Lab Alumni
Wyatt Madden
Wyatt was the lab statistician. He graduated with his masters from Montana State University in 2019. He started working for the Plowright lab once he graduated. Wyatt has gone on to pursue his PhD at Emory.
Anna DeCan
Anna worked with Graduate student Troy Koser on Moose ticks. She just graduated and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Organismal Biology.
Germán Botto
Germán received his PhD in the winter of 2020 and accepted a tenure-track position in his home country of Uruguay.
Mary McFadzen
Mary was our part time Program Manager. She left to work with the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Lauren Warner
Lauren was our Lab Technician. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Medical Laboratory Science in 2019 from Montana State University.
Anna Jacobs
Anna was the Lab Manager. She is now pursing her interests in teaching high school science and math in Bozeman.
Dan Becker
Daniel's Postdoctoral Rsearch appointment focused on the pathogen spillover and Hendra virus projects. Daniel earned his PhD from the University of Georgia, where he focused on resource provisioning, wildlife disease, and vampire bat immunology and epidemiology. He is interested in how food availability affects wildlife–pathogen interactions, linking within- and between-host infection processes, and how these perspectives can be applied to predicting spillover of zoonotic pathogens from wild bats and birds. Daniel is a postdoctoral fellow at Indiana University.
Katie Haase
As a Postdoctoral Rsearcher, Katie work on white-nose syndrome (WNS) using a mechanistic survivorship model based on the host bioenergetics, the growth of the pathogen that causes WNS, and the changing environment. By collecting baseline morphometric and energetic data from at least 5 bat species and microclimate data from across the western U.S., Katie and her collaborators evaluated the presence of WNS and determined areas of risk and refugia. Katie is now an Assistant Professor at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN. Read about her Ecology and Ecophysiology Lab.
Ticha Padgett-Stewart
Ticha was an undergraduate student at Montana State earning a degree in microbiology. She has worked at the National Genomics Center for Wildlife and Fish Conservation designing an eDNA assay as well as assisting in other work testing the applications of eDNA. She additionally conducted a research project assessing larval invertebrate diversity in the Salish Sea at the Shannon Point Marine Center. She is interested in work that combines molecular techniques with ecological thinking, especially disease ecology.
Christina Faust
Christina joined the lab for short-term postdoc between Princeton University and University of Oxford to work on models of pathogen spillover across changing landscapes. Additionally, she investigated the effects of habitat loss on pathogen dynamics in multi-host communities. Christina is currently a Research Associate at the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine at the University of Glasgow.
Nathan Justice
Nathan was a Research Associate assisting members of the lab with various computer-based tasks, including: model implementation, data visualizations, and geographic information systems (GIS) analytics. He is now in the Data Science Masters Program at George Washington University in DC.
Gerardo Martin
Gerardo was a Research Associate with the lab. He completed his PhD studying the ecological factors that affect risk of Hendra virus spillover to horses. The processes that he has studied are mostly related to the effects of climate on Hendra virus survival and on the fruit bat hosts of the virus. Gerardo is with the London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease Research.
Ellie Poteat
Ellie was an undergraduate at MSU studying microbiology. She worked in the Voyich lab investing NET release with different point mutations of S. aureus. She was interested in looking at the spillover dynamics of Hendra virus from bats to horses.
Daniela Weber
As an undergraduate, Daniela worked with Dr. Raina Plowright and Dr. Jovanka Voyich to investigate mechanisms driving chronic carriage in bighorn sheep. Daniela is a Montana State McNair Scholar.
David Paez
David joined the lab as a Postdoctoral Researcher from The University of Chicago. He worked on disease models to understand the mechanisms by which Hendra virus persist among flying fox populations in Australia.
Devin Jones
Devin graduated with a PhD of Microbiology and Immunology from MSU in 2022. She is now working as a Mendenhall Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Microbiologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
Maureen Kessler
Ph.D., Ecology & Environmental Sciences, Montana State University
Amelia Graves
Bachelor of Science: Biochemistry 2022 MSU
Dale Hansen
Bachelor of Science 2022 MSU
Lindsay Lee
Bachelor of Science 2022 MSU
McKenna Quirk
Bachelors of Science 2024, Pre-veterinary Microbiology Major with a Minor in Genetics, MSU
Will Rogers
Bachelor of Science 2021, Ecology and Conservation Biology
Minors in Genetics and Statistics, MSU
Trent Bushmaker
Master of Science 2022, MSU