This REU Site award to the University of Georgia (UGA), located in Athens, GA, will support the training of 10 undergraduate students for 10 weeks during each summer in 2027 - 2029. It is anticipated that a total of 30 students will be trained in the program. Students will be immersed in an interdisciplinary environment and trained by mentors to conduct research at the frontiers of infectious disease ecology. Students will investigate research questions from a range of experimental and quantitative perspectives, including field-based, lab-based, mathematical, and computational approaches to better understand causes and consequences of infectious disease. The research projects will use different systems to analyze disease including genes and cells, whole organisms, host populations, and broader ecological communities. Program activities will include student-led lab tours, research presentations, paper discussions, computational workshops, and a final research symposium. Students will learn how research is conducted by actively engaging in all phases of project development, and many students will present their work externally at professional scientific conferences and/or earn co-authorship on peer-reviewed scientific publications. Assessment of this program will be completed through the Undergraduate Research Student Self-Assessment (URSSA), supplemented by specialized annual surveys administered by program directors. Students should apply to the REU site using NSF ETAP (Educat