As the 2024-2025 school year comes to a close, we have much to celebrate! Having defended their honours theses and freshly graduated, Julia and Shawn will be returning to the lab as graduate students this coming fall. We have also welcomed three new lab members: Master’s Student Sydney Dam, Associate Researcher Amanda Zimmerman, and Research Assistant Sara Gunderson (also having defended her honours thesis and freshly graduated)!

Lastly, lab members Sydney and Reilly will be attending the Canadian Association of Veterinary Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine (CAVEPM) at the University of Calgary. While attending CAVEPM, Sydney will give a poster presentation for her scoping review on the ecological factors that influence the survival, reproduction, and establishment of Culicoides spp. This review will provide the foundation for further research, including the development of a species distribution model. Reilly will be presenting a model for the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) between Ontario dairy herds, as well as evaluating the risk of spillover into agricultural workers.

We look forward to sharing more details regarding all of the exciting and diverse research currently underway in the Mathematical Epidemiology Lab!

math.epi.lab