Joanna Shisler
$14,868
University of Chicago
Illinois
Unknown
Symbiosis Infection & Immunity
This award supports the Fourth International Symposium on the Infectious Diseases of Bats (‘BatID 2025’), an international conference which brings together researchers from the disparate fields of virology, immunology, biochemistry, ecology, physiology, and genetics to investigate the role of bats as unique pathogen hosts. Bats are natural reservoir hosts for several high profile emerging human pathogens—including SARS-related coronaviruses, the likely precursors to the COVID-19 pandemic—yet they demonstrate limited pathology upon infection with viruses that cause extreme disease in non-bat (including human) hosts. Studying the mechanisms by which bats avoid disease from infection offers opportunities to translate bat-inspired immunological approaches into human disease therapeutics. This meeting offers opportunities for early career trainees, particularly graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, to share ideas and research findings with experts across this wide-ranging and interdisciplinary field. The meeting also aims to facilitate conversation between bat ecologists and conservationists with those engaged in more molecular approaches to understanding bat infectious disease to reconcile bats’ roles as major pathogen reservoirs. BatID 2025 is organized around three major conference objectives: (1) to disseminate research on the unique role of bats as pathogen hosts, (2) to foster collaborations and expand the field of bat infectious disease research, and (3) to identify a priority future research agenda in the study of bat infectious diseases. The first objective highlights this meeting’s utility as a research-sharing forum that welcomes representatives from disparate disciplines, who may not closely follow research outputs from other fields. The second objective seeks to turn this idea exchange into action by fostering collaborations among attendees, this year with a particular emphasis on recruiting participants and speakers who have not previously attended this meeting. Finally, the third objective seeks to organize the community around future research goals through an open discussion at the end of the two-day program. As an output, the Conference Organizing Committee will produce a peer-reviewed ‘Conference Proceedings’ article (to be led by junior researcher attendees) that shares these goals with the broader scientific community. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.