I am a third-year Ph.D. student in the department of Entomology and the laboratory of Thomas W. Scott. I was pursuing a M.S. degree in epidemiology concurrently with the Ph.D. in entomology until 2006, when I earned the masters degree. From September 2007 through July 2008 I will be in Iquitos, Peru, collecting field data for my dissertation; this study is funded by a Fulbright fellowship from the U.S. State Department.
For my dissertation, I will test the following hypothesis. Dengue intervention strategies that are targeted to (i) the individuals in an endemic population who are bitten most frequently overall by Ae. aegypti and (ii) the individuals bitten most frequently by old Ae. aegypti will reduce incidence and severe disease more efficiently than homogeneously applied interventions. Data collected during fieldwork in Iquitos, Peru will test two fundamental assumptions of my overall hypothesis: (i) during endemic transmission, an individual’s exposure to bites is linearly associated with the risk of seroconversion, and (ii) old Ae. aegypti bite young humans more often than young Ae. aegypti do. To test these assumptions, I will determine which specific people were bitten by matching DNA profiles of human blood ingested by field-caught mosquitoes to DNA profiles of study participants. I will determine the age of field-caught mosquitoes using transcriptional profile analysis. When I return to UC Davis in summer 2008, I will determine the epidemiological significance of my results through modeling exercises.
Other students in program:
Brian Butler
Stanley Langevin
Payal Maharaj
Melody Malpass
Lisa Reimer
Tara Thiemann
Win Surachetpong
Jacklyn Wong
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