The Dr. Gregory D. Bossart Memorial One Health Scholarship was launched in 2021 by the One Health Commission and Georgia Aquarium. This prestigious scholarship is awarded annually to a student from anywhere in the world who is leading a graduate or clinical research project focused on the interconnections between animals, people, plants, and their shared environment.
Dr. Grace Hood, a Veterinarian with a Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases, is a third year DPhil student in the High-Consequence Emerging Viruses group at the Centre for Human Genetics & Pandemic Sciences Institute, has been awarded the 2024 Scholarship for her One Health Project titled "Deforestation as a driver of emerging viral spillover events at the human-animal-environment interface in Malaysian Borneo".
Malaysian Borneo has undergone extensive deforestation over the past 40 years, significantly altering the epidemiology of zoonotic diseases in both humans and non-human primates. This project seeks to describe the prevalence of zoonotic viruses in macaques across different landscapes, using multiplexed serology and pathogen-agnostic metagenomic sequencing. By combining serological and molecular measures of disease prevalence with earth observation and biodiversity data, it aims to produce a One Health investigation into the drivers of viral emergence at the human-animal-environment interface.