Leadership

Dr. Daniel Swale is an Associate Professor in the Emerging Pathogens Institute and Department of Entomology and Nematology at the University of Florida. Dr. Swale received his B.S. in Biology and Chemistry from Christopher Newport University (2008), his M.S. in Life Sciences from Virginia Tech (2009), and his Ph.D. in insect neurotoxicology from the University of Florida (2012). He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Anesthesiology at Vanderbilt Medical School focusing on the development of pharmacology for potassium ion channels involved in various human diseases. At EPI, his current research lies at the interface of physiology, toxicology, and molecular genetics to provide knowledge on the modes of action, discovery and development, and resistance of various drug and insecticide chemistries. Our lab studies the fundamental and applied aspects of physiology and toxicology by integrating toxicological, pharmacological, electrophysiological, and genomic approaches to address broad ranging hypotheses in model insects, arthropod vectors of human diseases, and agriculture pests. Specifically, the Swale Lab studies the physiotoxicology of ion channels and ion transporters that are understudied as a means to bridge the fundamental knowledge gap that limits our understanding of insect systems. In addition to fundamental physiotoxicology, a branch of the Swale Research Lab focuses on pathogen-vector interactions that alter physiological pathways to enhance pathogenesis of pathogens, alter arthropod behavior, or alter vector competency.

In his spare time, he enjoys fishing, hunting, and triathlons.

Dr. Glenn Morris assumed the position of Director of the Emerging Pathogen Institute in August 2007. In addition to his position as EPI Director, Dr. Morris is a professor of infectious diseases in the UF College of Medicine. Morris has worked in public health and pathogen related fields for more than 40 years, and has had a continuing fascination with emerging pathogens. At EPI, Morris has helped to shape the creative vision behind a web of campus-wide projects to anticipate, understand and control the emergence of new, disease-causing microorganisms. Morris started his public health career at the Centers for Disease Control where he was an epidemic intelligence service officer and focused his attention upon cholera and other water- and food-borne illnesses. Before coming to the University of Florida, he was Chairman of the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore.

Shantrel Canidate, Ph.D., MPH, a social and behavioral epidemiologist and health equity researcher, joins the institute’s leadership team as the EPI Associate Director for Outreach and Community Partnerships. This role is dedicated to nurturing the internal relationships between multiple UF units, identifying opportunities for external partnerships and fostering research collaboration with Southeastern universities.

Canidate is an assistant professor in the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions Department of Epidemiology. In addition, she serves as a faculty member within the social and behavioral science program and the Southern HIV and Alcohol Research Consortium. Her research focuses on applying interdisciplinary approaches to identifying, understanding and addressing substance use and HIV-related health disparities among marginalized populations, such as men who have sex with men (MSM). Her work also aims to leverage electronic health records data through artificial intelligence and utilize causal inference approaches to identify biomedical and behavioral interventions that can reduce racial disparities in HIV care among marginalized populations.

As a double gator, Canidate received both her master’s in public health and a doctorate in public health from UF, specializing in social and behavioral sciences. She later completed a two-year T32 postdoctoral fellowship in the department of epidemiology with the UF Substance Abuse Training Center in Public Health. She is currently funded as a principal investigator through the first-ever Health Equity Scholars for Action grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and through a five-year K01 grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Furthermore, she is also funded as a co-investigator by the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse.

Dr. Blackburn is a full professor of geography in the Department of Geography and the associate director for research resources for the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida. He is a medical geographer with a One Health research focus on zoonotic disease transmission and persistence. He has worked on anthrax ecology since 2003 and the spatial ecology of brucellosis since 2006. He has worked on both disease systems across the world, including Africa, Southeast Asia, South America, the Former Soviet Union, and North America. He applies spatio-temporal and ecological niche modeling, combined with animal movement ecology and patch use analysis, to map disease risk areas and variation in persistence and outbreak intensity. He also applies KAP surveys and public health surveillance to study disease impacts in communities where these diseases spillover into humans. Dr. Blackburn founded the Spatial Epidemiology and Ecology Research Laboratory (SEER Lab) in 2007 at Cal State Fullerton, moving it to be jointly housed in Geography and the EPI at the University of Florida in 2009. In 2011, the lab expanded from a GIS and Remote Sensing lab to include a suite of biosafety level 2 and 3 (BSL-2, BLS-3) labs to safely handle Bacillus anthracis and Brucella spp., the bacteria that cause anthrax and brucellosis, respectively. SEER Lab performs laboratory diagnostics and pathogen characterization procedures to better understand the pathogens involved in active outbreaks. Here at EPI, SEER lab maintains the Martin E. Hugh-Jones Bacillus anthracis Collection, a global reference collection of bacteria. With these facilities and this collection, SEER Lab can study the phylogenetics and spatial patterns of pathogen distribution using a combination of PCR and whole genome sequencing, genotyping, and bioinformatics. SEER Lab works from the pathogen level out to the landscape level. This ‘book ends’ approach expands SEER Lab’s capabilities to perform controlled laboratory experiments informed from environmental data collected at outbreak locations. Since 2018, Dr. Blackburn has worked on melioidosis, a disease caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. Dr. Blackburn leads a project in Vietnam focused on the spatio-temporal patterns of melioidosis in humans and livestock and pathogen characteristics across the region. SEER Lab is a dynamic research group composed of undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs, and faculty with international viewpoints and experience.

I’m an Assistant Professor at the Emerging Pathogens Institute, University of Florida, and a Research Associate at the Global Health Program, Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute. My research embodies the One Health approach by focusing on host, pathogen, environment, and enables deeper understanding emergence and transmission of pathogens in hotspots and ecosystems threatened by climate and land-use change. Currently my lab is working actively in 1) researching vibrios geographic expansion and modeling the impact of climate on regional outbreaks; 2) developing integrative modeling of phylodynamic, vector, human travel and epidemiological data to infer arboviral risk of importation and local transmission; 3) characterizing zoonotic viruses circulating in wildlife in biodiversity hotspots threatened by climate and land use change.

I obtained my bachelor and master in biotechnology from University of Padova, Italy. I obtained my PhD in the Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa hosted at the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain, mentored by Dr. Antonio Alcami. My PhD focused on evolution and immunodynamics of poxviruses. I joined the University of Florida during my postdoctoral training mentored by Dr. Maureen Goodenow and Dr. Marco Salemi.

Mattia Prosperi, Ph.D., FAMIA, FACMI, is a professor and associate dean for AI and innovation at the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions and the chief research information officer for UF’s Emerging Pathogens Institute (EPI). With a background in computer engineering, he has over two decades of experience in bio-health informatics and epidemiology, leading impactful research programs in both the U.S. and the E.U.

In his role as associate dean, he focuses on expanding AI infrastructure, training/education and research capacity within the college and across UF. As EPI’s chief research information officer, he leads efforts to enhance pathogenomics-centered data integration, reproducible bioinformatics pipelines, and guides the development of novel biological generative AI.

His research integrates AI, health and epidemiological informatics, causal inference and multimodal data science. Over the past decade, Dr. Prosperi has secured funding and led projects totaling more than $20 million in external support from U.S. federal agencies, (including the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation), the European Commission (Horizon 2020); not-for-profit foundations; and industry partners such as Merck and NVIDIA.

Dr. Prosperi has advanced both foundational and applied biomedical AI. His work includes developing multidomain, multilevel modeling approaches that fuse socioeconomic, ecological, clinical, and -omics data to enable precision health. More recently, he has pioneered causal AI methods aimed at shaping future outcomes rather than merely predicting them.

He serves as editor for the journals BMC Artificial Intelligence, Global Health Research and Policy, Journal of Healthcare Informatics Research, and BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and a Fellow of both the American Medical Informatics Association and the American College of Medical Informatics.

Hitchings is an assistant professor at the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions. He also serves on the UF Emerging Pathogens Institute’s leadership team as the EPI Associate Director for Biostatistics Consulting Core. He is a Guest Researcher with the CDC, collaborating with researchers at the CDC Dengue Branch on studies to uncover the drivers of transmission of arboviruses, including dengue, chikungunya and Zika in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories. In addition, Hitchings serves as a co-investigator on NIH- and CDC-funded grants focused on the development of immunity to SARS-CoV-2, interventions to reduce arbovirus incidence in Brazil and methods to improve surveillance and forecasting of infectious diseases in the U.S.

Hitchings’s research uses serological data, meaning data on antibody responses to pathogens, to understand infectious disease dynamics, evaluate interventions and identify high-risk populations to target disease mitigation efforts more effectively. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hitchings led studies assessing the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in Brazil using observational study designs and surveillance data, which directly informed the WHO’s guidance regarding vaccine schedules in older individuals. He has published over 40 papers on topics ranging from clinical trial design during outbreaks to household transmission of respiratory viruses to immune response to pathogens.

Michael Lauzardo, MD, MSc, is an associate professor within the division of infectious diseases and global medicine. Also serving as the director of the CDC funded Southeastern National Tuberculosis Center (SNTC) at the University of Florida, he has been involved in public health, teaching and patient care within the College of Medicine since 1997. Trained as an internist and pulmonologist, throughout his career he has been involved in the clinical care of patients with tuberculosis. He has also played a key role with the Florida Department of Health, serving as the Deputy TB Controller for the Florida TB Program and is currently the director of the Florida TB Physicians Network. Previously, he was the chief of the division of infectious diseases and global medicine. His clinical practice and research centers around tuberculosis among at-risk populations and he is involved in various international health activities.

Subramaniam is an associate professor at the UF College of Veterinary Medicine. He also serves on the UF Emerging Pathogens Institute leadership in a dual leadership position as the director of the Aquatic Pathobiology Lab and the director of the high-throughput sequencing core. He specializes in molecular virology, with an emphasis on infectious diseases that affect wildlife populations and pose challenges to the growth and sustainability of fisheries and aquaculture. He has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has been the PI/Co-PI on more than 20 intramural and extramural funded projects.

Subramaniam leads the Wildlife and Aquatic Veterinary Disease Laboratory housed in the APL. He uses metagenomics to identify and characterize viral pathogens affecting wildlife and hindering fisheries and aquaculture growth. In addition, he is involved in developing innovative diagnostic tools and techniques to detect and monitor the prevalence of these pathogens effectively. Subramaniam’s work also investigates how infections lead to disease in aquatic animals, including understanding the tissue tropism of pathogens, the host immune responses to viral infections and the influence of environmental factors (abiotic and biotic) on disease outcomes. By integrating these approaches, his research contributes to efforts that safeguard biodiversity and support the economic viability of fisheries and aquaculture.