Museums & Emerging
Pathogens in the Americas

Nine days of field surveillance, DNA extraction, Nanopore sequencing,
and bioinformatics

Applications CLOSED 📅 June 24 – July 4, 2026 📍 Maya Biosphere Reserve, Petén, Guatemala 💵 Travel & lodging sponsored for Latin American participants 🗣 Primarily English · Spanish support provided

Join MEPA Now 2024 Workshop Paper →

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9 Days in the field

3 Workshop phases

9+ Expert instructors

NSF Funded (#2302677)

Learning outcomes

Workshop objectives

Participants develop practice skills in wildlife and pathogen surveillance — from setting traps in the field to analyzing Nanopore sequencing data.

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Wildlife surveillance

Field sampling and holistic specimen preparation of small mammals for biomedical and biodiversity research.

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DNA extraction & library prep

Extract DNA from field-collected small mammals and prepare genomic sequencing libraries.

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Nanopore adaptive sampling (NAS)

Load libraries into Nanopore MinION sequencer and configure run parameters for adaptive sampling.

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Bioinformatics

Process Nanopore reads: basecalling, quality filtering, and taxonomic classification.

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One Health network-building

Connect with the MEPA Community of Practice and build cross-disciplinary partnerships across the Americas.

What is MEPA?
A virtual Community of Practice and branch of Project ECHO connecting natural history museum biorepositories with biomedical initiatives across the Americas.

About the program

Bridging museums,
genomics, and global health

MEPA aims to improve the sustainability, rigor, and replicability of pathogen surveillance in wild animals. In collaboration with Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, we lead hands-on Field+Genomics Workshops where participants conduct field-based surveillance of small mammals, perform DNA extractions and library preparation, run Nanopore Adaptive Sampling, and carry out basic bioinformatics — all in the field.

Check out our last workshop in Ecuador Learn about Project ECHO NSF award #2302677

Workshop schedule

Nine days, three phases

June 24 – July 2, 2026 · Tikal, Guatemala. Mammal trapping and specimen preparation in the field, followed by lab work and sequencing, culminating in a full bioinformatics workshop.

↓ Download Full Itinerary PDF