Maria A. Diuk-Wasser

BIOGRAPHY: Professor Diuk-Wasser is a disease ecologists interested in elucidating how anthropogenic changes (land use and climate change) impact the emergence of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. Her research program investigates how pathogen interactions at multiple scales (within host, population, community and regionally) influence the recent emergence of tick-borne pathogens. She integrates laboratory, field and a range of modeling approaches to understand pathogen dynamics and predict human disease risk. Her focus study systems currently include tick-borne diseases in the US, mosquito-borne diseases in the US and Colombia and multiple zoonoses in New York City, within a coupled natural-human system framework. She has also worked on West Nile virus, malaria, dengue and leptospirosis. Intersecting areas of interest include include landscape ecology, population and community ecology, evolutionary ecology, behavioral ecology and conservation biology.