Sometimes challenges confront our society in ways that call upon all of the expertise we have to both make sense of the phenomenon and to take the necessary actions. The virus that causes COVID-19 is one such challenge.

Kevin Gross, Ph.D. will help us to understand how and when potential pathogens move from non-human animals to humans, called spillover. Spillover events are rare, but given enough opportunity, rare events eventually occur.

Archaeologists Tate Paulette, Ph.D. and Kathryn Grossman, Ph.D. describe the stories of the first settlements and cities and the circumstances that spawned many of the diseases we still battle today.

Are ALL viruses dangerous? Many play important roles for humans. They help us (and ask little in return). Anne Madden, Ph.D. will briefly describe a few. You might be surprised to find out what’s living on your face!

This video, Matt Koci, Ph.D. explains how he came to work on poultry diseases and why viruses are fascinating biological paradoxes. He’ll explain what a virus is, how common viruses are, and the basics of a virus life cycle, even though viruses aren't alive.

Matt Koci, Ph.D. zooms in on the story of COVID-19. What is it? How did this start? Where did it come from?

Everyone experiences stress. Stress can take the form of major life events (like death of a parent), chronic, ongoing stress (like the COVID-19 pandemic) and daily hassles (like arguments). This talk will show how well-being can be optimized in times of stress.

David Rasmussen, Ph.D. explains how sequencing viral genomes is shedding new light on the origins and evolution of viruses like SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic.

David Rasmussen, Ph.D. shares his thoughts about forecasting the near-term evolution of viruses such as influenza and SARS-CoV-2

Decision making to satisfy the basic human needs of health, food, and education is complex. This involves thinking about the systems that drive the satisfaction of these basic needs and how they are connected.

Not only do we affect animals, but our well-being is tied to theirs. The COVID-19 epidemic has made this point even more clear—we cannot separate ourselves from nature, instead we have to learn how to manage interactions to reduce the risk.

Dr. Cooper will review how citizen science is transforming scientific discovery, introduce students to NC State’s Citizen Science Campus program, walk students through an NC State citizen science project about safe drinking water, and show students 3 ways they can fight COVID-19.

As we all listen to the pandemic discussions, appreciate the limitations of available data and what data are still needed. As we hear about testing adequacy, remember that understanding how well or poorly accurate tests can perform, when testing for rare conditions, is important.

First we’ll talk about a pair of tuberculosis films, one from 1912 and the other from 1914. Tuberculosis may seem like a disease of the past, but it is especially relevant to COVID-times in terms of the way it is spread.

What will COVID-inspired movies be like? Will they focus on our time spent in isolation? On imagining what it will be like to get “back to normal”? On scientists collaborating around the globe as they try to create a vaccine?

Just as with much of modern Western medicine, a key element of finding natural medicines has been trial and error. Testing this. Testing that. But the ability to find new drugs has become more refined and dramatically sped up, and the basic sciences are key to this field.

This presentation will explain the basics of how we develop immunity to dangerous infections. If enough people in a large group, like the Wolfpack, are immune, eventually the disease can’t spread anymore - then you get Herd (or Pack) Immunity!

This segment describes what vaccines are and the most common types of vaccines available for society; it also describes the manufacturing process for some of those vaccines and the current efforts to create a vaccine against COVID-19.

Science editor Liz Neely described our situation like this: “We are all science communicators now: COVID-19 has conscripted us.” While most of us would rather not be enlisted in this particular crisis, it’s clear that good science journalism is a lifeline in the age of COVID-19.

Faced with the impacts of making and serving food during the pandemic, restaurants have been dealing with the challenge of protecting staff and customers, navigating the world of changing recommendations, and adjusting business plans all while trying to keep food safe.

Entrepreneurs are constantly evolving to meet the needs of the world around them, so when COVID-19 forced us to reimagine everything about our lives and our businesses, entrepreneurial thinkers had some experience with such drastic and rapid change.

Decision makers face limited resources and uncertainty, and they often have different objectives or constraints driving their decisions. Science can help guide decision making, with methods ranging from game theory models to disease modeling to optimization models.

In many contexts and times, diseases have reshaped life, whether it be human life, animal life, or plant life. Here we share a podcast interview of ongoing research about the consequence of plant disease.

Holly Hurlburt, Ph.D. discusses human reaction to pathogens during The Bubonic Plague of 1347-1349. In this talk, she introduces the themes of the plague through discussion of and quoting from the 1348 last will and testament of Dogaressa Elisabeta Dandolo.

During the COVID-19 outbreak we have often seen predictions of the epidemic created using models. These influence important decisions about disease control measures. But we hear that predictions made by models change, so how much can we trust them?

One of the simplest mathematical models for transmission of an infectious disease is the so-called SIR (Susceptible/Infected/Recovered) model. After explaining the setup of the model, we explore what it tells us about the spread of an infection such as COVID-19.

Throughout the discussion, Jamal Moss will drop some gems that he has learned along his way as he navigates the world at the intersection of public health ethics and medicine.