Welcome to the Emerging Pathogens & Infectious Diseases Consortium
Welcome to EPIC – the Emerging Pathogens and Infectious Diseases Consortium.
EPIC brings together researchers, clinicians, and institutions across the University of Toronto and its hospital partners to advance infectious disease research and build lasting resilience against emerging threats.
This work builds on a long legacy: EPIC partners have played an integral role in infectious disease research for a century, from work that helped control diphtheria and eradicate smallpox, to today’s front-line research in antimicrobial resistance and infection control. Our collective response to COVID-19, highly pathogenic avian influenza, and mpox makes clear there’s never been a more important time to advance that work, from emerging pathogens and antimicrobial resistance to health inequities and public trust.
Building on this momentum, EPIC marshals the advanced research infrastructure and world-renowned research and training expertise of our EPIC partners to deliver an integrated, innovative response to the infectious disease challenges facing communities today and in the future.
Seven EPIC research clusters
Emerging Pathogens
Detecting and responding to new and re-emerging threats before they spread.
Antimicrobial Resistance
Protecting the effectiveness of the medicines we depend on.
Sepsis & Acute Respiratory Distress
Improving recognition and treatment when every minute counts.
Chronic Infections
Addressing the long-term burden of infections that don’t resolve.
Health Inequities
Ensuring infectious disease research and response reach everyone, equitably.
Health Systems Resilience
Building health systems that bend, not break, under infectious threats.
Mis/Disinformation & Public Trust
Strengthening public trust through clear, credible information.
EPIC News
U of T research extends real-world evidence on HPV vaccine to a group largely left out of it so far: older gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men living with HIV
September 24, 2026 By Megan Fleming When most people hear "human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine," they picture school clinics, teenage girls and cervical cancer prevention. Pranamika Khayargoli, a 2025 Emerging Pathogens & Infectious Diseases Consortium (EPIC)...
Inside EPIC’s summer of discovery: 2026 Inspire Summer Studentships
2026 EPIC Inspire Summer students alongside their mentors September 17, 2026 By Megan Fleming Every summer, the Emerging Pathogens and Infectious Diseases Consortium (EPIC) opens its network to a group of undergraduate researchers through the Inspire Summer...
U of T researchers develop innovative scalable functional screening platform for pathogen effector proteins
From left: He Leng, Mikko Taipale and Guillaume Dugied 31 August 2026 By Aideen Teeling EPIC researchers at the University of Toronto, working with colleagues in Austria, developed a scalable system to decode how proteins from viruses, bacteria and parasites disrupt...
