Tela Zembsch is a research specialist at the MCE-VBD. She has worked in a variety of roles for the center starting in 2017 as a summer field intern, and later as a Master of Entomology student studying the coinfection prevalence of Babesia species and Borrelia burgdorferi in Ixodes scapularis. In addition, she led the efforts to map the distribution and presence of Ixodes scapularis to the county level in Wisconsin and helped develop small mammal handling and tracking techniques to better understand key reservoir species for tick-borne diseases.