On 13 March, a research team consisting of six students from NEFU’s Key Laboratory of Wildlife Epidemic and Biosafety Control in Heilongjiang Province, including 2022 PhD student Chai Rong, received the official notification from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) that they had been awarded the Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR) Special Prize. The prize recognizes the exceptional contribution of NEFU students to the study of PPR in wildlife on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

The team consists of PhD students Chai Rong, Lv Jianing and Joka Dengata Lemu, and Master’s students Zhang Shuang, Fan Xin and Hu Yezhi, from the College of Wildlife Resources. The team has been conducting wildlife epidemic disease research in the alpine and severely hypoxic environment of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at an altitude of more than 4,000 meters. With the NEFU spirit of striving for excellence they overcame the tough environment, and in the end, they were selected from 83 finalist teams from around the world by their independent and innovative scientific spirit and collaborative teamwork, as well as their strong scientific capabilities, and became one of the 12 winners worldwide as the only Chinese team, and received an award of $10,000.

The role of wild petit ruminants in the epidemiology of PPR in Asia, especially in central Asia, is a current hot spot of global concern and a cognitive gap, and is the latest challenge of the Global PPR Eradication Program, a global intergovernmental cooperation program jointly advocated by FAO and WOAH (the World Organization for Animal Health). The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is located in the hinterland of Asia and has many wild petit ruminants. Since 2018, the NEFU scientific research team of Key Laboratory of Wildlife Epidemiology and Biosafety Control in Heilongjiang Province has focused on the cross-border tracing of PPR and the identification of potential wild hosts and atypical hosts of PPR on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which has initially revealed the epidemiological pattern of PPR on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and created a new theory and method for the study of natural epidemic sites and spillover of epidemic diseases. The research results have been recognized by FAO and named by the Ministry of Science and Technology as the highlight work of the 13th Five-year Key Research and Development Plan Project. It also has important implications for the research and prevention of other major human-animal diseases in the world.

The team is supervised by Professor Wang Xiaolong, Director of the Key Laboratory of Wildlife Epidemics and Biosafety Control in Heilongjiang Province.