S. Mark Tompkins, a University of Georgia associate professor who has been on faculty in the College of Veterinary Medicine’s department of infectious diseases since 2005, has won a Fulbright Award.

Tompkins (right) focuses his research on understanding the immune response to respiratory virus infection and developing novel vaccines and treatments for use against human and zoonotic diseases. He will serve six months in Geelong, Australia, where he will work with the Australian Animal Health Labs, a division of the Commonwealth Scientifi c and Industrial Research Organization, Australia’s national science agency. Specifi cally, he will focus on collaborative developments of therapeutic drugs for Hendra and Nipah viruses.

“This work will not only expand my infectious disease and antiviral drug discovery expertise for the work that is being done in our UGA labs, but will also provide concrete advances in drug development for emerging infectious diseases for which there are no effective treatments or vaccines,” says Tompkins. fulbright.state.gov