Iowa State University is joining a consortium of institutions that will do research and create training programs focused on diseases like Zika and West Nile virus. Ryan Smith, a professor of entomology and head of the I-S-U Medical Entomology Laboratory, says the new alliance is being funded by a ten-million-dollar grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Smith says researchers on the Ames campus will zero in on enhanced surveillance of West Nile virus transmission and the presence of the invasive Aedes mosquito species in Iowa.
The new consortium is called The Upper Midwestern Center of Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases. Other collaborators include: the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Illinois, Michigan State University and the Minnesota Department of Health.
