lab head
Daniel Becker, Principal Investigator
Daniel is an Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences. He received his PhD in ecology from the University of Georgia, followed by postdoctoral research on pathogen spillover at Montana State University and by an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellowship on animal migration at Indiana University. He is a National Geographic Explorer, member of The Lancet-PPATS Commission on Prevention of Viral Spillover, and co-PI of the NSF BII Verena Institute.
Interests: zoonoses, environmental change, mathematical models, ecoimmunology, animal movement, macroecology
email, CV, twitter, bsky, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Publons, he/him
postdoctoral researchers
Amanda Vicente-Santos, NSF Postdoctoral Fellow
Amanda is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Biological Sciences, working on comparative studies of bat immunity as part of our NSF BII with Verena. She has studied Neotropical bats for over 15 years as a model system for host–pathogen coevolution and anthropogenic impacts, using a combination of fieldwork, molecular methods, spatial analysis, and theory. As a Fulbright Scholar from Costa Rica, Amanda received her PhD from Emory University before joining OU.
Interests: disease ecology, host–pathogen coevolution, ecoimmunology, anthropogenic impacts
email, twitter, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, she/her
Amanda Vicente-Santos, NSF Postdoctoral Fellow
Amanda is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Biological Sciences, working on comparative studies of bat immunity as part of our NSF BII with Verena. She has studied Neotropical bats for over 15 years as a model system for host–pathogen coevolution and anthropogenic impacts, using a combination of fieldwork, molecular methods, spatial analysis, and theory. As a Fulbright Scholar from Costa Rica, Amanda received her PhD from Emory University before joining OU.
Interests: disease ecology, host–pathogen coevolution, ecoimmunology, anthropogenic impacts
email, twitter, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, she/her
Molly Simonis, IC Postdoctoral Fellow
Molly is an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research focuses on cross-species transmission dynamics of DNA and RNA viruses in co-roosting Neotropical bats as well as the health and immunology of North American bats. Before coming to OU, Molly completed her PhD at Wright State University, where she researched how long-term pathogen exposure impacts host ecology and physiology using big brown bats and white-nose syndrome as a model study system.
Interests: wildlife health, disease ecology, ecoimmunology, bat conservation, trait changes
email, website, twitter, bsky, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, she/her
Molly Simonis, IC Postdoctoral Fellow
Molly is an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research focuses on cross-species transmission dynamics of DNA and RNA viruses in co-roosting Neotropical bats as well as the health and immunology of North American bats. Before coming to OU, Molly completed her PhD at Wright State University, where she researched how long-term pathogen exposure impacts host ecology and physiology using big brown bats and white-nose syndrome as a model study system.
Interests: wildlife health, disease ecology, ecoimmunology, bat conservation, trait changes
email, website, twitter, bsky, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, she/her
Briana Betke, NSF Postdoctoral Fellow
Briana is a NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, working on predicting host–virus associations in the context of bats and anthropogenic roosting ecology. Prior to coming to OU, Briana received her PhD from the University of Texas in Austin and was part of the inaugural Fellows-in-Residence cohort with Verena. Her postdoctoral research will continue developing machine learning algorithms for studying the bat–virus network and will test predictions with bat fieldwork in the US.
Interests: disease ecology in wildlife and humans, urban ecology, OneHealth, environmental change
email, website, lab, twitter, Google Scholar, she/her
B. R. Ansil, HFSP Postdoctoral Fellow
Ansil recently completed his PhD at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in India, where he is currently a senior research fellow. His PhD focused on zoonotic bacterial pathogens in small mammals under landscape change. Ansil was awarded a Human Frontiers Science Program postdoctoral fellowship to study interactions between physiological stress and viral shedding in Neotropical fruit bat species, in collaboration with Arinjay Banerjee at VIDO for in vitro experiments.
Interests: disease ecology, biodiversity, wildlife microbiomes, zoonotic pathogens, stress–virus interactions
email, twitter, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, he/him
research staff
Beckett Olbrys, Research Technician
Beck is a research technician in the School of Biological Sciences. He is interested in how anthropogenic activities impact viral prevalence and host switching. Prior to OU, Beck received his BS in Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology from Colorado State University, where he worked in an agricultural laboratory as a technician and data analyst. At OU, Beck runs our coronavirus analyses across multiple bat systems and assists with other bat-related pathogen and immunity analyses.
Interests: disease ecology, conservation, land-use change, zoonoses
email, twitter, he/him
Beckett Olbrys, Research Technician
Beck is a research technician in the School of Biological Sciences. He is interested in how anthropogenic activities impact viral prevalence and host switching. Prior to OU, Beck received his BS in Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology from Colorado State University, where he worked in an agricultural laboratory as a technician and data analyst. At OU, Beck runs our coronavirus analyses across multiple bat systems and assists with other bat-related pathogen and immunity analyses.
Interests: disease ecology, conservation, land-use change, zoonoses
email, twitter, he/him
graduate students
Lauren Lock, PhD Candidate
Lauren is a PhD candidate in the School of Biological Sciences. She is interested in how wildlife disease dynamics differ between fragmented and connected habitats. Her PhD investigates this using metagenomic methods in Neotropical bats in Belize and is developing metagenomic methods in the TABR system. Prior to OU, Lauren earned her BS in Biology and MS in Bioinformatics from Juniata College, followed by work in a clinical laboratory as a technician and quality manager.
Interests: wildlife disease ecology, molecular biology, microbiology, landscape ecology, infectious diseases
email, website, twitter, bsky, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, she/her
Lauren Lock, PhD Candidate
Lauren is a PhD candidate in the School of Biological Sciences. She is interested in how wildlife disease dynamics differ between fragmented and connected habitats. Her PhD investigates this using metagenomic methods in Neotropical bats in Belize and is developing metagenomic methods in the TABR system. Prior to OU, Lauren earned her BS in Biology and MS in Bioinformatics from Juniata College, followed by work in a clinical laboratory as a technician and quality manager.
Interests: wildlife disease ecology, molecular biology, microbiology, landscape ecology, infectious diseases
email, website, twitter, bsky, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, she/her
Taylor Verrett, PhD Candidate
Taylor is a PhD candidate in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. She received her BS in Wildlife and Fisheries Science from Texas A&M University, where she studied avian malaria, and then worked with birds locally and in the Galápagos as a research technician. Before coming to OU, Taylor did her MS on bat–bat fly associations at Western Kentucky University. Her PhD research focuses on interactions between migration, urbanization, and infectious disease dynamics in songbirds.
Interests: disease dynamics and ecology, molecular ecology, urban ecology, host–parasite associations
email, twitter, bsky, ResearchGate, she/her
Meagan Allira, MS Student
Meagan is a MS student in the School of Biological Sciences. They received their BS in Microbiology from Colorado State University, where they worked on developing intestinal epithelial cell lines of Artibeus jamaicensis, before leading rodent surveys with USDA APHIS and phenology studies of Myotis volans with CSU. Their MS is adapting flow cytometry tools to wildlife field studies and assessing the seasonality of cellular immunity in migratory TABR in our western Oklahoma sites.
Interests: immunology, virology, bat migration, small mammals, transmission dynamics
email, website, twitter, bsky, ResearchGate, they/them
Kristin Dyer, MS Student
Kristin is a MS student in the School of Biological Sciences. She earned her BS in Wildlife Biology from Texas State University, worked on many bat and reptile projects, and was our jack-of-all-trades technician at OU from 2021–2023. Kristin's MS research follows work began during her technician position, assessing changes in TABR migration timing in Oklahoma and Texas using both radar and MOTUS as well as how this migration affects bat–bat fly–Bartonella dynamics.
Interests: bat and herpetofauna conservation, disease ecology, animal movement, tracking technology, ectoparasites
email, twitter, ResearchGate, she/her
Caroline Cummings, PhD Student
Caroline is a PhD student in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. She received her BSA as a Polymathic Scholar in Biology from the University of Texas in Austin. Caroline is part of Verena, where she is working to develop an atlas of the bat immune system and to develop trait-based predictive models to identify novel reservoir hosts of zoonotic pathogens. Her PhD research will focus on investigating how land-use change impacts bat immunity, host competence, and viral spillover risks.
Interests: ecoimmunology, macroecology, host–virus coevolution, land-use change, mathematical modeling, OneHealth
email, twitter, she/her
Alicia Roistacher, PhD Student
Alicia is a PhD student in the School of Biological Sciences. She received her BS in Biology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and her MS research at the University of Missouri compared physiology of captive big brown bats in response to diet. Prior to OU, she worked as a molecular biologist at Case Western Reserve University. Alicia is part of Verena, and her PhD takes a multi-omics approach to bat immunology and comparisons between and within bat species and populations.
Interests: bat conservation, host–pathogen coevolution, wildlife physiology, ecoimmunology, disease ecology, genetics
email, website, twitter, bsky, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, she/her
Maya Juman, Fellow-in-Residence
Maya Juman is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge and received a BS in EEB from Yale University. Her thesis focuses on relationships between fruit bat ecology and paramyxovirus emergence, using mathematical modeling and machine learning to describe patterns in viral dynamics and host–virus associations. As a Fellow-in-Residence via Verena, Maya is using machine learning models to guide viral discovery and surveillance in natural history museum specimens.
Interests: bats, henipaviruses, machine learning, niche modeling, natural history collections, conservation
email, website, twitter, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, she/her
Lucía Sánchez Trejo, PhD Student (incoming)
Lucía is a incoming PhD student in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. She completed her BSc in Biology at the University of El Salvador and did an MSc in Conservation Biology at the University of Kent, studying cross-transmission of BFDV virus and hemosporidians in endangered birds of Mauritius. She is also a member of the Bat Conservation Program of El Salvador. Her PhD will focus on virus transmission within molossid bats in Belize and exposure risk associated with use of buildings.
Interests: conservation genetics, phylogenetics, infectious diseases, endangered species, disease ecology
email, twitter, ResearchGate, GoogleScholar, she/her
honorary lab members
Alexis Heckley, PhD Candidate
Alexis is a PhD candidate at McGill University in the Department of Biology. Her dissertation investigates effects of parasitism and evolution on host dispersal and disease dynamics in stickleback fish. Alexis received her BSc from the University of Alberta and then worked with bats as a technician in Canada and Panama. For her MSc internship, Alexis did a meta-analysis of how parasitism covaries with deforestation in Neotropical bats and is now expanding this work further.
Interests: deforestation, Neotropics, zoonotic pathogens, infectious disease dynamics, dispersal, personality
email, website, lab, twitter, she/her
Nam Lu, MS Student
Nam is an MS student in the School of Biological Sciences, advised by Paul Lawson. He earned his BS in Microbiology from OU and worked on the characterization of novel anaerobic bacteria from mammalian guts and bat guano. His MS research will focus on further characterization and cultivation of novel bacterial species from bat feces and guano, primarily centered on studying sympatric bat species in western Oklahoma and seasonally sampled Mexican free-tailed bats.
Interests: gut microbiomes, anaerobic bacteria, mammals, bacterial characterization
email, twitter, he/him
Avirup Sanyal, PhD Student
Avirup is a PhD student at Griffith University in Australia, working with the BatOneHealth team. He received his BSc in microbiology from St Xavier’s College and his MSc in virology from the National Institute of Virology, India. Avirup's PhD focuses on bacterial and viral coinfections in bats and implications for pathogen spillover. He is working with the lab on studying cophylogeny of bats with select RNA viral pathogens and how coevolutionary relationships vary geographically.
Interests: OneHealth, coinfection, pathogen communities, immunology, zoonotic viruses
email, ResearchGate, lab, he/him
undergraduate researchers
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Mackenzie Hightower (she/her)
School of Biological Sciences Interests: animal health, animal behavior, virology Mackenzie is assisting with field and molecular studies of herpesviruses and haemosporidian parasites in migratory sparrows and bats in Oklahoma. Sydney Austin (she/her)
School of Biological Sciences Interests: ornithology, evolutionary biology, taxonomy Sydney is assisting with field studies to sample overwintering migratory sparrows across both urban and non-urban habitat types in Oklahoma. Jadeyn Lindsey (she/her)
School of Biological Sciences Interests: veterinary epidemiology, animal cytology, comparative medicine Jadeyn is assisting with field, -omic, and hematology studies of bat species that differ in life-history traits across western and eastern Oklahoma. |
Jaleel Zubayr (he/him)
Public and Community Health Program Interests: zoonotic diseases, hematology, macroecology Jaleel is assisting with preliminary hematological surveys of wild bats across North America in relation to multiple intrinsic and extrinsic stressors. Marguerite Hall (she/her)
School of Biological Sciences Interests: disease ecology, animal physiology, animal behavior Marguerite is assisting with field, -omic, and hematology studies of bat species that differ in life-history traits in western and eastern Oklahoma. Presley Maddux (she/her)
Department of Anthropology Interests: evolutionary biology, population genetics, epidemiology Presley is assisting with hematology studies of bat species that differ in their life-history traits in both western and eastern Oklahoma. |
alumni
Maria Muñoz (she/her, undergraduate): currently a PhD student at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Dr. Brian Allan)
Jessie Merrifield (she/her, undergraduate): currently a MPH student at Columbia University (Dr. Maria Diuk-Wasser)
Juliana Nunes (she/her, MSc intern): currently a MS student at the University of São Paulo (Dr. Marcos Heinemann)
Allen Pau (he/him, undergraduate): currently a medical assistant with Makena Pediatrics
Gracie Hedgpeth (she/her, undergraduate): currently a PhD student at the University of Notre Dame (Dr. Jason Rohr)
Anushka Sukhadia (she/her, undergraduate): currently a PREP scholar at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Bret Demory (he/him, technician)
Jessie Merrifield (she/her, undergraduate): currently a MPH student at Columbia University (Dr. Maria Diuk-Wasser)
Juliana Nunes (she/her, MSc intern): currently a MS student at the University of São Paulo (Dr. Marcos Heinemann)
Allen Pau (he/him, undergraduate): currently a medical assistant with Makena Pediatrics
Gracie Hedgpeth (she/her, undergraduate): currently a PhD student at the University of Notre Dame (Dr. Jason Rohr)
Anushka Sukhadia (she/her, undergraduate): currently a PREP scholar at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Bret Demory (he/him, technician)
interested in joining the lab? find more information here
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