NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY2008

这项行动为2008财政年度的NSF生物学博士后研究奖学金提供资金。该奖学金支持一项研究和培训计划，题为“异速生长缩放和传染病动力学：将理论与经验数据相结合”，为芭芭拉A。韩这项研究的主办机构是格鲁吉亚大学，赞助科学家是Sonia Altizer博士。近年来，新出现的疾病所带来的威胁已成为人类和野生动物健康的一个主要问题。本计画探讨宿主体型、病原体传播与宿主-病原体动态之间的关系。具体来说，这项研究将疾病的数学模型与不同体型宿主的接触模式（异速生长比例）相结合，以估计疾病的两个关键特征：病原体毒力和传播。这些模型生成关于不同大小的哺乳动物疾病的预测，这些预测将使用从现场收集的数据进行评估。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自然界中的疾病传播，特别是在疾病出现是病原体转移感染新宿主物种的结果的情况下。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，以产生关于自由生活的哺乳动物疾病出现的广泛预测，这些预测可以使用该领域过去研究的数据进行测试。

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.