RCSA, USDA Partner to Launch New Scialog: Mitigating Zoonotic Threats
Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are partnering to co-sponsor a new initiative that addresses the global threat to human health from animal-borne infectious diseases.
Scialog: Mitigating Zoonotic Threats, a three-year initiative set to begin in September 2021, will bring together early-career scientists from multiple disciplines (including chemists, biologists, physicists, computer scientists, veterinary scientists, epidemiologists and public health specialists), along with scientists from federal agencies and thought leaders in the detection and mitigation of existing and emerging zoonotic threats.
“This is an important opportunity to explore innovative approaches to prevent, control and cure some of the most challenging zoonotic diseases,” said USDA Agricultural Research Service Administrator Chavonda Jacobs-Young. “I expect the Scialog platform to generate a network of 50 promising early career scientists, which will result in new, groundbreaking research for the nation’s agricultural industry.”
The Agricultural Research Service (ARS), along with USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), plan to work together to form an interdisciplinary community to catalyze basic scientific advances related to: rapid detection, identification, and diagnosis of pathogens and threats; mechanisms and inhibition of emerging zoonotic disease pathogenesis; new approaches to vaccine development including methods that accelerate development or lead to broad-spectrum immunity; and modeling of epidemiology leading to actionable approaches to mitigating transmission.
“Bringing together such a diverse group of scientists will strengthen our cross-discipline approach to rapidly detecting, identifying and characterizing high-consequence diseases,” said USDA APHIS Administrator Kevin Shea. “This uniquely positions USDA and the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility at the forefront of emerging disease preparedness and response.”
Scialog is short for “science + dialog.” Created in 2010 by RCSA, the Scialog format supports research by stimulating intensive interdisciplinary conversation and community building around a scientific theme of global significance. Participating scientists from the U.S. and Canada discuss challenges and bottlenecks, build community around visionary goals for how these technologies can be developed and deployed, and seek collaborators for breakthrough pilot projects.
A group of senior scientists will serve as facilitators to frame the large questions under consideration, to guide discussions, and to evaluate proposals for novel, high-risk research that can best be explored in a collaborative, multidisciplinary way. A committee of these facilitators then recommends seed funding for the most promising of those team projects.
“Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, infectious diseases crossing from animals to humans posed serious scientific and societal challenges,” said RCSA Program Director Andrew Feig. “Scialog aims to build interdisciplinary communities of scientists to come together around critical problems.”
“In this case, advancing understanding of the interactions between animals, people, pathogens and their environments that could expand our ability to rapidly detect emerging pathogens and to quickly develop and deploy new medical countermeasures,” Feig said. “While the COVID pandemic is here today, this is not the last challenge of this type we will encounter and we need to be prepared to respond rapidly in the future.”
The initiative is part of the partnership and innovation strategy by APHIS and ARS for the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility’s science program.
