Disease Vector Ecology
A lot of people did not understand why I chose the field of vector-borne disease for my research––a field that put me in close proximity to the very things that nearly everyone avoids. It started during my undergraduate degree at Westminster College, PA. My epidemiology professor taught me about tick and mosquito biology, and I greatly admired her as a professor. Wanting to help people but not wanting to go to medical school, I chose the path of public health and infectious disease research. While at Westminster, I collected mosquito eggs using oviposition cups at the local Field Station, I pulled ticks from severed deer heads during hunting season, and I learned mosquito identification techniques. During my senior year, I had an independent study where I analyzed patient records of Lyme Disease from an infectious disease clinic, comparing patient symptoms and mapping locations of tick bite acquisition.
Following graduation, I took a 1 year internship at the Tennessee Department of Health in Nashville. While here, I used qRT-PCR to test mosquitoes from across the state for West Nile, Flanders, and St. Louis Encephalitis viruses. I trapped adult mosquitoes using BG, Gravid, and CDC light traps, and I collected eggs using oviposition cups. I improved my mosquito identification skills and learned how to hatch and rear mosquito eggs to adulthood. By this point, I was ready to take the skills to graduate school.
In the Fall of 2018, I started a Master's degree at Cornell in a new program that paired entomology with public health, specifically teaching about disease vectors. For my thesis, I spent a summer on Staten Island, NYC collecting tick species from different public parks to understand tick species distribution and ecology. This ecological study was paired with a human behavioral study where I recorded human movement in the public park spaces to understand how park visitors were utilizing spaces with varying levels of tick risk. Finally, I administered Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice (KAP) surveys to understand the level of knowledge that park visitors had about ticks and tick prevention and whether this knowledge affected their behavior (in the form of performing tick checks).
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In 2020, I moved to Delaware to work for Fish and Wildlife (in the division of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation). Here, I routinely sampled areas around the state for adult and larval mosquitoes, informing whether pesticide intervention was necessary. I operated truck-mounted foggers in the evenings to relieve select neighborhoods of adult mosquitoes and used backpack sprayers with larvicide to target immature stages in waterbodies. I also answered specific public service requests to survey properties for mosquitos habitats, treating them if necessary. Furthermore, I managed sentinel chickens for West Nile Virus testing. During this time, I also worked with the new state tick biologist to survey 12 public parks for ticks across the state, collecting and identifying tick species.
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In February 2021, I moved back to Upstate New York in Syracuse to work in a tick lab at Upstate Medical University with the goal of beginning graduate school in the Fall. During this time, I received, identified, and tested ticks from across New York for a panel of pathogens as part of a citizen science tick testing program. My research also focused heavily on Powassan virus, a rare, neurological tick virus in the United States with unclear reasons for its ecological hotspots. To study Powassan Virus, I sampled for ticks in known hotspots and trapped small mammals to understand tick hosts and virus reservoirs. Unfortunately, the PhD program was not ideal for my interests, taking me down a path that was more focused on human pathology rather than environmental health, so I transferred to the nearby SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry where I would, instead, focus my research on climate change, the major factor driving the expansion of disease vectors.
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