Heather earned BA/BS and MS degrees in English and biology from Rutgers University and Montclair State University, where she investigated the prevalence of Borrelia burgdorferi in resident and migratory bird species. Her Ph.D. work at the University of Rhode Island evaluated the use of a photo-based tick reporting system as both a surveillance method and community science education tool. After earning her doctorate, Heather combined a focus on socio-ecological tick surveillance and spatial modeling at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where she most recently completed a postdoc. There she modeled current and future distributions of four tick species of concern in Illinois using ecological niche models, surveyed numerous at-risk demographics regarding their knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions of ticks and tickborne illness, and investigated the use of eDNA for low-abundance tick field detection. At Columbia she will continue using socio-ecological approaches to disease outbreak prediction and transmission prevention using field, laboratory, and statistical modeling tools, with the aim of identifying integrative One Health solutions.
Associate Research Scientist