Course Announcements

Instructor:

TA:

LECTURES: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30-4:45 ILC 137

OVERVIEW: We are entering a very exciting period when the study of infectious disease and the study of evolution are intersecting like never before. Evolutionary insight is yielding important advances in understanding the nature of disease, and evolutionary approaches are becoming widely used not just for tracking the origins and spread of humanity’s current batch of plagues, but also for controlling them. At the same time, pathogens are yielding key insights into the nature of the evolutionary processes that shape all of life on Earth. The goal of this course is to use evolution to understand infectious disease and to use infectious disease to understand evolution. We will cover a diverse range of topics related to these themes, including fundamental evolutionary theory, the diversity of infectious disease agents, vertebrate immunology, molecular phylogenetics and epidemiology, evolution of virulence, Darwinian medicine, pathogen evolutionary genomics, impacts of pathogens on human genetics, antimicrobial drug resistance, and the control of disease using evolutionary knowledge. We will also focus on some important pathogens, such as HIV and influenza, as case studies.

Complete Syllabus