Investigating Outbreaks: Beyond the Laboratory Well-timed Infectious Disease Science Initiative strives to make UCI a global leader in an urgent and ever-evolving field By Kristin Baird Rattini
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hen Sanghyuk Shin launched UCI’s Infectious Disease Science Initiative in July 2019, the assistant professor of nursing had no idea that a devastating pandemic would erupt a mere eight months later. He simply recognized an opportunity to bring together under one umbrella the experts across numerous schools and centers on campus whose research touches on the dynamics of infectious diseases and drug resistance. “I was excited because there were so many faculty working on infectious disease dynamics,” Shin says about his arrival at UCI in 2017. “But there was no system or structure for how these faculty members could work together to generate new ideas, develop collaborations, and share their research with each other and the public.” In establishing IDSI, he looked forward to teaming with its members to fuel new insights into such scourges as tuberculosis (his own specialty), pathogenic E. coli, malaria and HIV. But then the novel coronavirus entered the scene, and the fledgling initiative found itself in the right place at the right time to rally its resources in support of not only UCI colleagues but the Orange County community in the fight against COVID-19.
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