Daniel Streicker: What If We Could Stop A Virus At Its Animal Source? Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode Making Sense of 2020 MERS, Ebola, and COVID-19âthe viruses that cause these diseases likely have the same patient zero: bats. For researcher Daniel Streicker, the key to preventing an outbreak is the bats themselves. A version of this segment was originally heard in the episode, Inoculation. About Daniel Streicker Ecologist Daniel Streicker focuses his research on animal-borne diseases. He is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and head of the Streicker Group at the University of Glasgow Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health & Comparative Medicine and the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research.