Dr. Alan Landay has spent over 40 years in immunology, HIV, and global health research. As Vice President of Team Science, Professor of Internal Medicine, and Professor Microbiology and Immunology at UTMB, he works to understand how pathogens interact with the host immune system and its application to public health. His true magic lies in his ability to bring together experts from diverse disciplines—including medicine, veterinary science, basic biology, and environmental health—to develop sustainable solutions.

Multidisciplinary engagement underpins effective One Health approaches to infections at the human/animal/environmental interface. Dr. Gene Olinger, professor and Deputy Director of the Galveston National Laboratory at UTMB, shares how drawing from multiple perspectives has shaped his work in virology and his vision for the future of One Health work.

In this article, I discuss the extraordinary work of two UTMB laboratory scientists in identifying and characterizing highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses that impacted a Texas dairy farm in March of 2024. Like many foreign scholars working at UTMB, Drs. Lyudmyla Marushchak and Judith Oguzie trained in countries far from the United States. Yet their interesting backgrounds and training have made them well-suiting for studying emerging zoonotic respiratory viruses that infect humans and animals.