In a press release this week, it was announced that Professor Gregg Mitman had received a coveted Advanced Investigator Grant from the European Research Council. Mitman is a Professor of History of Science, Medical History, and Environmental Studies at UW-Madison, and is an affiliated researcher with the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society at LMU Munich in Germany. ERC Advanced Investigator Grants are each worth up to 2.5 million euros over 5 years, and are intended for established researchers in all disciplines who wish to undertake highly ambitious and innovative projects that promise to break new ground in their respective fields. Mitman received his grant for the project “Bloodborne: Hot Zones, Disease Ecologies, and the Changing Landscape of Environment and Health in West Africa.” The project will examine the relationships between environmental change and the emergence of new threats to public health from multiple perspectives. According to the press release, the project will “set out to elucidate how the economic interests of the Western world led to new insights into the ecology of infectious diseases, while at the same time disrupting the interrelationships between the environment and it’s flora and fauna in ways that favored the emergence of new pathogens.” To read more, visit LMU Munich’s news post. Congratulations to Professor Mitman on this momentous opportunity for research and scholarship!