Veterinary Student Opportunities: Janet Foley, Tick-borne diseases
Summer veterinary students have several opportunities from which they can choose a summer project. The emphasis in the laboratory is disease ecology, epidemiology, and theory of infectious diseases, primarily in vector-host-pathogen systems although there are several non-vector transmitted diseases being studied as well. Students should expect to work every day all day, learn laboratory and/or field skills appropriate to their interests and project, and meet with Dr. Foley as early as possible (preferably in the spring) to confirm a project. Skills will be acquired through work with other students, technicians, and faculty in the laboratory; once a veterinary student is comfortable, they may expect to spend much of the rest of the summer obtaining data relevant to their project, analyzing the data with faculty supervision, and hopefully prepare it for publication.
Projects currently underway in which a veterinary student could develop a summer project:
1. Plague epidemiology, including host determinants of infection, methods of diagnosis, in vitro infection, and spatial and mathematical modeling. There are several opportunities within this project although restrictions on select agents and high risk mean that summer veterinary students will not work with Y. pestis per se.
2. “Ehrlichia” or Anaplasma phagocytophilum and Borrelia burgdorferi ecology. Several studies are underway including characterization of canine disease due to these bacteria, phylogenetic analysis of one of the rodent specialist ticks, and rodent population dynamics.
3. Infectious diseases in animal shelters, including epidemiology and pathogenesis of respiratory pathogens in dogs and diarrhea-causing pathogens in dogs and cats.
4. Spread of infectious diseases, mathematical modeling, and spatial mapping of disease in coral in the Caribbean.
Further information is available by email at: jefoley@ucdavis.edu.