Emerging infectious diseases present a broad challenge to humans, other animals and plants, in both human-dominated and natural communities. Anticipating effects of emerging diseases will require synthesis of ecological, epidemiological, genetic, and evolutionary data, and solutions must address issues such as pandemics, species jumps, drug resistance, and roles of immunity and vaccination. The leading edge of infectious disease research will move with development of mathematical models and the enormous capacity of genome projects to gather data. This demands a step change in training the next generation of scientists, by integrating quantitative analysis from ecology and evolution with more traditional analyses in epidemiology and biomedicine. This project will fund workshops to train the next generation of infectious disease researchers in quantitative analyses, to form interdisciplinary teams to synthesize the growing mountain of data, and to link research in ecology, evolution, genomics, epidemiology, microbiology/parasitology, and immunology. The project will use a flexible curriculum integrating state-of-the-art modeling approaches with analysis of data sets provided by workshop participants.
Broader impacts include bringing together students and instructors with diverse backgrounds, and training students from underrepresented groups by targeted recruiting. Collaborative projects arising from the training will lead to advances in public health and epidemiology, including understanding of pathogen emergence in the face of changing human populations, drug therapies, vaccination strategies, and global change.
Summary of Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease Workshops 2008-12 Principal Investigators: Mike Antolin (Colorado State), Sonia Altizer (Georgia), Peter Hudson (Penn State), Drew Harvel (Cornell), Mary Poss (Penn State) With generous funding from the National Science Foundation (Grant EF-0722115) we convened workshops each year at five universities with expansion of the program beyond the original homes of the PI’s to the Univ. California Santa Barbara and Univ. Michigan (with thanks to local organizers): 2008 Colorado State University (Mike Antolin) 2009 University of Georgia (Sonia Altizer, Pej Rojani) 2010 Cornell University (Drew Harvell, Colin Parrish) 2011 University of California, Santa Barbara (Cherie Briggs, Kevin Lafferty) 2012 University of Michigan (Aaron King, Pej Rojani) A major objective of the workshops was to provide cutting-edge analytical techniques for the analysis of ecological and genetic data related to infectious diseases. Equally as important was the emphasis on original analyses of data set provided by workshop participants. As we will see, a number of those have resulted in peer-reviewed publications. But even more, the goal of providing a framework for "vertical" integration of our field was overwhelmingly successful. A post-workshop survey sent to all participants shows how important these workshops were in forging lasting relationships that participants view as beneficial to their development as scientists. The full schedules and workshop materials are available online on a web page maintained by Ben Bolker (currently McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada). www.math.mcmaster.ca/~bolker/eeid/ The analyses developed for and during workshop focused on the program R, and the web page contains not only lecture notes, but R-scripts that provide further examples and templates for additional analyses by participants. The web page also includes an R Tutorial (primarily written by Stu Field, with contributions by others) that provides a basic education in using R. We have used this as the warm-up for students on the first day of the workshop, but have found that its necessity has been reduced over the years because of the greater facility of using R by the entire ecology and evolution of infectious diseases community. Demographic Summary of Workshop Participants A table summarizing the workshop participants appears below. Some highlights: 1.) Overall, 299 participants attended workshops, a total of 254 persons when those who attended more than once are accounted for. Generally attendance in the Ecology workshops was greater than in the Evolution ones. 2.) Participants came from 31 states and Puerto Rico, and from seven countries besides the U.S. (Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, United Kingdom). 3.) We provided financial aid to 215 participants (course fee plus $500 for travel), and financial aid was provided only to graduate students and post-docs. We had originally budgeted to support 200 (40 per year), but were able to extend funding to an additional 15 because of income generated from course fees paid by 46 participants who paid their own way. 4.) In terms of diversity, the population was 55% female, and 16.6 % diverse (African American, Hispanic, Asian). The majority of participants were graduate students, but two advanced undergraduates also attended. Year 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Colorado Georgia Cornell UCSB Michigan Ecology Graduate Student 20 25 23 32 28 Post-doc 5 13 7 16 7 Researcher 1 0 0 0 3 Faculty 1 0 0 3 4 Evolution Graduate Student 14 12 16 13 9 Post-doc 6 6 11 10 10 Researcher 0 1 0 0 1 Faculty 0 0 0 1 1 Total Participants 47 57 57 75 63 Financial Support 40 46 41 43 45 Self-pay 2 4 4 22 14 Gratis (students from local host) 5 7 12 12 4 Female 55.9% 27 37 26 45 32 Male 44.1% 20 20 31 30 31 Ethnicity African-American 1 2 2 1 0 Hispanic 5 3 4 6 4 Asian 3 3 7 6 2 % diverse 9 8 13 13 6 16.6 19.1 14.0 22.8 17.3 9.5 States where participants originated AZ, CA, CN, CO, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, LA, MA, MD, MI, MN, MO, MT, NC, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OR, PA, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, WI
