30 October 2023 - As COVID-19 and flu season descends on the northern hemisphere, we talk with three new research group leaders who work, among other topics, on host-virus interactions: Hsiao Han Chang at National Tsinghua University in Taiwan, Gytis Dudas at Vilnius University in Lithuania, and Hedvig Tamman at the University of Tartu in Estonia. Their work ranges from the population genetics of viral spread in vertebrate hosts, to the biology of spillover events, to the tiny arms-races between bacteria and phage. Chang is a part of the EMBO Global Investigator Network; both Dudas and Tamman were awarded EMBO Installation Grants this year to help establish and grow their laboratories.