1st Meeting of Scialog: Mitigating Zoonotic Threats to be Virtual
The first meeting of the three-year Scialog: Mitigating Zoonotic Threats initiative, sponsored by Research Corporation for Science Advancement and U.S. Department of Agriculture, has been shifted from in-person to virtual in response to new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and the spread of the Delta strain of COVID-19.
The initiative will now be held Sept. 30 - Oct. 1, 2021, with the formation of teams for collaborative research projects and proposal writing to follow the week after the meeting.
“This reiterates just how important the topic is,” said Senior Program Director Andrew Feig, who is leading the initiative that will bring together a multidisciplinary group of early-career researchers to address the global threat to human health from animal-borne infectious diseases. “The better prepared we are for the next spillover event, the more we can hope for a rapid quelling of the outbreak, less human suffering, and reduced impact on society.”
During the pandemic, RCSA has successfully conducted numerous large scientific meetings in a virtual format, including the emergency COVID-19 Initiative, four Scialog meetings, two Cottrell Scholar Conferences, and two Cottrell Conversations.
The virtual meetings have used a variety of electronic platforms to engage participants in conversation, learning, and creative idea development. Those platforms have included Zoom, Zoom breakout rooms, Slack for conversation and information sharing, Gather.town for socializing, Padlet for networking, and Google Drives for shared documents.
