Virology Student Travel Award

Colleagues have established the Virology Student Travel Award for the contributions of students and findings in Virology.

The Virology Student Travel Award was established in 1999. Since the science of virology was founded in 1898 with seminal studies on tobacco mosaic virus, viruses have played a central role in understanding how all pathogens cause disease and as tools to study the biology of the plant cell. Due to very few means to control plant viruses, every year there are devastating effects on human society resulting in inadequate nutrition or loss of income for growers. The spread of significant virus diseases on crop and ornamental plants worldwide continues in association with global trade and travel. Therefore, a more complete basic and applied understanding of viruses and their interactions with host plants and biological vectors is needed to provide new strategies to control important virus diseases throughout the world.

The travel award was established to facilitate student travel to the APS annual meeting so that students in plant virology would have the opportunity to present findings from their studies and interact with virologists from around the world. Contributors to the establishment and development of this fund, as of April 2000, include: Yiming Bao, Stella Coakley, Carry Dooh, Robert Fulton, Rose Gergerich, Andrew Jackson, Ulrich Melcher, Stephen Nameth, Annette Nassuth, Richard Nelson, Herman Scholthof, John L. Sherwood, Sue Tolin, Jari Valkonen, Milt Zaitlin, The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, and the Virology Working Group.