All members can be contacted by their UGA email address by adding their email identifier followed by ‘@uga.edu’
Richard Hall (PI; he/him)
Richard is an Associate Professor in the Odum School of Ecology, and cross-appointed in the Department of Infectious Diseases, at UGA. He is also a member of the Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases. In addition to mathematical modeling, Richard really likes birds and native plant restoration. He serves on the board of the local local chapter of the National Audubon Society and reviews bird records for eBird and the Georgia Ornithological Society.
Email: rjhall
Postdocs
John Vinson (He/him)
John is interested in community ecology of pathogen transmission, and how land use change alters transmission dynamics and zoonotic exposure risk in multi-host, multi-vector systems. He is working on a collaborative project understanding the integrated social and ecological dynamics driving transmission of Chagas Disease and leishmaniasis in rural Panama.
Email: vinsonje
Graduate students
Brendan Haile (He/him)
Brendan is interested in micro- and macroparasite interactions, and how these are altered by food subsidy. He is developing coinfection models with applications to a vole-hantavirus-helminth system in Finland. Brendan is part of the NSF IDEAS NRT program.
Email: Brendan.Haile
Izzy Ragonese (She/her)
Izzy is interested in the intersecting areas of animal behavior, spatial ecology, and anthropogenic change as they relate to disease dynamics in wild populations. Izzy‘s research is supported by the NSF IDEAS NRT and is co-advised by Sonia Altizer.
Email: Isabella.Ragonese
Megan Tomamichel (She/her)
Megan is interested in host-parasite dynamics in aquatic systems. Her previous work includes modeling the consequences of a microsporidian parasite to a yellow perch population, exploring trophic cascades in freshwater ecosystems, and researching functional genetic mutations in an invasive freshwater plankton. She is co-advised with Jeb Byers, and her research is supported by the NSF IDEAS NRT.
Email: Megan.Tomamichel
Cali Wilson (She/her)
Cali is interested in behavioral and environmental determinants of parasite transmission in wildlife. Cali’s research is supported by the NSF IDEAS NRT and is co-advised by Sonia Altizer. She is a collaborator on an NSF EEID project understanding how food provisioning influences movement, condition and infection dynamics in an urban-foraging waterbird, the White Ibis.
Email: Cali.Wilson
Alumni
Leone (Lee) Brown (2015-2017)
Lee was a NSF postdoctoral scholar co-mentored by Sonia Altizer and Richard Hall. Her project at UGA used modeling approaches to understand how climate and anthropogenic changes influenced migration patterns in songbirds, and thus transmission dynamics of vector-borne blood parasites. Lee’s broader research interests include movement ecology, urban ecology and conservation, with a particular focus on birds and butterflies. She is now an Assistant Professor at James Madison University.
Claire Teitelbaum (2016-2021)
Claire’s Ph.D explored the drivers and consequences of nomadic movement in animals, especially in the context of anthropogenic change and host-parasite dynamics. Claire’s research was supported by a UGA Presidential Fellowship and NSF GRFP. Claire is currently a postdoc with the US Geological Survey working on models of avian influenza spread in waterfowl.
Zachary Arnold (2019-21)
Zach’s CESD MS research investigated the the role of landfills in shaping bird community composition, and their potential as sites of grassland restoration. After graduation, Zach worked as a Biology lecturer at Georgia Southern University and is currently a high school instructor.
Undergraduate students
Natalie Bachner
Natalie worked on a research project studying the within-winter movements of birds. She is currently working as a sustainability coordinator in Atlanta.
Emma Bay Dickinson
Emma graduated with an Ecology and Music double major, and founded the UGA Campus Chapter of the Audubon Society (Lilly Branch Audubon). Her senior thesis nvestigated how attributes of powerline cuts influence their use by birds during the nonbreeding season. Since graduating Emma has tracked big cats in Belize and worked on invasive mosquito eradication in Hawaii.
Nathaniel Haulk
Nathaniel graduated with an Ecology BS and a minor in Public Health. His research in the lab used mathematical models to investigate how seasonality and food provisioning influence wildlife disease. He is currently pursuing graduate studies at Louisiana State University.
Julia Weil
Julia’s senior thesis explored how food provisioning influences wildlife behaviors relevant to pathogen transmission. She analyzed video data of White Ibis to explore drivers of, and variation in, aggressive behaviors of hand-fed birds. Julia was president of Lilly Branch Audubon Society, and will pursue graduate studies in Memphis on house finch eye disease.
Since 2014, the Hall Lab has mentored students through the NSF-funded Population Biology of Infectious Diseases REU at UGA.
- 2022: Annie Cramer developed models of wildlife infectious disease under land use change.
- 2019: Maya Sarkar conducted controlled temperature experiments on monarchs to quantify how butterflies and their protozoan parasites might respond to climate warming.
- 2018: Chastity Ward set up a cage experiment to understand determinants of monarch butterfly visitation behavior to their milkweed host plants, with relevance to pathogen transmission.
- 2017: Katie Adkins conducted behavioral observations of urban-feeding White Ibis to assess their exposure risk to diverse parasites.
- 2016: Celine Snedden worked on mathematical models of spatial host-pathogen dynamics in relation to anthropogenic food subsidies. Research resulting from this project was published in The American Naturalist.
- 2015: Anna Schneider worked on a model for the transmission of protozoan parasite OE in monarch butterflies that investigated the role of mating transmission on infection prevalence. She also conducted field observation of wild monarchs to record the frequency of plant visitation. Work resulting from her project was published in Proceedings B.
- 2014: Mary-Kate Williams developed a model of monarch-OE dynamics along with an experiment to determine the longevity of OE spores in the environment. Work resulting from her project was published in PLoS One.
Former REU students. Mary Kate-Williams, Anna Schneider and Celine Snedden.