Families of virology pioneers set up new scholarship for public health and veterinary students
Pedro Acha and Luis Melendez formed a tight personal and professional bond that knitted their families together and led to groundbreaking research together in virology.
Now, their families are honoring them through endowing a new scholarship at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, where Melendez served as professor of biomedical sciences from 1984 to 1994 and Acha occasionally taught as a visiting lecturer.
The Dr. Pedro Acha and Dr. Luis Melendez Scholarship will support students who have demonstrated financial need and an interest in public health, with preference given to students dual-enrolled in the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) and Master of Public Health (MPH) programs.
“It was always my husband's belief that the veterinary profession was much more open than what people realized,” said Juanita Acha, wife of Pedro Acha, who died in 1988. “They didn't just take care of dogs and cats. The veterinarian has to know so many animals and so many diseases, and how those diseases affect humans, and that was what the two of them did. They just felt that the world needed them, and they needed to help bring about better health and a better life for all of us, animals included. The two of them were completely dedicated to the veterinary profession”
The Virginia Tech ties run deeply for the two families, with two of Acha’s daughters and two of Melendez’s sons plus a granddaughter having earned Virginia Tech degrees.
Luis Melendez earned his doctorate from the University of Chile and then relocated to the United States as a recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. He became world renowned in virology through research he conducted at the University of Wisconsin and at Harvard University.
Melendez, who died in 2005, made his mark studying cancer-causing viruses in primates, isolating Herpesvirus saimiri from squirrel monkeys in 1968 -- harmless to the squirrel monkeys but causing fatal lymphomas and leukemias in other primate species. It was the first herpesvirus proven to cause cancer in primates, creating a crucial model for studying human leukemia and lymphoma viruses, as well as influencing HIV research.
Acha, orginally from Peru, was driven in his research by the concept that human health is inextricably linked to animal health — a philosophy now known as One Health, which he championed decades before the term became popular.
As the chief of veterinary public health for the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Acha convinced Latin American governments that controlling rabies, brucellosis and tuberculosis in animals was the best way to protect people. His textbook "Zoonoses and Communicable Diseases Common to Man and Animals," co-authored with Boris Szyfres, remains a definitve reference in the field.
“One of the research papers that I've been reading lists my dad as one of the first people to think of One Health, that his ideas were the basis of One Health,” said Marta Acha ’85 DVM ‘88, daughter of Pedro Acha, and a Virginia Tech alumna who served as a U.S. Army veterinarian and now owns Acha Relief Veterinary Services in Round Hill, Virginia. “And I think it was just unique because it was coming from a veterinarian. But he never thought of himself as just as a veterinarian. He thought like a physician, as a specialized veterinarian. He was always thinking about the interaction of health between animals and humans. And that's the basis the zoonosis books that he's written.”
Acha and Melendez connected through their work with PAHO in the 1970s and early 1980s.
“They became best friends, basically, and have a lot of their professional careers together,” said Simone Acha ‘87, another of Pedro Acha’s five daughters and a Virginia Tech alumna. “As a result, the families blended and bonded over the years. My mother and Dr. Melendez’s wife Sylvia, were very, very close themselves. And they traveled together. They did parties, family events, everything. So it was really a true, strong relationship, but it was first bonded in their passion for public health.”
“It was their personal partnership that really drove a lot of their successes,” said Andres Melendez M.S. ‘88, one of the three sons of Luis Melendez and a professor of nanoscale science and engineering at the University of Albany. “They were sort of tied to the hip in terms of what they believed and what they wanted to do, and that drove a lot of their discoveries in zoonotic diseases in the Western Hemisphere.
“Their close ties, with family and professionally, really helped them put together a comprehensive view of science and public health, Not only as they looked in detail at the at the nitty gritty in terms of the basic research, but also looked at a lot at the more comprehensive scope of public health.”
Melendez’s brother Jose graduated Virginia Tech in 1980 with a bachelor of science in communications and his daughter Kacie graduated in 2022 with a bachelor of science in economics.
At PAHO, Acha handled epidemiological surveillance while Meléndez brought laboratory precision to public health policy. Their partnership proved critical for establishing international protocols on animal movement.
“This scholarship was established to honor their memory and their legacy, the contributions they made for the founding of the veterinary school, but also and the foundation they set in public health,” Juanita Acha said. “That’s what we're really trying to honor, their legacy and their passion for public health. And that's what we're looking to help foster in the next generations to come, these young veterinarians with that same passion of pursuing the One Health mission.”
