Frontiers in Comparative Systems Virology Symposium

Artem Babaian is a University of Toronto Assistant Professor in Molecular Genetics and The Donnelly Centre where he leads “The Laboratory for RNA-Based Lifeforms.” His lab focuses on the discovery and biodiversity of Earth’s RNA viruses using state-of-the-art computational approaches. As an independent postdoctoral researcher, Babaian initiated the Serratus project, which has catalyzed the discovery of 750,000+ novel RNA virus species, new phyla of viruses, and even new categories of RNA lifeforms. He was awarded a CIHR Banting Fellowship to continue this work at the University of Cambridge before returning to Toronto to start his group in 2022. In 2023, Babaian was recognized as a “Research Symbiont,” a prize for exceptional data-sharing and advancement of the open science, and named a Gairdner Foundation Early Career Investigator.

Jesse Bloom is a professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. He established his lab at Fred Hutch in 2011. Prior to that, he earned a B.S. in Biological Chemistry from the University of Chicago (worked with Susan Lindquist), an M.Phil. in Theoretical Chemistry from Cambridge University (with David Wales), a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Caltech (with Frances Arnold), and completed postdoctoral training in Biology at Caltech (with David Baltimore). He is a HHMI-Simons Faculty Scholar (2016), a Pew Scholar (2015), and Searle Scholar (2012), and has been recognized with the Young Investigators in Virology Award, the 2016 Ann Palmenberg Junior Investigator Award from the American Society for Virology, and the ASM’s Merck Irving S. Sigal Memorial Award.

Nels Elde is an associate professor of human genetics at the University of Utah, and an HHMI investigator. Born in Minneapolis, he earned a Biology degree from Carleton College (1995) and a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology from the University of Chicago (2005). After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, he joined the University of Utah faculty in 2011. His accolades include being named a Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences, a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases, and a Kavli Foundation Fellow, as well as receiving the NIH Director’s Transformative R01 award and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.