Mitigating bat viruses: from forecasting spillover to control at the source

Bats are among the most important sources of emerging viral threats, responsible for Ebola, SARS and Nipah. We currently mitigate the impacts of bat viruses reactively, by treating humans or domestic animals after viruses emerge and cause disease. This fellowship proposes that deeper understanding of viral epidemiology, combined with new statistical and biological tools, could empower a strategic shift towards prevention. Using a tractable and important bat virus, vampire bat-transmitted rabies, I will first use routinely-collected surveillance data to develop models that rapidly forecast spatiotemporal emergence risk as epidemiological situations change, enabling use of life-saving human and animal vaccines prior to outbreaks. Next, field studies, experiments and viral genomics will allow individual-to-landscape epidemiological models to identify sensitive points in viral transmission cycles that could be exploited by interventions. Finally, I will explore whether revolutionary new approaches to vaccinology using self-spreading vaccines can reduce human and livestock mortality by controlling bat viruses at their source. This research delivers immediate translational benefits by mitigating health and economic costs from the most important bat virus in the Americas, strengthens international research capacity, and creates a biological and methodological toolbox to manage pathogens in bats, an historically intractable reservoir of zoonotic viruses.