Co-Founder

Research background and interest

I am interested in understanding the physiological, genetic, and environmental factors that drive variation in infection susceptibility and host-microbe interactions. I began working in this field as a graduate student using the model organism Drosophila melanogaster, in which I investigated the trade-off between reproduction and immune defense in female flies. As a postdoc, I shifted my focus to the mosquito microbiota and its potential role as an ecological driver of variation in vector-borne disease transmission. I joined the faculty in the Entomology Department at The Ohio State University in 2018. My laboratory is currently investigating interactions between nutrition and the microbiome, the effects of mating on immunity in disease vector mosquitoes, the role of mosquito tolerance to infection in human pathogen transmission, and the role of the microbiota in establishment and breeding of invasive mosquito species.