October 27, 2023
CEZID/CBID Seminar Series presents Gavin Smith
Submitted by Christine Huncovsky
The COBRE Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, or CEZID, is hosting Gavin Smith in the next presentation in the CEZID Distinguished Speaker Seminar Series at 3 p.m. Friday, Oct. 27, in the Mara Conference Center on the fourth floor Trotter Hall. The seminar will also be available via Zoom.
Smith will present "The genomic diversity and pandemic risk of swine influenza A viruses in Southeast Asia."
Smith is director of the Programme in Emerging Infectious Diseases at Duke-NUS Medical School with appointments at the Duke-NUS Centre for Outbreak Preparedness and SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre in Singapore. His primary training was in ecology and evolution at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
He obtained his doctorate from the University of Hong Kong where he also undertook his postdoctoral training in the department of microbiology, before moving to Singapore to start his laboratory. Smith's research program primarily investigates the ecology and evolution of zoonotic viruses and the genomic epidemiology of human respiratory pathogens. His lab conducts both human and animal disease surveillance throughout Asia via an extensive network of collaborators in universities and hospitals; governmental and intergovernmental research institutions — including UN agencies, nongovernmental organizations and industry. The ultimate aim of his research is to better understand viral disease ecosystems in Asia, specifically at the animal-human interface, and to inform and enhance disease control.
The CEZID seminar series is organized in the diagnostic medicine and pathobiology department in the College of Veterinary Medicine and is hosted by CEZID director, Juergen Richt.