Research

Overview:  My work centers around the interactions of wildlife and their environments. For my dissertation, I am primarily focused on urban spaces and use cross-cutting methodologies, including framing my research around One Health, social theory, and environmental justice. The breath of my interest is reflected in my PhD committee, which is made up of an array of disciplines, including my PI, Dr. Nyeema C. Harris, a wildlife ecologist, economist Dr. Ken Gillingham, climate change and public health scholar Dr. Daniel Carrión, and urban ecologist and forester, Dr. Morgan Grove. 

One Health: The Philadelphia Rodent Study PRS leverages my wildlife and well-being research background. Studying the drivers of urban rodents and their pathogens in Philadelphia, I can begin to parse out how novel dynamics of cities, like energy burden, shape rodent communities and the potential for zoonotic disease spread. For this research, I lead rodent/scat sampling across 15 different Philadelphia neighborhoods. To answer these questions, I am using different statistical and molecular techniques. This work would not be possible without collaboration, including the Philadelphia Data Lab, Friends of Gorgas Park, Dion Lerman, Dr. Marieke Rosenbaum, Dr. Fedrico Costa, and many, many more. 

 Social Theory: Studying wildlife insolation is no longer enough, especially in cities. Ignoring the legacy effects of policy and actions that are detrimental to different areas means ignoring critical drivers of behavioral and phenotypic characteristics of wildlife. I explore the harms of ignoring these legacies, erasing them, or hyper-focusing on particular narratives. Haerms include the lack of funding to explore scientific questions in particular areas, oversimplification of questions, or misrepresenting communities in scientific studies. Ensuring these harms do not occur means doing science differently, which means emphasizing community voices and ultimately being comfortable with being uncomfortable. 

Solutions: For me finding casual relationships between well-being, the environmnet, and wildlife is great. But, extrodinary science means going beyond dessimnating to implementation. We owe it to tax payers who support scientific research. My work aspries to implemnt retrofitting, greening, and other climate soultions that protects  pathogens and dangerous temeratures so everyone can live helthy fulfilling lives.