With my backgrounds in public health and medical/veterinary entomology, the Poh/Exotick Forecasting and Physiology Lab integrates a One Health framework into our research. The big question in my lab is "How do vectors utilize their environments and their hosts?" My research focuses on identifying the relationships between the vector, its hosts, and the environment and their individual roles in disease systems. I use a combination of field, molecular, ecological, and mathematical skills to investigate how arthropod vectors affect people and animals and developing integrated approaches to controlling vectors and their associated diseases. My research leverages the interactions between vectors, animal hosts, humans, and the environment as a means to prevent or control veterinary and medically-relevant vectors and vector-borne disease systems.
Much of my research today has been inspired by the work I conducted as a PhD student and as a post-doc, where I previously worked with mosquitoes, blacklegged ticks, deer keds, flies, mites, and bed bugs. But these days, I'm investigating ticks and tick-borne diseases that affect livestock and wildlife. This includes ticks and tick-borne diseases that are domestic and exotic to the US. Hence, the "ExoTICK Forecasting and Physiology Lab" name. 😏
Want to read about all of our cool research? Check out our lab publications!
Ongoing Projects
Spatial and temporal modeling of cattle fever ticks and their hosts
Equine piroplasmosis epidemiology
Experimental acquisition and transmission of tick-borne diseases
Ticks and tick-borne diseases in Zimbabwe
Previous Projects
I've worked in a variety of different systems, check 'em out below (or in the menu at the top of the page)!