Penn State Altoona News

Friday, March 20, 2009 - 1178 hits

Biology program and biology club present Dr. Peter Hudson

The biology degree program and the Biology Club are pleased to sponsor a seminar by Dr. Peter Hudson titled "The Ecology of Infectious Diseases" on Tuesday, April 14, 2009 at 7 p.m. in the Edith Davis Eve Chapel at Penn State Altoona.

Hudson is the director of the Huck Institute of the Life Sciences and the Willaman professor of biology at Penn State, University Park. He received his D.Phil from Magdalen College, Oxford University, and moved from the University of Stirling to Penn State in 2003. His work investigates the dynamics of infectious disease in wildlife, how diseases spread through wild animal populations, and how they impact host dynamics. He 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. More recently he has been investigating how parasites interact through the host's immune system to cause variation in susceptibility and transmission. Dr. Hudson has published more than 200 scientific papers and 4 books on the ecology of infectious disease. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2008.