Dr. Karen Fuenzalida Araya

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 a Master of Science with a mention in Zoology degree from the University of Concepción, Chile. For her master’s thesis, she worked with mites of the genus Gigatonlaelaps, an ectoparasite of the long-tailed rice rat (Oligorizomys longicaudatus), the main Hanta virus vector in Chile. She worked on the ecological, distributional, morphological, and morphometric aspects of Gigantolaelaps mites.