Image credit: Pat Jones Photography
Event_

Ian Beveridge Memorial Lecture

Dedicated to promoting One Health research
Veterinarian and wildlife disease ecologist Dr Alison Peel presents our first of two Ian Beveridge Memorial Lectures for 2024. Alison will explore the dynamics of viral spillovers from bats, focusing on Hendra virus in Australian flying foxes.

Hendra and beyond: The ecology of One Health approaches to bat viral spillover

One Health frameworks that integrate human, animal and environmental health are critical to prevent future viral emergence, yet they often ignore the complexity of wildlife ecology.

Several emerging infectious diseases have bats as the principal wild reservoir or ancestral host. Dr Alison Peel will explore the dynamics of viral spillovers from bats, focusing on Hendra virus in Australian flying foxes as a model system.

She will also discuss how long-term data collection, interdisciplinary collaborations and predictive modelling have enabled identification of predictable drivers of spillover, revealing potential sustainable solutions.

At the end of the talk, there will be a Q&A followed by a cocktail reception.

Event details

Date: Tuesday 26 March 2024
Time:

5:45pm for 6pm - 8pm

(Lecture 6pm-7pm followed by a cocktail reception)

Venue:

Charles Perkins Centre Auditorium (D17)

John Hopkins Drive (off Missenden Road)

The University of Sydney

Cost:
Free. Registration essential.

Dr. Alison Peel

Dr. Alison Peel

About the speaker

Dr. Alison Peel is a veterinarian and wildlife disease ecologist whose research focuses on how human environmental impacts, ecological change and climate cycles contribute to the emergence and ongoing spillover of viruses from bats.

After undertaking her PhD at the University of Cambridge on viruses in African fruit bats, her research now focuses on Hendra virus and the broader viral community in Australian flying foxes. Leveraging broad multidisciplinary expertise, she collaborates within One Health networks to explain the root causes of spillover and identify sustainable solutions.

Dr Peel will be joining the University of Sydney as a Horizon Fellow in June 2024.


Past lectures

Ian Beveridge

Emeritus Professor William Ian Beveridge 

About Ian Beveridge

This memorial lecture commemorates the work of Ian Beveridge, whose pioneering work in the area of 'one medicine' foresaw an entirely new kind of interdisciplinary research.

Emeritus Professor William Ian Beveridge was an alumnus of the University of Sydney, graduating in 1931. He began his research career at McMaster Laboratory, CSIR, shortly afterwards supervised by Professor R H Carne.

Remarkably, within a few years he had found the bacterium responsible for footrot of sheep and set the principles for its control and eradication. He was later awarded a DVSc for this research.

During World War II he worked on influenza and other diseases at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne. In 1947 he became Professor of Animal Pathology at Cambridge and there and later in the WHO, developed and promoted the concept of 'comparative (one) medicine'.

In 1972 Professor Beveridge published a book, Frontiers in Comparative Medicine, outlining his views in this area of 'one medicine'.