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In the past year, as people from all over the world prepared to travel to Brazil for the Olympic games, growing concern about the Zika outbreak there kept infectious disease in the headlines. And it’s in the headlines again as it makes its way into Florida.

Infectious diseases are just one area where medicine profoundly affects quality of life. For some maladies, expensive treatments are increasingly possible while for others, vaccines and drug treatments can be inexpensively produced in quantity.

Two VMI professors sat down with Maj. Sherri Tombarge, director of news and editorial services, to discuss these issues on the new VMI Voices podcast.

Dr. Wade Bell is a professor of biology. He studies mechanisms that govern behavior and development of single-celled organisms, like germs. Before coming to VMI, he worked in laboratories that studied viral disease, and he also has experience in mosquito ecology. He is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force.

Dr. Atin Basuchoudhary teaches microeconomics and game theory in the Department of Economics and Business. His scholarly interests apply economic and mathematical methods to issues including social cooperation and conflict, the impact of legal and social institutions on behavior, cybersecurity, and epidemiology.

More on this Topic

U.S. Centers for Disease Control

World Health Organization – Zika

U.S. Centers for Disease Control – Zika