“Dr. Sobral will work to further develop our growing campuswide initiative into a world-class institute that leverages the university’s interdisciplinary expertise to help solve some the planet’s pressing challenges,” Vice President for Research Alan Rudolph said. “Colorado State is well-positioned to provide high-impact solutions in the global One Health community with our established expertise in critical fields.”

These include: infectious disease and its emergence; environmental toxicology; food safety and security; sustainable agriculture and enterprise; biodiversity and ecosystem function; engineering; public health; and behavioral sciences. Adding to this heft are key state and federal agencies with local offices and established CSU partnerships, including Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

The modern One Health movement has gained significant visibility, as health experts around the world increasingly recognize the complexity and interconnectedness of today’s climactic, ecological, food security, population and public-health challenges.

Indeed, the American Medical Association and American Veterinary Medical Association have prioritized One Health work, particularly as a way to thwart effects of cross-species disease transmission, or zoonoses, with inherent ties to the environment.

That’s why interdisciplinary scientific teams must plumb connections among human, animal and environmental health, seeking insights and successful interventions at these junctures, Sobral said.

“I’m really interested in interventions and designing them for use in the real world,” he said. “If we really want to solve problems, we have to design new interventions in a human-centered manner, with beneficiaries at the table from the start.”

Sobral’s career experience exemplifies One Health. He recently served as chief science officer for Alkol Biotech, a London-based feedstock research company that develops agricultural products for biofuels. He was an assistant vice president and head of Biosystem Informatics and Human Microbial Ecology at the Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Sobral also was the founding executive and scientific director for the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, where he was a professor of plant pathology, physiology and weed science. His research at the institute focused on symbiosis from a biological perspective; he has worked in infectious disease, computational biology, bioinformatics and cyberinfrastructure.

During his first several months at CSU, Sobral will meet with stakeholders with the goals of jointly creating the One Health Institute’s purpose, establishing its values, investigating strategic partnerships, alliances, and collaborations; developing appropriate advisory boards; coordinating activities across campus and in the community; representing the university through networking and professional collaboration with external constituents, industry representatives, schools and organizations; and developing resources for programmatic growth and sustainability.

“I see my first task as learning,” he said.