Hudson Named Director of Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences

1 December 2006—Peter J. Hudson, Willaman Chair in Biology, founding director of the Penn State Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, and affiliate of the Penn State Institutes of the Environment, has been named the director of the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State.

Hudson’s research combines fieldwork, laboratory studies, and mathematical modeling to explore disease dynamics—how parasites and pathogens flow through animal populations, who infects whom, which individuals are important for disease transmission, and the consequences of infection. His studies include not only the diseases that affect wildlife, but also the role of wildlife in transmitting diseases to other animals, including humans. He has been involved in a study in northern Italy on tick-borne encephalitis, a disease that causes significant mortality among children in southern and eastern Europe. Since arriving at Penn State, he has initiated local studies that parallel his studies conducted in Italy. He says, “It is going to be interesting to see the correlations between our Italian studies and the emerging disease problems in the United States.”

He has worked extensively on the dynamics of red grouse populations in Scotland and England, where his innovative and large-scale experiments demonstrated that parasites were important in driving population cycles in this species—a fundamentally important finding in population dynamics. He also has investigated a wide range of other disease issues including dilution in tick-borne diseases, parasites shared between hosts, and the interactions in parasite communities.  

Hudson’s research accomplishments have been recognized with the Carlton Herman Award from the U.S. Wildlife Disease Association in 2005 and the Laurent Perrier Award for Game Conservation in 1985. In 2002, he was named an honorary member of the British Falconers Club in recognition of his research on grouse and their natural enemies. In 1992, his book, titled Grouse in Space and Time was named “Book of the Year” by The Guardian in the United Kingdom.

Hudson has published more than 195 scientific papers and has authored or edited 5 books. He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Helminthology and the Journal of Ecohealth. He has been associate editor of the Journal of Animal Ecology since 1990, and was associate editor for the Journal of Wildlife Biology from 1994 to 1998.

Hudson has organized several professional conferences, including the British Society for Parasitology (BSP) conference on Wildlife Diseases in 1999; the Infections Diseases in Wild Animal Populations conference of the Alpine Ecology Center in Trento, Italy, in 1998, and a follow-up meeting on zoonotic disease in 2006. In addition to many previous research fellowships, he currently is a visiting research professor at the Imperial College in London, the University of Exeter in Cornwall, and at the University of Stirling, all in the United Kindgom; at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland; and at the Alpine Ecology Center in Italy. He also is a research associate at the Consortium for Conservation Medicine in New York.

Educated in the United Kingdom, Hudson earned a doctoral degree in zoology at the University of Oxford in 1979, where he studied population dynamics of seabirds. He earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology at the University of Leeds in 1974, both in the United Kingdom. Prior to joining Penn State in July 2002, he was at the University of Stirling in Scotland, where he held a Personal Chair in Animal Ecology from 1998 to 2002 and was a reader in wildlife epidemiology from 1995 to 1998. From 1979 to 1995, Hudson worked in the Highlands of Scotland as a research fellow and then in charge of Upland Research with The Game Conservancy Trust.

The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences is comprised of seven Penn State colleges with faculty working in the life sciences: the Eberly College of Science, the College of Medicine at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, the College of Agricultural Sciences, the College of Health and Human Development, the College of Engineering, the College of the Liberal Arts, and the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. The Huck Institutes is dedicated to enhancing Penn State's ability to prepare students for tomorrow, strengthening research in the life sciences, and encouraging research alliances across disciplinary boundaries.

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