The venue of the meeting will be The Corum, a conference centre ideally located in the heart of Montpellier’s historic neighbourhood, easily accessed by public transportation and a very short walking distance from restaurants, cafes and hotels. Montpellier is home to the world’s oldest Medical School still in operation (12^th century) and one of the largest communities of researchers working in Ecology and Evolution in Europe, many involved in the study of the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases.

A welcome reception will take place on Sunday 14^th June  (5pm-8pm). The official program, beginning on Monday 15^th June will follow the structure of past EEID meetings: 4 scientific themes will be explored in a single plenary session. For each scientific theme, 2 invited and 4 contributed talks will be presented. Two poster sessions (each with 100+ posters) will take place on Monday 15^th and Tuesday 16^th June. The  conference dinner will take place on the evening of Tuesday 16^th June, at the Domaine des Grands Chais, a former vinyard built in the 19^th century on the outskirts of Montpellier. The traditional walk will be on Wednesday 17^th June in the hills surrounding Saint Guilhem le Desert, a medieval village, and UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated in the narrow valley of the Herault river.

The four themes are:

• 1. The crazy life of microbes (keynote speakers Stéphane Blanc, Montpellier, France, and Kimberley Seed, Berkeley, USA)
• 2. Disease control: epidemiological, ecological and evolutionary consequences (keynote speakers Jessica Metcalf, Princeton, USA and Scott Nuismer, Idaho, USA)
• 3. Diversity of host resistance to pathogens (keynote speakers Stineke van Houte, Exeter, UK and Jean-Benoit Morel, Montpellier, France)
• 4. Using genomics and immunity to infer pathogen dynamics (keynote speakers Tanja Stadler, Zurich, Switzerland and Henrik Salje, Cambridge, UK)