The study of seemingly obscure animal viruses has led to major advances in medicine and research. This talk will describe work in the Stenglein lab involving the discovery and characterization of viruses causing disease in animals, and the unexpected lessons learned along the way. Mark Stenglein is an Assistant Professor in the Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology Department at Colorado State University. Dr. Stenglein's training bridges computing and biology and he has deep roots in both areas. In addition to a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology, Dr. Stenglein has formal training in mathematics and computer science, and worked for 6 years for an aerospace engineering company writing analytics software. His doctoral research focused on innate immune anti-viral defense systems. As a postdoc, he developed and used metagenomic sequencing and computational methods to identify and characterize the cause of infectious diseases of unknown etiology. The Stenglein lab continues to apply a blend of techniques to the study of infectious diseases. We are interested in questions related to disease etiology and ecology, and pathogen evolution.