My Fulbright research will explore the diversity in wildlife viruses over the past century, using formalin-fixed museum specimens from across Australian and American collections. Using these historical viral sequences as ‘fossils’ in viral phylogenies, we will have a better understanding of the long-term evolutionary processes occurring in wildlife viruses.
Dr. Ash Porter is an evolutionary biologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Australian National Wildlife Collection at CSIRO. Their research explores how wildlife viruses evolve and emerge in new hosts, contributing to disease outbreak prevention. Previously, Ash worked on the COVID-19 pandemic response at the Doherty Institute.
As a Fulbright Scholar, Ash will study viral fragments in preserved wildlife specimens at the Museum of Southwestern Biology and the KU Natural History Museum to uncover patterns in virus evolution.