Plowright wins NSF grant to study how human behavior impacts spread of infectious diseases

The National Science Foundation has awarded a $1.65 million grant to a pair of Montana State University professors that will enable them, and an international team of researchers, to study how human behavior contributes to the spread of emerging infectious diseases from animals to people. The collaborators come from three continents, involving 10 academic institutions and a nonprofit agency.

The grant will help fund Raina Plowright’s research on pathogen spillover from bats to domestic animals and people. The grant focuses on urban bats in eastern Australia, where there has been an influx of fruit bats into towns and cities and, at the same time, Hendra virus has been spilling over from fruit bats into horses and people. Read the full article.

Montana State University faculty Elizabeth Shanahan, left, associate professor of political science and Raina Plowright, assistant professor of microbiology, received $1.65 million from the National Science Foundation to research the ways human acti…

Montana State University faculty Elizabeth Shanahan, left, associate professor of political science and Raina Plowright, assistant professor of microbiology, received $1.65 million from the National Science Foundation to research the ways human activity contributes to the spread of infectious diseases. MSU Photo by Adrian Sanchez-Gonzalez

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