UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics (CIDD) will welcome 350 scientists from around the globe to discuss parasites and pathogens affecting plants, animals and humans, as part of the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease conference. Twenty years after the inaugural meeting at the University, the meeting will be held from May 22 to 25, on the Penn State University Park campus.
Conference participants will discuss the progress in our understanding of parasitism and disease over the last 20 years and set the agenda for scientific discovery in infectious-disease biology for the coming decades.
“CIDD is excited to bring this meeting back to Penn State,” said Matt Ferrari, professor of biology and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics and organizer of this year’s conference. “We’ve watched this meeting, and the community of researchers, grow and develop since the first meeting when I was a first-year grad student. Now, in the wake of a global pandemic, it is important for our field to come together and discuss the basic science that should be done in the coming years to better prepare our world for the increasingly common threat that infectious diseases pose.”
The conference features keynote addresses from eight world-renowned scientists and 16 shorter, contributed talks from researchers from around the world. Although registration has officially closed, members of the Penn State community who have not registered for the conference are welcome to attend individual talks. Conference organizers respectfully ask unregistered guests not to attend catered events or breakout discussions reserved for conference attendees. The full program can be found at the conference website.
Keynote speakers include:
- Michael Boots, professor of integrative biology, University of California, Berkeley.
- Alessandro Vespignani, Sternberg Distinguished University Professor of Physics, Northeastern University
- Avery August, professor of immunology, Cornell University, and HHMI professor
- Yasmine Belkaid, senior investigator and chief of the Metaorganism Immunity Section and the Laboratory of Host Immunity and Microbiome, National Institutes of Health
- Emily Bruns, assistant professor of biology, University of Maryland
- Coleen Webb, professor of biology and mathematics, Colorado State University
- Paul Turner, Rachel Carson Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University
- Paul Cross, research wildlife biologist, U.S. Geological Service
Prior to the workshop, 32 graduate students and post-doctoral researchers will spend three days developing skills in science communication during a workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation. In the workshop, participants will discuss strategies for communicating novelty and combating misinformation in infectious disease science as well the opportunities and challenges of communicating research to diverse audiences. The workshop also includes a 1-day program led by the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.
This year’s EEID meeting at Penn State is made possible by support from the Office of the Provost, the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, the Institutes of Energy and the Environment, the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, Penn State Global, the Eberly College of Science, the College of Health and Human Development, and the National Science Foundation.