Today I'm pleased to announce the Viral Emergence Research Initiative (VERENA), a consortium of virologists, ecologists, and data scientists working to predict which viruses could infect humans, which animals host them, and where they could emerge. http://viralemergence.org 

Over the last decade, several cutting-edge teams have been independently pushing the field forward. We've pulled early career researchers from each of those research groups to try to increase collaboration, share more data, and accelerate scientific discovery.

We think that

1. data sharing,
2. principles of open science, transparent scientific communication, and honest policy analysis; and
3. making predictions actionable enough to actually support outbreak prevention

could transform how we do science.

In that spirit, our team will be keeping our work open with preprints (like the one we just posted), all our code and data without external use restrictions will be open source, and our work will include policy pieces and consults relevant to our findings.

Yesterday, we released our first team-wide paper on wildlife sampling priorities for SARS-CoV-2 research, which identified 300 candidate bat species, and added new insights to conversations about intermediate hosts like pangolins or civets. https://twitter.com/wormmaps/status/1264525041452097536

Our work on coronaviruses is supported by The Institute for Data Valorization ( @IVADO_Qc), and over the next year, we hope to continue developing and expanding our projects in coordination with partners in the field, on both the wildlife side (e.g., GBatNet) and in public health.

As we do that, I hope more ECRs - especially on the virology, immunology, and bioinformatics side - see what we've done with SARS-CoV-2 and other work, and want to join! We want more teammates, especially ones that can help us bridge gaps with molecular data & experimental work.

In that process, it's front-of-mind that how we put together the core team - pulling a handful of people we know who have already led studies with the exactly relevant methodologies - perpetuated diversity and inclusion issues that are especially endemic to computational ecology.

I'd like to particularly encourage early-career researchers who are female/nonbinary, BIPOC, and/or from outside the U.S., Canada, and Europe to reach out if they're interested / working on these topics (and I've been working hard to mirror this in recruitment off Twitter).

More broadly, my DM's are open to folks interested in joining, or interested in partnering with us to test predictions in the lab and field, develop models tailored to your unique system, or generally make viral ecology a stronger player in global health and pandemic preparedness

And to follow our online presence:

Web: http://viralemergence.org 
Twitter: @viralemergence
Github: http://github.com/viralemergence