NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow (previously PhD student)
I am broadly interested in applying ecological methods and theory to conservation problems. My training and continued interests focus on combining methods in disease ecology, quantitative ecology, and mammalian ecology to address issues of human-wildlife conflict and the impacts of environmental disturbance on species interactions, populations, and communities. As an undergraduate, I worked in a variety of field and lab settings investigating animal health and behavior including a field course in the Panamanian rainforest and a biomedical research institute (MMCRI). Most recently, I completed my master’s at the University of Michigan where I was involved in two projects in central Kenya investigating the impacts of land-use change on the interplay between zoonotic disease, wildlife, and human-wildlife conflict.
As a graduate student in the Levi lab, I will be addressing the role of land-use change and biodiversity loss as drivers of infectious disease dynamics across a gradient of deforestation and forest fragmentation in the Brazilian Amazon. This work is particularly exciting because it has implications for both bettering our understanding of basic ecology as well as for guiding conservation efforts.