Scialog: Mitigating Zoonotic Threats Concludes with Awards to 6 Teams
Top row: Tavis Anderson, Louise Moncla, Nicholas DeFelice, Angela Arenas, Nicholas Wu, Crystal Reid. 2nd row: Dan Peach, Stacey Scroggs, Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, Michael Schulz, Nsa Dada. 3rd row: Bethany McGregor, Patricia Calvo, Liliana Salvador, Catalina Picasso Risso, Timothy Smyser, Anni Yang.
Research Corporation for Science Advancement and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have made awards to six multidisciplinary teams of early career scientists to launch new research in the detection and mitigation of emerging animal-borne infectious diseases in the final year of the Scialog: Mitigating Zoonotic Threats initiative.
The 18 awards of $50,000 in direct costs will go to 17 individual researchers from a variety of institutions, including USDA agencies. The funded projects include five new partnerships between USDA and academic scientists.
“Creating collaborations between early career scientists at the USDA and at colleges and universities across the country has been very fruitful,” said RCSA President & CEO Daniel Linzer. “The transformative link between USDA’s vast dataset and materials and academia’s research methodologies and tools has enabled science that could not happen otherwise.”
Including the 2023 awards, RCSA and USDA have made 61 individual awards totaling more than $3 million through the three-year Scialog: Mitigating Zoonotic Threats initiative. Planned before the COVID pandemic, the initiative also created new connections among the more than 75 Fellows from a variety of disciplines — biology, chemistry, environmental science, computer modeling, ecology, epidemiology, physics, public health, and veterinary science — who participated over the course of three meetings.
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 importance. Teams of two to three Fellows who have not previously collaborated compete for seed funding for high-risk, high-reward projects based on the ideas they develop at the conference.
The final meeting of Scialog: Mitigating Zoonotic Threats was held September 7-10, 2023, in Tucson, Arizona.
Sara Cherry, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, set the stage for discussions with her keynote talk, “Antiviral Discovery Pipeline for Emerging and Re-emerging Viruses.” She detailed her lab’s pioneering use of high-throughput cell-based screening to study viral infections, focusing on emerging RNA viruses, including arthropod-borne viruses such as dengue and West Nile Virus, and more recently respiratory viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 and influenza.
Calling re-emerging viruses “the gift that keeps on giving,” she stressed the need for more potent ways to block viruses or boost immunity. She explained how her lab has uncovered antivirals active through distinct mechanisms and identified synergies between antivirals that may be leveraged for treatment.
Suelee Robbe-Austerman, Director, National Veterinary Services Laboratories, USDA / Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), gave participants an overview of the USDA’s vast trove of data, products, services, and other resources that researchers can use in studies and projects. Her talk, “Reagents, Isolates and Datasets Maintained by the National Veterinary Services Laboratories,” described the resources available through the USDA, how to request materials, and ways to contact USDA researchers and potential collaborators.
The conference also featured brief presentations on the progress of projects that were funded in the first two years of the initiative.
In addition to Cherry and Austerman, senior scientists serving as facilitators to guide discussions throughout the conference were: Amy Baker, USDA/ARS; Peter Dorhout, Iowa State University; Matt Erdman, USDA/APHIS; Roxann Motroni, USDA/ARS; Zac Schultz, Ohio State University; Wilfred van der Donk, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; William Wilson, USDA/ARS; and Michael Wimberly, University of Oklahoma.
During their discussions, participants developed research ideas to bridge their different expertise, methods, and technologies in new ways to advance basic science in the detection and mitigation of existing and emerging zoonotic threats. On the final day of the conference, teams pitched their proposals for collaborative projects.
The following Mitigating Zoonotic Threats teams will receive 2023 Scialog Collaborative Innovation Awards:
Tavis Anderson, Virus and Prion Research Unit, USDA/ARS
Louise Moncla, Pathobiology, University of Pennsylvania
Nicholas DeFelice, Environmental Medicine & Public Health, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
When Pigs Fly: Animal Movement Networks to Project Spillovers
Angela Arenas, Veterinary Pathobiology, Texas A&M University, College Station
Nicholas Wu, Biochemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Crystal Reid, Center for Veterinary Biologics – Virology, USDA/APHIS
From Discovery to Field: Improving Diagnostic Assay Accuracy by Protein Engineering
Dan Peach, Savannah River Ecology Lab & Department of Infectious Disease, University of Georgia
Stacey Scroggs, Arthropod Borne Animal Diseases Research Unit, USDA/ARS
Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, Environmental Sciences, Emory University
Nectar of the Gods: Impact of Flower Nectar on Mosquito Longevity and Virus Transmission
Michael Schulz, Chemistry, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Louise Moncla, Pathobiology, University of Pennsylvania
To Catch a Virus: Decoy Polymers and Influenza’s Evolutionary Response
Nsa Dada, Life Sciences, Arizona State University
Bethany McGregor, Arthropod Borne Animal Diseases Research Unit, USDA/ARS
Patricia Calvo, Chemistry, Kansas State University
Novel Insecticide Delivery and Formulation for Resistance Management in Zoonotic Disease Vectors
Liliana Salvador, Animal and Comparative Biomedical Sciences, University of Arizona
Catalina Picasso Risso, Large Animal Clinical Sciences, Michigan State University
Timothy Smyser, National Wildlife Research Center, USDA/APHIS
Anni Yang, Geography and Environmental Sustainability, University of Oklahoma
Development of an Integrative Approach to Enhance Surveillance Sensitivity Systems for Wildlife Spillover of Bovine Tuberculosis: Wild Pig Case Study
In addition to the current Molecular Basis of Cognition initiative, which will hold its final meeting in October 2024, RCSA will launch three new Scialogs next year: Automating Chemical Laboratories in April, Sustainable Minerals, Metals, and Materials in September, and Early Science with the LSST in November.
