Irving-Scholander Memorial Lecture Series

To provide lasting recognition of the scientific contributions of Laurence Irving and Per Scholander, the Irving-Scholander Memorial Fund supports the visit of an outstanding life scientist to the University of Alaska Fairbanks each year. The visitor presents a formal lecture and meets with faculty and students for informal discussions. The lectures and discussions are a fitting memorial to Drs. Irving and Scholander, who provided their colleagues with many stimulating ideas and seminal contributions to biological knowledge. The series began in 1981 and is sponsored by the Institute of Arctic Biology and Institute of Marine Science. It is supported by private donations to an endowment within the University of Alaska Foundation.

2012 Lecture

	Name:	Peter J. Hudson
	Affiliation:	Willaman Professor of Biology, Director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, Pennsylvania State University
	Title:	Just when you thought it was safe: The ecology and rise of emerging diseases
	Date:	Thursday, 26 April 2012
	Time:	6:00PM
	Location:	University of Alaska Museum of the North

Abstract:

The study of infectious disease is usually considered the domain of the medical community – and there is little doubt that clinical treatment coupled with sanitation has reduced the impacts of many fatal infections. Vaccination and drug delivery have also reduced suffering and improved human longevity and livestock production. But at the very point we thought we had solved the global disease burden we seem to be faced by a range of new infections – diseases we never knew existed such as Ebola, SARS and Hantavirus. At the same time there are a string of human diseases we were close to eradicating such malaria that are now increasing in prevalence. In addition we have observed the evolution of new strains of infections that could become highly pathogenic and these cause serious concern amongst the human population.

About the Speaker:

Peter Hudson is the Director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences and the Willaman Professor of Biology at Pennsylvania State University. He earned his B.Sc from the University of Leeds and his D.Phil from Magdalen College, Oxford University where he worked in the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology, part of the Department of Zoology. Combining fieldwork, laboratory investigation, and mathematical modeling Hudson investigates the dynamics of infectious disease in wildlife, how diseases spread through wild animal populations, how they impact host dynamics, and the role of wildlife in transmitting disease to humans (zoonosis). He undertakes revealing field experiments and applies theory to understanding how parasites interact with their hosts, other natural enemies, and climatic conditions to affect the population dynamics of hosts. Hudson demonstrated that parasites are the cause of population cycles in red grouse, and showed how parasites shared between hosts can lead to localized host extinction. Recently he has investigated how parasites interact through a host’s immune system to cause variation in susceptibility and transmission to infection. He is currently investigating zoonotic infections of tick-borne encephalitis in Italy and has initiated parallel studies in Pennsylvania. He is also studying pneumonia in big horned sheep and mange infections of wolves in Montana. During the bovine-tuberculosis scare and the start of the hoof-and-mouth epidemic, Hudson served as a scientific adviser to the Prince of Wales and to the House of Commons Standing Committee. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Helminthology and is an editorial advisor for the Journal of Ecohealth. He has been associate editor of the Journal of Animal Ecology since 1990, and was associate editor of the Journal of Wildlife Biology from 1994 to 1998. He has published more than 230 scientific papers and four books on the ecology of infectious disease. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2008 and a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2010. He received the Carlton Herman Award from the U.S. Wildlife Disease Association in 2005 and the Laurent Perrier Award for Game Conservation in 1985. In 2002, he was named an honorary member of the British Falconers Club in recognition of his research on grouse and their natural nemies. Hudson is the founding director of the Penn State Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics and an affiliate of the Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment. His passion is biology and he spends his spare time photographing animals and plants, studying nature, running his own nature reserve, and riding motorcycles

Laurence Irving

Per Scholander

Series History

Biographies

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Contributions to the Irving-Scholander Memorial Fund are tax-deductible and may be made online from the IAB Giving page.