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Researchers plan center to track mammal pathogens in the wild to warn of coming pandemics
LAWRENCE — Researchers from the University of Kansas are helping build an international, multidisciplinary center to monitor pathogens in wild mammals and act as an early warning system for pandemic prediction and prevention. Supported by an initial $1 million planning grant from the National Science Foundation, the Pathogen Informatics Center for Analysis, Networking, Translation & Education (PICANTE) will link real-time monitoring of wildlife pathogens to permanent biodiversity archives, including KU’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum.
Policymaker, cybersecurity expert to give 2023 KU Self Graduate Fellowship Symposium Lecture
LAWRENCE — R. David Edelman, a former presidential adviser who currently directs the Project on Technology, the Economy, and National Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will deliver the Madison and Lila Self Graduate Fellowship Symposium Lecture at the University of Kansas. He will present “The Next Decade: Tech Trends and Innovations Shaping our Future” at 3:30 p.m. April 21 in Woodruff Auditorium at the Kansas Union. His talk is free and open to the public.
Fourth KU Libraries dean candidate to present Feb. 23
LAWRENCE — The fourth candidate for the University of Kansas Libraries dean position will give a public presentation at 3 p.m. Feb. 23 in Watson Library in Watson 3 West Event Space. Catherine Quinlan is currently university librarian and dean emeritus at the University of Southern California.
KU team wins Mid America Championship debate tournament
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas debaters Ethan Harris, sophomore from Lawrence, and Will Soper, junior from Bucyrus, won the Mid America Championship debate tournament hosted by the University of Central Oklahoma. The pair went undefeated over 10 rounds of debates Feb. 17-19 to win the championship. A second KU duo of freshmen — Zach Willingham, Topeka, and Sabrina Yang, Overland Park — took fifth place at the tournament.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected], @BrendanMLynch
Researchers plan center to track mammal pathogens in the wild to warn of coming pandemics
LAWRENCE — Researchers from the University of Kansas are helping build an international, multidisciplinary center to monitor pathogens in wild mammals and act as an early warning system for pandemic prediction and prevention.
The Pathogen Informatics Center for Analysis, Networking, Translation & Education (PICANTE) will link real-time monitoring of wildlife pathogens to permanent biodiversity archives, including KU’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum.
PICANTE is supported by an initial $1 million planning grant from the National Science Foundation’s Predictive Intelligence for Pandemic Prevention program. The new center’s approach will be to “detect subtle shifts in pathogen-host-environment systems, to proactively identify threats and predict early signatures of pandemic emergence” through a combination of genomic sequencing, bioinformatics, geovisualization, mathematical modeling and machine learning.
“Traditionally, when a disease emerges in humans, suddenly we care about it — that makes us reactive in the way we sample animals, our environment and even people,” said Jocelyn Colella, Robert W. and Geraldine Wilson Assistant Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at KU and assistant curator of mammals with KU’s Biodiversity Institute, who will head up PICANTE efforts at KU. “That reactive approach is not only ‘too late,’ but it leads to biased sampling that limits our ability to apply cutting-edge computational methods, like machine learning and artificial intelligence, to biodiversity data.”
According to Colella, researchers need to first understand baseline conditions, then monitor changes in those over time.
“This is where including museums can really add to the wildlife component of ‘One Health’ — the idea that the health of humans, animals and their environments are all connected.”
At the outset, PICANTE researchers will focus on hantaviruses in rodents to show the efficacy of their approach. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 833 cases of hantavirus disease in people were reported in the U.S. between 1993 and 2020, following an outbreak in the Southwest in 1993. A larger hantavirus outbreak occurred in Panama around the year 2000 was caused by a different strain of the virus. Today, there are more than 20 recognized strains of hantaviruses found in diverse mammalian hosts from rodents to shrew and bats.
“Our engineering team is developing new technology to affordably and rapidly screen mammal tissues for a suite of different pathogens,” Colella said. “In the meantime, our biologists and social scientists are building models based on tens of thousands of rodent records that have been screened for hantaviruses and human health data to examine how well the environmental space has been sampled and what we need to do better or differently to fill some of those sampling gaps.”
One such scientist is PICANTE researcher Folashade Agusto, associate professor of ecology & evolutionary biology, who will apply mathematical modeling skills to different modeling approaches across fields.
“Here at KU, we are starting by integrating epidemiological and ecological niche modeling approaches to understand the propagation of a pathogen across spatial landscapes, and how that process might be influenced by environmental factors like temperature,” Agusto said. “These models will be coupled with more intricate models of lung infections within a single organism, developed by our New Mexican collaborators, using museum specimens to produce a holistic view of a disease.”
Colella, who will be sampling wild bats in Panama for PICANTE next month with KU doctoral student Ben Wiens, said the new center aims to identify pathogens with high pandemic potential, like hantavirus and other respiratory diseases, then forecast their transmission behavior, based on natural history as well as ongoing field sampling. Doctoral student Marlon Cobos also will work on PICANTE as a postdoc starting this summer.
“Hantaviruses have previously been a health concern in the U.S.,” Colella said. “And through wildlife surveillance, it’s showing up in more species than we previously thought. Information about where and when hanta-positive and negative animals were sampled can inform these new integrative modeling approaches and train artificial-intelligence applications. In theory, our models should only get better as we add specimens to museums. It’s essentially a positive-feedback loop, where we learn about the biosphere and can anticipate what, when and where emergence might happen.”
While PICANTE is based at the University of New Mexico — known for expertise in fungal pathogens and a world-renowned collection of mammalian genomic resources at the Museum of Southwestern Biology — KU will play a key role in the work, providing expertise in mammalian genomics, biorepository capacity building, spatial and epidemiological analyses, as well as new samples from the field.
Both the pilot grant and full proposal, if funded, will support graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to work on zoonotic pathogens and help expand cryogenic infrastructure at KU’s Biodiversity Institute and collaborating institutions.
“The BI has only three liquid nitrogen tanks, or ‘dewars,’ each of which can hold just under 100,000 tissue samples — but with new collaborations in wildlife health we hope to expand that as part of this project,” Colella said.
Other collaborators in PICANTE are based at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico State University, Gorgas Memorial Institute for Health Studies in Panama and the Center for Research on Health in Latin America (CISeAL) in Ecuador.
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Contact: Michelle Compton-Muñoz, Madison and Lila Self Graduate Programs, 785-864-2434, [email protected], @Selfgraduate
Policymaker, cybersecurity expert to give 2023 KU Self Graduate Fellowship Symposium Lecture
LAWRENCE — R. David Edelman, an American policymaker and academic who currently directs the Project on Technology, the Economy, and National Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will deliver the Madison and Lila Self Graduate Fellowship Symposium Lecture at the University of Kansas. Edelman is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on how new innovations are changing life and business around the globe. Dubbed the nation’s “chief cyber diplomat,” he has shared insights on issues like artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data ethics and the geopolitics of technology that have shaped national and international policy at the highest levels.
Edelman will present “The Next Decade: Tech Trends and Innovations Shaping our Future” at 3:30 p.m. April 21 in Woodruff Auditorium at the Kansas Union. His talk is free and open to the public.
Edelman served in the Bush and Obama administrations, rising to become the youngest-ever director named to the U.S. National Security Council. As special assistant to the president in the Obama administration, he led the White House economic team’s work on technology, media and telecom policy. Edelman led the development of and co-wrote over a dozen legislative proposals, national strategies, executive orders and presidential policy reviews. As director for cybersecurity and international cyber policy at the National Security Council, he penned the government’s principal doctrine on cybersecurity and internet issues within U.S. foreign policy. He led White House engagement with top executives at over 100 companies in the technology, media and telecom sectors and managed the Obama administration’s policy development on issues like net neutrality, consumer privacy and patent reform.
Prior to his time at the White House, Edelman served at the State Department’s Office of Cyber Affairs and as the United States’ lead negotiator on internet issues at the United Nations, where he received the department’s Superior Honor Award and twice received its Meritorious Honor Award. He was named one of Forbes’ “30 Under 30” leaders in Law & Policy.
At MIT, Edelman leads an interdisciplinary team of researchers, students and policymakers to address the challenges created by technological disruption – from the international concern of cyberattacks to the economic and regulatory consequences of artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles. He holds joint appointments in the Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab and the Center for International Studies.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University and a master’s and doctorate in international relations at Oxford University. His groundbreaking dissertation, “Cyberattacks in International Relations,” examined which forces might restrain state use of cyberattacks.
The Self Graduate Fellowship Symposium Lecture is sponsored by the Madison and Lila Self Graduate Fellowship. The mission of the Self Graduate Fellowship is to identify, recruit and provide development opportunities for exceptional doctoral students in business, economics, engineering, mathematics, biological, biomedical, pharmaceutical and physical sciences who demonstrate the promise to make significant contributions to their fields of study and society as a whole.
The late Madison “Al” and Lila Self launched and permanently endowed the Self Graduate Fellowship in 1989. The creation of the Self Graduate Fellowship was motivated by Madison and Lila’s belief in the vital importance of developing leadership for tomorrow.
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Fourth KU Libraries dean candidate to present Feb. 23
LAWRENCE — The fourth candidate for the University of Kansas Libraries dean position will give a public presentation at 3 p.m. Feb. 23 in Watson Library in Watson 3 West Event Space.
The event will be livestreamed, and the passcode is 959680.
Catherine Quinlan is the final candidate who will describe her vision and aspiration for the role of libraries in the next 10 years at a flagship university. She is currently university librarian and dean emeritus at the University of Southern California.
Faculty, staff and students are encouraged to offer their impressions and observations of Quinlan online in a limited-time feedback survey. Feedback on Quinlan’s presentation is due by 5 p.m. Feb. 28. A recording of her presentation will be available on the search website until the survey closes. Additional search information is also available on the Provost Office website.
Quinlan will meet with Chancellor Douglas A. Girod, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Barbara A. Bichelmeyer, senior administrators, KU Endowment, KU Alumni Association, University Governance and KU Libraries groups, including faculty, staff, and the board of advocates. She will also tour KU Libraries’ facilities.
Quinlan is the inaugural holder of the Valerie and Ronald Sugar Dean’s Chair at USC. She stepped down as the dean of USC Libraries in June 2022 after 15 years in that role and was awarded a two-year sabbatical leave in recognition of exemplary service. She guided the university’s efforts to establish the model for the 21st century library.
Quinlan started several innovative programs to expand the USC Libraries’ support for teaching, learning and research on campus and to expand the libraries’ influence beyond USC. She oversaw the development of the USC Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, which was established as a unit of the libraries in 2011 to bring together students and eminent faculty to cultivate polymathic perspectives and integrated, interdisciplinary practices in teaching, research and artistic creation.
In collaboration with the USC School of Business, Quinlan developed and launched the Master of Management in Library and Information Science program, which received full, seven-year accreditation from the American Library Association in 2017. She also established the USC Digital Repository, one of the most advanced providers of digital preservation and access services for academic and corporate clients, including the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
In partnership with KCETLink Media Group, a leading national independent broadcast and digital network, Quinlan produced “Lost L.A.” The four-time Emmy Award-winning show draws upon the libraries’ collections and other resources to engage filmmakers in telling stories of the city and the region to showcase USC’s role as a source of scholarship on and understanding of Los Angeles as a Pacific Rim metropolis.
Quinlan went to USC after a decade at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where she headed a library system encompassing 300 full-time staff members and more than 21 sites. She also served as managing director of UBC’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre for three years. Before that, she spent seven years as director of libraries and chief librarian at the University of Western Ontario in Canada and as an adjunct professor.
Quinlan holds degrees from three Canadian institutions: a master’s degree in business administration from Memorial University of Newfoundland, a master’s in library studies from Dalhousie University and a bachelor’s degree in music from Queen’s University.
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Contact: Scott Harris, KU Debate, 785-864-9878, [email protected], @KansasDebate
KU team wins Mid America Championship debate tournament
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas debaters Ethan Harris, sophomore from Lawrence, and Will Soper, junior from Bucyrus, won the Mid America Championship debate tournament hosted by the University of Central Oklahoma. The pair went undefeated over 10 rounds of debates Feb. 17-19 to win the championship.
A second KU duo of freshmen — Zach Willingham, Topeka, and Sabrina Yang, Overland Park — took fifth place at the tournament. Harris, Soper and Yang also received individual recognition as the third-, fourth- and fifth-place speakers at the tournament.
The KU team of freshmen Isaac Martinez from Spearman, Texas, and Sean McConnell from Topeka finished with a 3-3 record at the tournament and just missed qualifying for the single-elimination debates.
“We are very proud of the hard work of the entire squad that went into winning the championship,” said Scott Harris, the David B. Pittaway Director of Debate.
Other schools competing at the tournament included Baylor University, the University of Central Oklahoma, Emporia State University, Gonzaga University, the University of Houston, Kansas State University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Oklahoma, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University, Wake Forest University, Wichita State University and the University of Wyoming.
The Mid America Championship was the first of four postseason tournaments KU teams will be competing at this season. KU will also have teams competing at the American Debate Association Championship tournament at Georgetown University from March 3-5, the National Debate Tournament Championship in Chantilly, Virginia, from March 30 to April 3, and the Cross Examination Debate Association National Championship Tournament in Houston from April 7-11.
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