Dr. Alison Peel from The University of Sydney was the recipient of the 2025 Barry L. Munday Award. 

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Alison is a veterinarian and wildlife disease ecologist and has been an outstanding member of the Wildlife Disease Association as well as a passionate advocate for wildlife health for many years.

 

Alison graduated from her Bachelor of Veterinary Science in 2003 from the University of Sydney before embarking on a Masters in Wild Animal Health at the Royal Veterinary College in England, which she completed in 2007. She then undertook her PhD degree in the field of Veterinary Epidemiology at the University of Cambridge, England, which was conferred in 2012. After her PhD she undertook a series of post-doctoral positions both in the University of Cambridge, England, and at Griffith University, Australia. These included several esteemed and competitively awarded fellowships: Newton Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Queensland Accelerate Early Career Fellowship and Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award Fellowship. Alison was recently (2024) appointed on a continuing position as a Sydney Horizon Fellow at The University of Sydney - a very well-deserved and prestigious opportunity. In addition to her Fellowships, Alison has received numerous national and international competitive grants (including US NSF and NIH grants), and multiple awards, including Vice Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence for a Mid Career Researcher, Griffith University.

 

Alison’s research and outreach activities have had an immense impact particularly in the field of bat viral infections and the drivers of their spillover into other hosts, including humans. She is currently author on over 100 scientific research papers, with over 5000 citations and an h-index of 38. Given her transdisciplinary background across veterinary science and ecology, she has a holistic understanding of the drivers of infection in wildlife species, and she shares her expertise broadly through the media and via participation in workshops, conferences and panels. Much of her recent work has been on henipaviruses including Australian Hendra virus which has been responsible for over a hundred cases of horse euthanasia and at least four human mortalities over the last decades.

 

Alison is the Australian lead of the Bat One Health research team and has guided numerous students through to successful completion of their PhDs and on to valuable careers in wildlife health and related fields. Her research specifically focuses on the complex interactions between land-use change, flying foxes and the dynamics and fatal spillover of Hendra virus to horses and people, and how interactions within the diverse community of viruses in flying-foxes contribute to bat virus spillover in general. She and her team employ a range of techniques including field capture and sampling of flying foxes, under-roost sampling, genetic, molecular and immunological analyses, as well as complex mathematical modelling to understand when and why bat viral infections manifest, how they are transmitted, and what permits them to cross taxonomic groups and threaten domestic/production animals as well as humans. She collaborates within international One Health networks to explain the root causes of spillover and identify sustainable solutions that harness natural ecosystem processes to both prevent viral emergence and solve the environmental and public health crises we have created.

 

Alison is a remarkable mid-career researcher in the wildlife health space and highly deserving of the WDA-A’s Barry L. Munday Award.

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