Sunitha Chari

With an investment of over $250,000, the Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC) is supporting 25 doctoral students this year through our Doctoral Awards program. This is the third annual offering of this program that fosters young researchers involved in innovative infectious disease research.

This year’s awardees come from two University of Toronto campuses- St. George and Scarborough- and four hospital partners, encompassing five faculties and thirteen departments.

The University of Toronto’s Emerging & Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC) has launched a Rapid Research Response to address the public health risk posed by highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).
Leveraging the multidisciplinary EPIC research community, the response will support projects that aim to understand the fundamental biology of these viruses and their potential for human transmission and to develop new methods for detecting viral infections and outbreak management.
The EPIC resp...

To mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the University of Toronto’s Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC) is sharing the stories and aspirations of four young and upcoming researchers from the EPIC community. They share their personal scientific journeys and the importance of female mentors and role models in science.
Chidumebi Idemili
PhD student, Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Unity Health Toronto
“I am the last of six children and my mother is a te...

University of Toronto researchers have discovered nine new genes used by bacteria to protect themselves against viral infections.
Their findings uncover a new hotspot in the bacterial genome for these protective systems and could have profound implications for the development of new strategies to treat bacterial infections, particularly those that are drug resistant.
“Phages are viruses that naturally predate bacteria,” says Landon Getz, a postdoctoral fellow in Karen Maxwell’s lab in the dep...

Today the University of Toronto’s Emerging & Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC) announced the winners of the 2025 Future Leaders Prizes.
The EPIC Future Leaders Prizes are $5,000 cash prizes, awarded to PhD graduates who defended an excellent infectious disease-related thesis in 2024. This year, applications came in from across three different faculty divisions and two hospital partners, and winners were selected based on the scientific excellence of their research and their demonstrated l...

Researchers at the University of Toronto have developed a new vaccine formulation for the sexually transmitted infection (STI) gonorrhea.
The formulation comprises two antigens derived from a bacterial surface protein, and in preclinical studies was shown to provide robust protection against different Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Neisseria meningitidis strains. Recent publications in npj Vaccines and Vaccine outline these advances.
Gonorrhea is the second most commonly reported STI in Canada and...

Lung transplant recipients are on lifelong immunosuppressant drugs to reduce their risk of organ rejection. This makes them incredibly susceptible to bacterial infections, with scientists and clinicians continually investigating ways to help the body both accept the transplanted organ and minimize the risk of infections.
Pleural immune cells that reside in the pleural cavity could hold some answers. While their existence has been known to the scientific community for a while, limited access t...

The University of Toronto’s Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC) has announced the recipients of the 2025 EPIC Inspire Summer Studentships.
The studentships offer paid summer research placements to Black and Indigenous undergraduate students to engage in infectious disease research under the mentorship of EPIC faculty.
To increase equity and inclusion in summer research opportunities, EPIC is proud to be part of U of T’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine’s approach to harmonize summer...

The annual U of T Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Research Days (MID Research Days) were held on May 26th and May 27th.
The event — organized by the Emerging & Pandemic Infections Consortium in collaboration with the division of infectious diseases a...

The University of Toronto’s Emerging & Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC) is investing $600,000 in the Career Transition Awards and Convergence Postdoctoral Fellowships to support the next generation of infectious disease researchers across five projects that span disciplines from discovery and clinical research to public health.
EPIC Career Transition Awards support postdoctoral fellows and research associates as they lead their first independent project while being mentored by their supe...

The University of Toronto’s Emerging & Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC) is investing $400,000 through the EPIC New Connections Grants and EPIC Ignite Grants to support six projects that span research topics from vaccine development to novel technologies for pathogen detection and identifying new compounds that curb the spread of infectious diseases...

University of Toronto’s Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium is investing $48,000 through the Researcher Mobility Awards to support 11 recipients as they undertake research training, skills development or collaborative field work outside of Toronto.
These experiences, taking the awardees across Canada and to four different countries, will support projects including developing m...

Coinciding with the World Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Week, the Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC) once again co-hosted the third annual AMR Symposium on November 19 and 20 empowered by bioMérieux Canada and an amazing cast of partners.
The two-day event brought together over 400 clinicians and researchers in human and animal health, along with industry and government representatives, to discuss innovative research developments, challenges and opportunities to address the AMR health crisis.

December 1, 2024, marked World AIDS Day, and forty years since the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and its causal link to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). With current treatment, AIDS is no longer the public health emergency that it once was and tremendous strides in HIV research over the last forty years have given us antiretroviral (ARV) therapies that enable people with HIV to have a normal life span and live normal lives.
In addition, ARV medications can be used effectively to prevent HIV transmission.

As communities around the world marked World Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Awareness Week from November 18 to 24, 2024 we shine the spotlight on members of the Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium (EPIC) who are leading the fight against AMR.
These researchers are pioneering approaches that extend across different disciplines of basic and clinical research aimed at improving drug resistance monitoring and developing treatment strategies to lessen the AMR burden.