I am a second-year postdoc in Sarah Hill’s group at Royal Veterinary College (London, UK). I am currently working on a BBSRC research project titled “Genomic epidemiological determination of routes of pathogenic virus transmission between farmed salmon”. My academic journey began with a master’s degree in Fish immunology at Chinese Academy of Sciences (Qingdao, China), followed by a PhD in Marine biology at the University of Marland (Baltimore, US). My PhD dissertation was to investigating interactions between climate, host life history and viral diversity in marine animals. Although my graduate studies covered immunology, virology, and molecular biology, I did not have the opportunity to take courses on virus evolution or epidemiology. I have sequenced hundreds of viral genomes with Nanopore Sequencing for my postdoctoral research project. However, I’m eager for additional training on virus evolution and epidemiology to conduct further phylogenetic and phylodynamic analyses of the viral sequences.