Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce that the winners of the Pathogens 2022 Young Investigator Award are Dr. Marta Giovanetti and Dr. Carrie M. Long.

Dr. Marta Giovanetti is a Visitant Researcher at the National Reference Laboratory of Flavivirus in the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Brazil. Her research focuses on investigating the patterns of gene flow in pathogen populations, particularly the use of phylogenetics and phylogeography as tools to recreate and understand the determinants of viral outbreaks and how this information can be translated into public policy recommendations. She is currently the researcher with the largest number and most cited papers on COVID-19 in Brazil, and she was also awarded the “Researcher Productivity Fellowship” in consideration of her many publications and her dedication to Science by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development. She has authored 141 articles published in international peer-review journals and 2 book chapters, and she also has been involved in the development of 3 pieces of open-source software for virus genotyping. Recently (October 2021), due to her commitment in the arbovirus surveillance research, she was awarded with the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science prize.

Dr. Carrie M. Long is an NIH Independent Research Scholar (IRS) in the Laboratory of Bacteriology at the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a component of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Dr. Long obtained her Ph.D. in Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis from West Virginia University School of Medicine in 2016. Her research focuses on
C. burnetii pathogenesis, immunology, vaccinology, Q fever, animal modeling, guinea pigs, and bacterial vaccine development. Her scientific achievements are documented in 21 peer reviewed publications, including six first-author manuscripts in well respected journals. Dr. Long also contributed to the ongoing NIH COVID-19 research at RML, and she received an NIH Merit Award (2020) and an NIH Director’s Award (2021).

Each awardee will receive an honorarium of CHF 1000, an engraved plaque, and the opportunity to publish a paper free of charge in Pathogens following peer review before the end of 2022.

We would like to thank all the nominators from various fields of study for their participation and the Award Committee Members for their evaluation of the many excellent nominations.

Kind Regards,
Pathogens 2022 Award Evaluation Committee