🎓Post-Doctoral🎓
-Post-doc fellowship-
I am a disease ecologist interested in how global change may drive changes in disease transmission and disease risk. For my research, I have been examining how global climate change can impact geographic distributions of various vector-borne diseases, particularly focused on ticks and tick-borne diseases.
I obtained my bachelor’s degree in the Department of Zoology, University of Tripoli, Libya, in 2010. During my undergraduate studies, my research focused on leishmaniasis vectors (sandfly species) in Libya. I participated in two major field efforts, one of which was for my undergraduate research project. I collaborated with CDC Tripoli to identify my samples to the species level via their information resources and experience. Based on that experience, I was granted the opportunity to work with the Department of Vector Biology at CDC Tripoli, where I worked for a year after I graduated from my university. In my free time, I like to spend my time with my family playing with my daughter and son. I also love playing soccer, which is my favorite sport.
In 2013, I was granted a scholarship from the Ministry of Higher Education of Libya, to support my studies towards obtaining a master’s degree in ecology. Professor Townsend Peterson accepted me as a master’s student under his direction at the University of Kansas, and I began my studies in Fall 2015.
In 2017, I have continued my PhD studies to focus my research attention on the geographic ecology of ticks, particularly in the face of warming/changing climates worldwide. I have used the most up-to-date tools in ecological niche modeling (ENM) and geographic information systems (GIS) to design and analyze distributions of multiple tick species.
For the past two years (2020-2022), I have been working with field sampling of ticks and tick-borne pathogens, as part of a large-scale, NSF-funded project run by my dissertation advisor, Prof. Town Peterson.
In 2023. I started my postdoctoral fellowship at Virginia Tech, and here I am focusing on a directly transmitted viral disease, hantavirus, in relation to the small-mammal hosts in the United States.