NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY2008

本行动资助美国国家科学基金会2008年度生物学博士后研究奖学金。该奖学金支持Barbara a . Han的一项题为“异速缩放和传染病动力学：将理论与经验数据结合起来”的研究和培训计划。这项研究的主办机构是佐治亚大学，赞助科学家是索尼娅·阿尔蒂泽博士。近年来，新出现的疾病带来的威胁已成为人类和野生动物健康的主要关切。本项目研究宿主体型、病原体传播和宿主-病原体动力学之间的关系。具体来说，这项研究将疾病的数学模型与不同体型的宿主的接触模式（异速缩放）相结合，以估计疾病的两个关键特征：病原体毒力和传播。这些模型对不同大小的哺乳动物的疾病进行预测，并将使用从实地收集的数据对其进行评估。培训目标包括生物信息学、数学建模、数据管理和指导。这项工作将有助于预测和管理疾病在自然界的传播，特别是当疾病的出现是病原体转向感染新宿主物种的结果时。该项目汇集了来自进化、生态学、代谢理论和疾病相关研究的观点，对自由生活的哺乳动物的疾病出现进行了广泛的预测，这些预测可以使用过去在该领域进行的研究数据进行测试。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2008. The fellowship supports a research and training plan entitled "Allometric scaling and infectious disease dynamics: integrating theory with empirical data" for Barbara A. Han. The host institution for this research is University of Georgia and the sponsoring scientist is Dr. Sonia Altizer. In recent years, threats arising from emerging diseases have become a major concern for both human and wildlife health. This project examines relationships between host body size, pathogen transmission, and host-pathogen dynamics. Specifically, this research is combining mathematical models of disease with contact patterns of hosts of varying body sizes (allometric scaling) to estimate two key characteristics about diseases: pathogen virulence and transmission. These models generate predictions about diseases in mammals of different sizes that will be evaluated using data collected from the field. Training objectives include bioinformatics, mathematical modeling, data management, and mentorship. This work will contribute to predicting and managing disease spread in nature, especially where disease emergence is the result of pathogens switching to infect new host species. This project brings together perspectives from evolution, ecology, metabolic theory, and disease-related research to generate broad predictions about disease emergence in free-living mammals that can be tested using data from past studies conducted in the field.