Peter Hudson Elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh

Peter J. Hudson has been elected a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters. Hudson is the Willaman Chair in Biology, the founding director of the Penn State Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, an affiliate of the Penn State Institutes of the Environment, and the Director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State. In 2008, he was elected a Fellow of the The Royal Society, the United Kingdom's National Academy of Science.

Hudson's research combines fieldwork, laboratory studies, and mathematical modeling to explore disease dynamics — how parasites and pathogens flow through animal populations, who infects whom, which individuals are important for disease transmission, and the consequences of infection. His studies include not only the diseases that affect wildlife, but also the role of wildlife in transmitting diseases to other animals, including humans. He has been involved in a study in northern Italy on tick-borne encephalitis, a disease that causes significant mortality among children in southern and eastern Europe. Since arriving at Penn State, Hudson has initiated studies in Pennsylvania that parallel his studies conducted in Italy.

In addition, Hudson has worked extensively on the dynamics of red grouse populations in Scotland and England, where his innovative and large-scale experiments demonstrated that parasites were important in driving population cycles in this species — a fundamentally important finding in population dynamics. He also has investigated a wide range of other disease issues including tick-borne illnesses, parasites shared between hosts, and the interactions in parasite communities.

During the bovine-tuberculosis scare and the start of the foot-and-mouth epidemic, Hudson served as a scientific adviser to the Prince of Wales and to The House of Commons Standing Committee. He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Helminthology and the Journal of Ecohealth. He has been associate editor of the Journal of Animal Ecology since 1990, and was associate editor of the Journal of Wildlife Biology from 1994 to 1998. He has organized many professional conferences, including an Alpine Ecology Center meeting on zoonotic disease in 2006. Since becoming the director of the Huck Institutes, Hudson has initiated a number of new initiatives to improve academic excellence. He currently is spearheading a new initiative in genomic research within Penn State.

Among Hudson's research honors are a 2005 Carlton Herman Award from the U.S. Wildlife Disease Association and a 1985 Laurent Perrier Award for Game Conservation. In 2002, he was named an honorary member of the British Falconers Club in recognition of his research on grouse and their natural enemies. In 1992, his book, Grouse in Space and Time, was named "Book of the Year" by The Guardian in the United Kingdom. Hudson has published over 220 scientific papers and has authored or edited 5 books.

Prior to joining the Penn State faculty in July 2002, Hudson was at the University of Stirling in Scotland, where he held a Personal Chair in Animal Ecology from 1998 to 2002 and was a reader in wildlife epidemiology from 1995 to 1998. From 1979 to 1995, Hudson worked in the Highlands of Scotland as a research fellow and was in charge of research for the Upland Research Group with the Game Conservancy Trust.

In 1979, Hudson earned a doctoral degree in zoology at the University of Oxford, where he studied the population dynamics of seabirds. He earned a bachelor's degree in zoology at the University of Leeds in 1974.

Hudson and his wife Mary have three dogs and two children. They manage 90 acres of a nature-reserve woodland and keep detailed records of the area's plants and animals. He also likes riding motorcycles.