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
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 is a HFSP Postdoctoral Fellow, working on interactions between physiological stress and infection in Neotropical fruit bats. Prior to OU, Ansil received his PhD at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in India, working on zoonotic bacterial pathogens in small mammals under landscape change. His postdoctoral research is combining field studies, molecular and endocrine assays, epidemiological modeling, and—with Arinjay Banerjee at VIDO—in vitro experiments.
Interests: disease ecology, biodiversity, wildlife microbiomes, zoonotic pathogens, stress–virus interactions
email, twitter, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, he/him
Alexis Heckley, NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow
Alexis is a NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow, working on feedbacks between infection and both social and spatial behavior in Neotropical bats as part of our Human Frontier Science Program project. Prior to OU, Alexis completed her MSc and PhD at McGill University, working on the role of parasitism and evolution on host dispersal and disease dynamics in stickleback fish. During this time, Alexis also completed three meta-analyses in the lab on deforestation and host–parasite interactions.
Interests: deforestation, Neotropics, zoonotic pathogens, infectious disease dynamics, dispersal, personality
email, website, lab, twitter, she/her
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
Katelyn Sanchez, Research Technician
Katelyn is a research technician in the School of Biological Sciences. She received her BS in Ecology and Conservation Biology from Texas A&M University, where she studied the population genetics of Townsend’s big-eared bats. Prior to OU, Katelyn worked as a field technician with rodents, mountain goats, pikas, bats, and warblers. At OU, Katelyn manages our western Oklahoma bat project and has a joint appointment with Bat Conservation International, working on WNS projects.
Interests: bat conservation, disease ecology, conservation genetics, landscape ecology
email, twitter, she/her
Katelyn Sanchez, Research Technician
Katelyn is a research technician in the School of Biological Sciences. She received her BS in Ecology and Conservation Biology from Texas A&M University, where she studied the population genetics of Townsend’s big-eared bats. Prior to OU, Katelyn worked as a field technician with rodents, mountain goats, pikas, bats, and warblers. At OU, Katelyn manages our western Oklahoma bat project and has a joint appointment with Bat Conservation International, working on WNS projects.
Interests: bat conservation, disease ecology, conservation genetics, landscape ecology
email, twitter, she/her
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
Kristin Dyer, PhD Student
Kristin is a PhD student in the School of Biological Sciences. She earned her BS in Wildlife Biology from Texas State University and was our jack-of-all-trades technician at OU from 2021–2023. Kristin's PhD research follows work began during her technician position, assessing changes in Mexican free-tailed bat migration timing in Oklahoma and Texas using both radar and MOTUS as well as testing how long-distance migration affects bat–ectoparasite–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 focuses on integrating within-host data into diverse predictive models of bat- and bird-borne viral spillover risk.
Interests: ecoimmunology, macroecology, host–virus coevolution, 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
Lucía is a 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 focuses 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
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 is focusing on further characterization and cultivation of novel bacterial species from bat feces and guano, primarily centered on studying Mexican free-tailed bats in western Oklahoma and sympatric bat species within Alabaster Caverns.
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 and postgraduate 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. Grace George (she/her)
School of Biological Sciences Interests: epidemiology, community health, cancer biology Grace is enrolled in the FYRE program and is conducting molecular studies of Bartonella in wild molossid bats, aiming to characterize B. rochalimae. Jana Kotze (she/her)
School of Biological Sciences Interests: genomics, molecular biology Jana is assisting with molecular studies of Bartonella in wild bats and their associated ectoparasites as part of our western Oklahoma projects. |
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. Aliya Zervoudakes (she/her)
School of Biological Sciences Interests: infectious and zoonotic diseases, molecular biology, microbiology Aliya received her B.S. in Biology from OU, and she is assisting with 16S rRNA amplification in New World bats to assess pathogen communities. Rory Polson (he/him)
School of Biological Sciences Interests: genomics, molecular biology, microbiology Rory is assisting with the collection and testing of arthropod vectors for pathogens also found on songbirds as part of our Oklahoma sparrow work. Cynthia Yang (she/her)
School of Biological Sciences Interests: genomics, molecular biology, microbiology Cynthia is assisting with the collection and testing of arthropod vectors for pathogens also found on songbirds as part of our Oklahoma sparrow work. |
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
Molly Simonis (she/her, postdoctoral fellow): currently an assistant professor at Auburn University, College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
Meagan Allira (they/them, MS student): currently a research technician at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (Dr. Hayley Lanier)
Bret Demory (he/him, technician)
Jaleel Zubayr (he/him, undergraduate)
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
Molly Simonis (she/her, postdoctoral fellow): currently an assistant professor at Auburn University, College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment
Meagan Allira (they/them, MS student): currently a research technician at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (Dr. Hayley Lanier)
Bret Demory (he/him, technician)
Jaleel Zubayr (he/him, undergraduate)
interested in joining the lab? find more information here
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