Maria Diuk-Wasser
PhD
Dr. Maria Diuk-Wasser is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution & Environmental Biology at Columbia University. She earned a PhD in Biology from the University of California, Los Angeles and completed her post-doctoral training in Epidemiology & Public Health at Yale University. She was an Assistant Professor in the Division of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health before moving to her current position at Columbia.
Dr. Diuk-Wasser is interested in elucidating the environmental and anthropogenic factors driving the emergence of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. The research at her laboratory, the Eco-Epidemiology Lab, integrates laboratory, field and a range of modeling approaches to predict human disease risk. Her current focus is on how pathogen interactions at multiple scales (within host, population, community and regionally) influence the recent emergence of tick-borne pathogens in the United States. In endemic areas, she studies how human behavior and landscape modification influence human infection and disease. Her current research focuses on tick-borne pathogens, but she has also worked on West Nile virus, malaria, dengue and leptospirosis. Other research interests include landscape ecology, population and community ecology, evolutionary ecology, behavioral ecology and conservation biology.
Dr. Diuk-Wasser is a Collaborator on the grant.