coronaviruses, and arboviruses at the forest-urban ecosystem edge in Africa and Latin America, she leads the EpiCenter for Emerging Infectious Disease Intelligence, one of NIAID’s Centers for Emerging Infectious Disease (CREID). She also designed new approaches to animal and human surveillance in 30 resource-limited countries for USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT program in partnership with public health, agricultural, and environmental government partners to inform on public health risk.

Her most rewarding professional experiences have been to support science-based decision making and public policy by providing epidemiologic support, congressional briefings, and invited testimony to state and federal governments and intergovernmental international partners. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) in 2021 and is an Honorary Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). At UC Davis, she teaches One Health and ecosystem health and fosters a training program in applied research in wildlife epidemiology and disease ecology at the animal-human interface.

Stephanie Seifert

Assistant Professor
Paul G. Allen School for Global Health
Washington State University

Lab website: Molecular Ecology of Zoonotic & Animal Pathogens Lab

“Title”

Steph completed her doctoral thesis research in the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease Systems laboratory at UPenn. She then completed her postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health in the Laboratory of Virology/Virus Ecology Section where she studied the circulation of filoviruses and henipaviruses in African bats. This work included field sampling in the Republic of Congo and experimental work in the BSL4 at Rocky Mountain Laboratories. Steph has been active in outbreak response including EVD outbreaks in DRC and the COVID-19 pandemic. Steph received the NIH 2020 Merit Award for her participation in the early COVID-19 response including characterizing within-host evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in one of the first persistently infected patients. Steph is passionate about equity and accessibility in the sciences, particularly relating to international research collaborations. Outside the lab, Steph enjoys skiing with her partner, spending time with her three dogs, and riding horses.

Alison Kell
Assistant Professor
Molecular Genetics & Microbiology
University of New Mexico

Lab website: https://thekelllab.org/

“Understanding hantavirus virulence through host-specific innate immune activation”

Dr. Alison Kell completed her Bachelor’s degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado. She then made her way to the Pacific Northwest to complete her graduate work with Dr. Gael Kurath, developing novel in vivo superinfection assays to determine phenotypic and genetic correlates of viral fitness for the salmonid rhabdovirus, Infectious Hematopoietic Necrosis virus. To fully appreciate the impact of host immune pressure on viral fitness and evolution, she joined the laboratory of Dr. Michael Gale, Jr. at the University of Washington as a postdoctoral fellow. She is now excited to bring her independent research program to the University of New Mexico to study the molecular mechanisms underlying divergent host responses to orthohantavirus infection.

Asher Leeks

Postdoctoral Fellow, Turner Lab
Yale School of Medicine
Yale University

“Social conflict within viral populations: from evolutionary causes to epidemiological consequences”

Dr. Asher Leeks studies social evolution in viruses. Viruses are intrinsically social organisms; every aspect of the viral lifecycle can be influenced by social interactions, from replication within a cell to transmission between hosts. He uses social evolution theory to understand how these interactions evolve and to predict their clinical consequences.

He is currently a JSMF postdoctoral fellow with Professor Paul Turner at Yale University. Previously, he studied at the University of Oxford with Professor Stuart West and Professor Ashleigh Griffin.