Congratualtions to Dr. Leidong Mao for being elected into National Academy of Inventors
It’s intended to strengthen public health response to infectious disease threats and support workforce development
The University of Georgia and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) in partnership with the Georgia Department of Public Health, have received a five-year, $17 million cooperative agreement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to establish a Pathogen Genomics Center of Excellence.
The center is intended to strengthen public health response to infectious disease threats and support public health workforce development.
The award is part of a $90 million investment by the CDC to build a network of centers in five states. Each Pathogen Genomics Center of Excellence (PGCoE) consists of a health department and one or more academic institutions.
The Georgia Department of Public Health will provide overall leadership and prioritization of center efforts. UGA will be leading the effort to translate new discoveries into usable data and interventions. GTRI will be leading the operations and implementation arm of the Georgia-based center.
Collectively, this work will be focused on transitioning innovations out of academia and into use at public health departments across the United States.
“We really are trying to learn about outbreak epidemiology, those population-scale processes that are impacting disease spread. Patterns of transmission that are really hard to observe,” said Justin Bahl, an associate professor with joint appointments in UGA’s College of Public Health and College of Veterinary Medicine. Bahl will be leading the project at UGA.
More data, better targeting
Molecular epidemiology uses genomic data to learn how pathogens like the SARS-CoV-2 virus move and infect people within populations. This work is what allows scientists to trace the origins of a virus strain and track its spread as it moves from place to place.
Bahl says that adding pathogen genomic data to traditional epidemiological surveillance could dramatically strengthen the public health workforce’s ability to prevent and mitigate local outbreaks.
“We’re going to be able to work closely with these departments of public health, connect the genetic data from the pathogens to the actual population characteristics. That provides information for those public health practitioners to direct their interventions,” he said.
Researchers from GTRI will support the data management, data analytics and information security needs of the center toward a goal of providing disease information in real-time to public health organizations at the local and state levels.
“We want to support public health departments in getting out ahead of pathogen trends,” said Rebecca Hutchins, chief engineer in GTRI’s Advanced Concepts Laboratory. “With COVID-19, we had to stand up new genomic sequencing and data analytics capabilities. In future infectious disease outbreaks, this center will allow us to pivot from a reactive mode – responding to what the virus is doing – to a more proactive mode aimed at quickly taking preventive measures.”
By facilitating ongoing collaborations, the network will help ensure that academic researchers, public health agencies and others involved in a pandemic response will have systems in place to share crucial information and apply consistent data-gathering techniques. Sampling and sequencing innovations developed at the center will be shared with other centers and public health agencies nationwide.
“The true measure of success for the Georgia-based Pathogen Genomics Center of Excellence will be the increased capabilities of public health departments across the United States to prevent and respond to infectious disease outbreaks,” said Hutchins.
Building on a deep foundation
“We have a very strong infectious disease research community here at UGA, especially with pathogen transmission modeling, and a lot of experience with integrating different types of data,” said Bahl. “There are probably not many other places that have the amount of expertise that’s here.”
This work will build on the innovative tools generated from UGA’s interdisciplinary infectious disease research centers, including the Center for Vaccines and Immunology, Center for Influenza Disease Emergence Research, and the Center for Ecology of Infectious Diseases.
“And now we have this center that is focused on taking all this wealth of information that we’ve generated and these new approaches and methodologies, and apply them at the population level, to inform public health response,” said Bahl.
This project, which will establish the Center for Applied Pathogen Epidemiology and Outbreak Response, is the fourth major funding investment the university has received in the past five years.
Bahl is optimistic that this investment in pathogen genomics will create more pathways for data sharing among scientists and practitioners and enhance genomic surveillance nationwide.
“We’re active, and we’re trying to learn more, translate more to the public health labs and be better prepared collectively to respond to these new threats,” said Bahl. “This investment is about trying to strengthen partnerships with public health. We’re part of that effort, building up public health across the board.”
The team
Team members include Tonia Parrott at the Georgia Department of Public Health and Amy Winter, Erin Lipp, Travis Glenn, Magdy Alabady, Liang Liu, Pej Rohani, Susan Sanchez, Mandev Gill and John Drake from UGA. They will be joined by Rebecca Hutchins and True Merrill at GTRI. The network across Georgia also includes researchers from Emory University, Georgia State University and Augusta University Medical College of Georgia.
IOB Director and IOB Faculty Awarded: CDC funds for Pathogen Genomics Center of Excellence
CDC funds Pathogen Genomics Center of Excellence
It’s intended to strengthen public health response to infectious disease threats and support workforce development
The University of Georgia and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) in partnership with the Georgia Department of Public Health, have received a five-year, $17 million cooperative agreement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to establish a Pathogen Genomics Center of Excellence.
The center is intended to strengthen public health response to infectious disease threats and support public health workforce development.
The award is part of a $90 million investment by the CDC to build a network of centers in five states. Each Pathogen Genomics Center of Excellence (PGCoE) consists of a health department and one or more academic institutions.
The Georgia Department of Public Health will provide overall leadership and prioritization of center efforts. UGA will be leading the effort to translate new discoveries into usable data and interventions. GTRI will be leading the operations and implementation arm of the Georgia-based center.
Collectively, this work will be focused on transitioning innovations out of academia and into use at public health departments across the United States.
“We really are trying to learn about outbreak epidemiology, those population-scale processes that are impacting disease spread. Patterns of transmission that are really hard to observe,” said Justin Bahl, an associate professor with joint appointments in UGA’s College of Public Health and College of Veterinary Medicine. Bahl will be leading the project at UGA.
More data, better targeting
Molecular epidemiology uses genomic data to learn how pathogens like the SARS-CoV-2 virus move and infect people within populations. This work is what allows scientists to trace the origins of a virus strain and track its spread as it moves from place to place.
Bahl says that adding pathogen genomic data to traditional epidemiological surveillance could dramatically strengthen the public health workforce’s ability to prevent and mitigate local outbreaks.
“We’re going to be able to work closely with these departments of public health, connect the genetic data from the pathogens to the actual population characteristics. That provides information for those public health practitioners to direct their interventions,” he said.
Researchers from GTRI will support the data management, data analytics and information security needs of the center toward a goal of providing disease information in real-time to public health organizations at the local and state levels.
“We want to support public health departments in getting out ahead of pathogen trends,” said Rebecca Hutchins, chief engineer in GTRI’s Advanced Concepts Laboratory. “With COVID-19, we had to stand up new genomic sequencing and data analytics capabilities. In future infectious disease outbreaks, this center will allow us to pivot from a reactive mode – responding to what the virus is doing – to a more proactive mode aimed at quickly taking preventive measures.”
By facilitating ongoing collaborations, the network will help ensure that academic researchers, public health agencies and others involved in a pandemic response will have systems in place to share crucial information and apply consistent data-gathering techniques. Sampling and sequencing innovations developed at the center will be shared with other centers and public health agencies nationwide.
“The true measure of success for the Georgia-based Pathogen Genomics Center of Excellence will be the increased capabilities of public health departments across the United States to prevent and respond to infectious disease outbreaks,” said Hutchins.
Building on a deep foundation
“We have a very strong infectious disease research community here at UGA, especially with pathogen transmission modeling, and a lot of experience with integrating different types of data,” said Bahl. “There are probably not many other places that have the amount of expertise that’s here.”
This work will build on the innovative tools generated from UGA’s interdisciplinary infectious disease research centers, including the Center for Vaccines and Immunology, Center for Influenza Disease Emergence Research, and the Center for Ecology of Infectious Diseases.
“And now we have this center that is focused on taking all this wealth of information that we’ve generated and these new approaches and methodologies, and apply them at the population level, to inform public health response,” said Bahl.
This project, which will establish the Center for Applied Pathogen Epidemiology and Outbreak Response, is the fourth major funding investment the university has received in the past five years.
Bahl is optimistic that this investment in pathogen genomics will create more pathways for data sharing among scientists and practitioners and enhance genomic surveillance nationwide.
“We’re active, and we’re trying to learn more, translate more to the public health labs and be better prepared collectively to respond to these new threats,” said Bahl. “This investment is about trying to strengthen partnerships with public health. We’re part of that effort, building up public health across the board.”
The team
Team members include Tonia Parrott at the Georgia Department of Public Health and Amy Winter, Erin Lipp, Travis Glenn, Magdy Alabady, Liang Liu, Pej Rohani, Susan Sanchez, Mandev Gill and John Drake from UGA. They will be joined by Rebecca Hutchins and True Merrill at GTRI. The network across Georgia also includes researchers from Emory University, Georgia State University and Augusta University Medical College of Georgia.
Holly Bik receives NSF Career award
Holly Bik, assistant professor in the University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Science department of marine sciences with a joint appointment in UGA’s Institute of Bioinformatics, has received a grant from the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) to study the biodiversity, evolution, and ecology of free-living marine nematodes and their host-associated microbiomes.
The five-year, $1 million CAREER grants, among the most prestigious awarded by the NSF, support early-career faculty who exhibit promise as both researchers and teachers, and whose work has the potential to advance their field and their institution.
Bik’s expertise stands at the interface between biology and computer science, using biological questions and evolutionary hypotheses to drive the development and refinement of –Omic approaches focused on marine microbes.
Her NSF-supported project will represent the first large-scale investigation that collects molecular data across marine habitat gradients, including across salinity levels, water depths, and and gradients of environmental stressors such as pollution and oxygen availability. The study will provide a comparative dataset for the existing body of nematode taxonomic studies to advance knowledge of the structure and function of seafloor marine ecosystems.
“Nematode worms are populous in sediment habitats worldwide, from coastal estuaries to deep-sea methane seeps, though little is known regarding their interactions with sediment geochemistry and bacteria and archaeal members of the community,” Bik said. “We want to better understand how they interact with those microbial communities, as well as utilize new computational frameworks and data visualization tools to advancing the pace of environmental microbiome studies.”
“Dr. Bik is well-recognized by the scientific community for her development and refinement of high-throughput sequencing and novel computational tools to study the ecology and evolution of microbial taxa from diverse environments,” said Daniela Di Iorio, professor and head of the department of marine sciences. “Students have shown a keen interest in learning these advanced computational methods used to study complex biological ecosystems and I am confident that she will continue to provide excellent student research and educational experiences at UGA and beyond, and that this CAREER grant will aid Dr. Bik in achieving those goals.”
Bik’s research will use a novel approach that combines traditional light microcopy, environmental DNA sequencing, and single-worm genome sequencing in order to advance scientific knowledge of free-living nematodes and their ecological and evolutionary roles in marine habitats worldwide. The resulting datasets will produce an important baseline of global nematode biodiversity in shallow-water and deep-sea marine habitats, and illuminate “dark areas” in the Nematode Tree of Life – lineages which are currently poorly sampled. The project combines interdisciplinary research themes spanning marine nematode systematics, bioinformatics, and microbial ecology, with a strong integration of computational training and science communication for undergraduate and graduate students across all project aims.
“I’m absolutely thrilled to receive an NSF CAREER award that will advance my lab’s research merging classical nematode taxonomy, microbial ecology, and benthic marine science,” Bik said. “I’m especially excited to incorporate bioinformatics training into graduate and undergraduate curricula at UGA, which will help students develop strong data science skills that will be valuable for their future career paths.”
Image courtesy of Holly Bik.
By: Alan Flurry, UGA- Franklin News
UGA Research Awards | Congratulations to Dr. Bensasson!
Creative Research Medal
![ra-web-DoudaBensasson Douda Bensasson](https://research.uga.edu/research-awards/wp-content/uploads/sites/62/2022/04/ra-web-DoudaBensasson.jpg)
Douda Bensasson, associate professor in the Department of Plant Biology, has pioneered a new understanding that wild plant environments serve as reservoirs for a common fungal pathogen of humans. Her laboratory discovered that old oak trees harbor Candida albicans, which is responsible for potentially lethal yeast bloodstream infections in humans. Scientists thought that this species could only thrive in warm-blooded animals, but she showed that three genetic strains in oaks were more closely related to strains isolated from warm-blooded animals like humans than to other oak strains. The high genetic diversity found in oak strains implies that C. albicans has moved between humans and oaks multiple times and that plants could be the pathogen’s ancestral source. Her work in isolating, characterizing, genome sequencing and analyzing C. albicans has reshaped her field. She has inspired researchers worldwide to explore the evolution of this and potentially other human pathogens in wild plants.
Wayland Yeung Successfully Defends Dissertation
Wayland Yeung of Dr. Natarajan Kannan’s lab has successfully defended his dissertation titled, “Traditional representation learning approaches for protein sequence analysis” on Friday, April 15, 2022. Congratulations Dr. Yeung!
![](https://iob.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/47/2022/04/Wayland-Defense-Photo-1024x731.jpg)
Yuan Feng Successfully Defends Dissertation
Yuan Feng of Dr. Shaying Zhao’s lab has successfully defended his dissertation, “Canine MHC-I Genotyping and Diversity Landscape” on Wednesday, April 13, 2022. Congratulations Dr. Feng!
![](https://iob.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/47/2022/05/IMG_3241-683x1024.jpg)