about me

disease ecology, ecosystem health, data science

Broadly, I am interested in how feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes vary across biological scales to affect the outcomes of emerging infectious disease as well as the effect of seasonality on host-pathogen dynamics. The primary motivation of my research is to advance and integrate our understanding of eco-evolutionary principles to decision-making on disease mitigation and conservation initiatives. Combining field-based investigations with large, public datasets, I mainly explore how host and pathogen demography interact with environmental factors to structure patterns of disease and population outcomes.

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I am currently a Postdoc with the Carver Research Group at the University of Georgia where I am working to characterize the contribution of seasonality to wombat-mange dynamics. I completed my PhD in the Langwig Lab at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University where I worked on bats affected by white-nose syndrome, an emerging fungal disease that caused severe population declines across North America. My dissertation focused on the drivers and population-level consequences of sex-biased infections in collaboration with state and federal scientists and academics across multiple institutions. I have also worked within field systems to examine shifting adaptive traits with disease phase and exposure of wildlife communities to SARS CoV-2.