People Type: Graduate Student

Biography Dr. Matthew Buchholz is a post-doctoral research associate at Michigan State University in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. His research interests include the management of wildlife diseases at the population scale and other disease and population ecology questions in wildlife. He has previously worked on community ecology of ticks, small mammals, and the …

Biography Karen Fuenzalida Araya is a first year PhD student in the lab of Dr. Lyric Bartholomay and Dr. Susan Paskewitz. She is an international student who obtained the Fulbright scholarship for PhD studies in the US. Karen’s research interests include ticks and tick- and vector-borne diseases. She holds a Veterinary Doctor degree (MV) and …

Biography With the ongoing spread of resistance in malaria vectors, a paradigm shift to non-chemical-based insecticides becomes inevitable. I got fascinated by Prof. Molly Duman Scheel and her team, who are currently using siRNA-mediated gene silencing tool to develop novel insecticides for mosquito vectors. I joined this team in July 2022, following my 18-year research …

Biography Dr. Murgia is a postdoctoral researcher in the Vector Biology program in the Department of Entomology at Purdue University. She earned a Ph.D. in Virology/Infectious Diseases from The Ohio State University in 2012. Subsequently, she moved to Kansas State University, where she worked as a postdoctoral researcher with high consequence animal infectious pathogens under …

Biography Tom is a first-year PhD student under co-advisors Dr. Susan Paskewitz and Dr. Lyric Bartholomay. Tom earned his B.S. in 2017 at UW-Madison where he first gained experience in vector-borne disease working on West Nile virus surveillance in Wisconsin.  He completed an MPH degree at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, during …

Biography I have broad research interests in global health, particularly pathogens that are relevant to public health. My PhD involved the use of MiSeq next-gen 16s rRNA gene and 18s rRNA gene sequencing for the detection of bacterial and protozoan communities of human health importance in domestic water in the southern Caribbean. In recent years, …