CURE-KY's Infectious Diseases Research Day 2026

Thank you to everyone who joined us for CURE-KY’s Infectious Diseases Research Day 2026. We were delighted to welcome researchers, trainees, clinicians, and staff from across the University of Kentucky for a full day of scientific exchange, trainee presentations, and interdisciplinary conversation.

This year’s program featured three themed scientific sessions—Infection During Pregnancy, Pathogen Surveillance, and Interventions & Treatments—along with trainee poster presentations, a 3-Minute Thesis showcase, and a CURE-KY business meeting and strategic discussion. We are grateful to all of our speakers, presenters, attendees, and volunteers for helping make the day such a success.

We extend our sincere thanks to this year’s speakers for contributing such thoughtful and engaging presentations to Infectious Diseases Research Day 2026. Their talks reflected the breadth of infectious diseases research taking place across the University of Kentucky and helped create a program that was scientifically rigorous, multidisciplinary, and highly relevant to our campus research community.

The scientific sessions clearly made an impression—here are a few reactions from the anonymous attendee feedback survey:

• “The quality of oral presentations was high...”
• “I like the three major topics chosen for the ID day. Very informative and also covered multiple disciplines.”
• "This was my first time attending and I thought it was wonderful... All wonderful research that will hopefully shed light and bring value to the world of infectious diseases."

Infection During Pregnancy

Tom Stout, PhD (College of Agriculture, Food and Environment) - The Impact of Maternal Aging on the Normality of Early Embryonic Development in the Horse

Alex Pasternak, PhD (College of Agriculture, Food and Environment) - Fetal Response to Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Virus Infection

Samantha Zambuto, PhD (College of Engineering) - Tissue Engineering Models of Pregnancy

Pathogen Surveillance

Rebecca Wilkes, PhD (College of Agriculture, Food and Environment) - Targeted NGS Panels for Syndromic Testing and Surveillance

Takaaki Kobayashi, MD, PhD (College of Medicine) - Surveillance Strategies for Emerging and Multidrug-Resistant Pathogens at the University of Kentucky

Ishanu Chattopadhyay, PhD (College of Medicine) - Large Science Models for Predictive Biosurveillance of Zoonotic Emergence

Interventions and Treatments

Vince Venditto, PhD (College of Pharmacy) - Triazine Lipids as a Platform for Efficient Vaccine Development

Patrick Grace, MD (College of Medicine) - Translating Clinical Advancements in Hepatitis C to Real World Treatment

Siva Gandhapudi, PhD (College of Medicine) - Enhancing T Cell Response to Influenza Vaccines