Working together to protect the Midwest from ticks, mosquitoes, and the diseases they carry
Biography Nicole L. Achee, PhD, is a Medical Entomologist (Research Professor) within the Department of Biological Sciences and holds a joint Associate Professor appointment in the Eck Institute for Global Health at the University of Notre Dame. She has a combined 20 years of experience in vector behavior research related to the epidemiology and control …
Biography Henry (Rique) Campa, III, Ph.D. is a Senior Associate Dean in the Graduate School and a Professor of Wildlife Ecology in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University (MSU) and a Certified Wildlife Biologist® in The Wildlife Society (TWS). As a Senior Associate Dean, he develops, implements, and evaluates career and …
Biography John Grieco, PhD, Medical Entomologist (Research Professor) within the Department of Biological Sciences and holds a joint Associate Professor appointment in the Eck Institute for Global Health at the University of Notre Dame. He currently manages a multidisciplinary research program with a focus on the biology, ecology and transmission dynamics of vector-borne illness. He …
Biography Across the US and around the world, cities spend enormous amounts of time, money, and effort on large-scale efforts to kill mosquito adults and larvae. Justin Harbison has worked on mosquito control in Kenya, California, Illinois, and beyond, and his research suggests that at least some of those resources are not doing what what …
Biography Despite the devastating impact of vector mosquitoes on human society, we know very little about mosquito development. 15 years ago, I began to use my training as a comparative arthropod developmental biologist to address this gap in our knowledge of mosquito biology. We first developed methods to pursue siRNA-mediated gene silencing to study development …
Biography Rebecca Smith is an infectious disease epidemiologist with a focus on modeling to predict control program efficacy. She is particularly interested in the potential interactions between multiple diseases in the same population, a problem that is highly applicable to tick-borne diseases. Her role in the center is to translate the prediction models for vector-borne …
Biography Jean Tsao has over 20 years of experience studying Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease (LD), and its vector, the blacklegged tick. Her research includes both basic science (what are the ecological factors that affect how Borrelia and ticks are distributed across the landscape?) and practical public health (where are areas that are the most …
Biography Dr. Edward D. “Ned” Walker is a professor of entomology and microbiology at Michigan State University. He serves as the PI of the Michigan State University contribution to the MCE-VBD. His interests include surveillance for vector-borne diseases, analysis of landscape and environment associations with risk of establishment and perpetuation of disease foci, and …