David Kennedy

Assistant Professor of Biology

David Kennedy

Research Summary

Ecology and evolution of infectious diseases, with particular interest in how disease dynamics influence pathogen emergence, virulence evolution, and drug or vaccine resistance.

Huck Graduate Students

Huck Affiliations

Links

Most Recent Publications

Spillover rate is not predictive of host jump risk

Brandon Simony, David Kennedy, 2024, bioRXiv

Exceptions to the rule: When does resistance evolution not undermine antibiotic therapy in human bacterial infections?

Amrita Bhattacharya, Anton Aluquin, David A. Kennedy, 2024, Evolution Letters on p. 478-493

Detecting and quantifying heterogeneity in susceptibility using contact tracing data

Beth M. Tuschhoff, David A. Kennedy, 2024, PLoS Computational Biology

Developing transmissible vaccines for animal infections

Daniel Streicker, Megan Griffiths, Rustom Antia, Laura Bergner, Peter Bowman, Maria Dos Santos De Moraes, Kevin Esvelt, Mike Famulare, Amy Gilbert, Biao He, Michael Jarvis, David Kennedy, Jennifer Kuzma, Carolyne Wanyonyi, Christopher Remien, Tonie Rocke, Kyle Rosenke, Courtney Schreiner, Justin Sheen, David Simons, Ivet Yordanova, James Bull, Scott Nuismer, 2024, Science on p. 275-277

Comparative analysis of multiple consensus genomes of the same strain of Marek's disease virus reveals intrastrain variation

Alejandro Ortigas-Vasquez, Utsav Pandey, Daniel W. Renner, Chris D. Bowen, Susan J. Baigent, John Dunn, Hans Cheng, Yongxiu Yao, Andrew Fraser Read, Venugopal Nair, David A. Kennedy, Moriah L. Szpara, 2024, Virus Evolution

Death is overrated: the potential role of detection in driving virulence evolution

David A. Kennedy, 2023, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Pathogen evolution during vaccination campaigns

Troy Day, David Kennedy, Andrew F. Read, Sylvain Gandon, 2022, PLoS Biology on p. e3001804

Developing an empirical model for spillover and emergence: Orsay virus host range in Caenorhabditis

Clara Shaw, David A. Kennedy, 2022, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

What you need to know about the new COVID-19 variants

David Kennedy, 2021,

What the reproductive number R<sub>0</sub> can and cannot tell us about COVID-19 dynamics

Clara Shaw, David Kennedy, 2021, Theoretical Population Biology on p. 2-9

Most-Cited Papers

Imperfect vaccination can enhance the transmission of highly virulent pathogens

Andrew F. Read, Susan J. Baigent, Claire Powers, Lydia B. Kgosana, Luke Blackwell, Lorraine P. Smith, David A. Kennedy, Stephen W. Walkden-Brown, Venugopal K. Nair, 2015, PLoS Biology on p. e1002198

Why does drug resistance readily evolve but vaccine resistance does not?

David A. Kennedy, Andrew F. Read, 2017, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Potential drivers of virulence evolution in aquaculture

David A. Kennedy, Gael Kurath, Ilana L. Brito, Maureen K. Purcell, Andrew F. Read, James R. Winton, Andrew R. Wargo, 2016, Evolutionary Applications on p. 344-354

Why the evolution of vaccine resistance is less of a concern than the evolution of drug resistance

David Kennedy, Andrew F. Read, 2018, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on p. 12878-12886

Monitor for COVID-19 vaccine resistance evolution during clinical trials

David Kennedy, Andrew F. Read, David A. Kennedy, 2020, PLoS Biology

Industry-Wide Surveillance of Marek's Disease Virus on Commercial Poultry Farms

David A. Kennedy, Christopher Cairns, Matthew J. Jones, Andrew S. Bell, Rahel M. Salathé, Susan J. Baigent, Venugopal K. Nair, Patricia A. Dunn, Andrew F. Read, 2017, Avian Diseases on p. 153-164

What the reproductive number R<sub>0</sub> can and cannot tell us about COVID-19 dynamics

Clara Shaw, David Kennedy, 2021, Theoretical Population Biology on p. 2-9

Effects of multiple sources of genetic drift on pathogen variation within hosts

David Kennedy, Greg Dwyer, 2018, PLoS Biology

Combining principal component analysis with parameter line-searches to improve the efficacy of Metropolis–Hastings MCMC

David A. Kennedy, Vanja Dukic, Greg Dwyer, 2015, Environmental and Ecological Statistics on p. 247-274

Modeling Marek's disease virus transmission: A framework for evaluating the impact of farming practices and evolution

David A. Kennedy, Patricia A. Dunn, Andrew F. Read, 2018, Epidemics on p. 85-95

News Articles Featuring David Kennedy

Sep 30, 2022

Disease outcomes differ by new host species in virus spillover experiments

Why has the SARS-CoV-2 virus ravaged the global human population, but many other animal viruses haven't? Using nematode worms as a model, researchers at Penn State conducted a set of experiments to investigate the factors influencing the disease outcomes of virus spillover events.

Full Article

Nov 29, 2021

Vaccine Makers Already Testing Their Shots Against Omicron Variant

As concerns about the new Omicron variant grow, vaccine makers say they're already working on ways to protect people against the potential new threat.

Full Article

Nov 26, 2021

Will Covid variant omicron need a new vaccine? Time and data will tell

The discovery of another coronavirus variant has raised new concerns about the ability of existing vaccines to protect against the mutating virus — and whether they’ll need to be updated.

Full Article

Nov 16, 2021

New tool weighs costs and benefits of managing evolution of pathogens and pests

Spend money now on antibiotic stewardship practices or save the money but run the risk of potentially deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria emerging later? A new economic tool can help physicians, farmers and other people whose activities may influence the evolution of biological organisms, such as pathogens and insects, decide when they should invest in evolution management strategies.

Full Article

Apr 28, 2021

Are the vaccines effective against mutant Covid variants?

India is undergoing a massive vaccination effort in the midst of a devastating rise in reported daily cases and deaths. While the main cause of the rise in cases is yet to be determined, epidemiological and virological data point to the rise of new variants of concern being a major contributing factor.

Full Article

Mar 17, 2021

How Much Should We Really Worry About the Coronavirus Variants?

Even as things look promising for summer, the coronavirus is still finding new ways to threaten our creep back to normal and our general sense of health and safety.

Full Article

Jan 15, 2021

How devastating could Brazil's 'super-covid' be? Study finds coronavirus overwhelmed the country, killing nearly 40% of hospitalized patients as fears grow its variant could ALREADY be in America

Nearly 40 percent of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Brazil died of the virus as the nation's health care system was inundated with coronavirus cases last year, a new study estimates.

Full Article

Dec 22, 2020

Why it matters that the coronavirus is changing — and what this means for vaccine effectiveness (Philadelphia Inquirer)

If this new version of the virus is here to stay, as it appears to be, what does that mean? Will this new version of the virus replace the old one? Will it be easier to catch? And, most important, will the current vaccines still be effective?

Full Article

Dec 22, 2020

Why it matters that the coronavirus is changing — and what this means for vaccine effectiveness (The Conversation)

A new variant of SARS-CoV-2 is spreading rapidly in the United Kingdom, with over 1,400 cases since September. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, generally accumulates mutations slowly over time, but this new variant had accumulated many mutations quickly.

Full Article

Dec 14, 2020

What happens if you skip the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine?

As Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine begins circulating, there is another big logistical challenge ahead: reminding people to get the second dose.

Full Article

Nov 17, 2020

Virus evolution could undermine a COVID-19 vaccine – but this can be stopped

The first drug against HIV brought dying patients back from the brink. But as excited doctors raced to get the miracle drug to new patients, the miracle melted away. In each and every patient, the drug only worked only for a while.

Full Article

Nov 11, 2020

Mutant coronaviruses found in mink spark massive culls and doom a Danish group’s research

Jens Malmkvist’s life’s work came to a dramatic end this week. An ethologist at Aarhus University, Malmkvist studies the behavior and welfare of farmed mink, with the aim of giving them a better life as they are raised for fur. But on Monday and Tuesday, all 6350 minks at the Aarhus facility were gassed as part of a nationwide cull ordered on 4 November by the Danish government.

Full Article

Nov 09, 2020

Vaccines will not be a 'silver bullet' to end Covid-19 immediately

A coronavirus vaccine won't immediately bring the pandemic to an end and scientists and officials must be honest about how long it will take to roll one out and get life back to normal, experts say.

Full Article

Nov 09, 2020

Could SARS-CoV-2 evolve resistance to COVID-19 vaccines?

Similar to bacteria evolving resistance to antibiotics, viruses can evolve resistance to vaccines, and the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 could undermine the effectiveness of vaccines that are currently under development, according to a paper published Nov. 9 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by David Kennedy and Andrew Read from Penn State.

Full Article