NEVBD-TEC Summer Internship Program

 My time with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture and the Aedes Albopictus survey/surveillance has come to an end. It has truly been a wonderful experience. I have learned so much and grown even more as a person. In the past few weeks, I continued my Aedes Albopcitus surveillance and route throughout Vermont. I then picked up all the traps and cleaned them back at the laboratory when the survey came to a conclusion. I was also able to conduct a tick drag in an area that we thought may have an Asian Longhorned Tick. Although we did not find any, I was able to find the only tick of the day, out of 5 of us conducting drags (although it was a Black-legged tick). I am so grateful to have had this experience this summer and am forever grateful to the Vermont Vector-Borne team. 

 While gravid traps made up most of our weekly trapping, we also worked with BG-Sentinel traps, which are designed to target more aggressive mosquitoes than the ones we catch in the gravid traps! These traps are set up completely different in comparison to gravid traps because instead of using "stink water," they use a fan, collection bag, 2 6-V batteries, and two attractants to draw mosquitoes in. The first attractant is dry ice which is a source of CO2, mimicking the carbon dioxide humans release when we breathe. The dry ice was hung right above the collection bag, usually from a nearby tree branch. The second attractant is called a "BG lure" which mimics what humans are supposed to smell like. PS: It smells unlike anything I could describe and definitely not what I think we smell like, so it is incredibly strange and cool! Another part of the internship that I really enjoyed was our days at community gardens. We would visit gardens throughout Philadelphia to look...

Here's my update on weeks 7–10 working at the Virginia Department of Health under the supervision of the Epidemiology team! Week 7: This week, we had the amazing opportunity to shadow a local health department's tick and mosquito surveillance efforts. It was exciting to compare the surveillance methods used at the state and local health department levels. We also observed how the team responded to a positive test for West Nile virus, including treating local waterways with larvicide to help prevent further mosquito breeding and reduce the risk of further positive tests. Week 8: This week brought a lot of rain, which made it difficult for me to complete my tick drags. Instead, I spent time analyzing data and continued meeting with leaders from different departments within the Epidemiology team. These meetings have allowed me to expand my professional network while gaining a broader understanding of the many areas and initiatives within epidemiology. Weeks 9 and 10: During my ...

I can’t believe my internship has come to an end. This summer was an incredible experience, traveling throughout Delaware, conducting tick dragging and tick identification, assisting with the sentinel chicken program, participating in outreach events, and working with a wide variety of wildlife.  One of my favorite experiences has been assisting with Delaware’s sentinel chicken surveillance program for West Nile Virus.  We deployed 36 chickens to nine different sites throughout the state. Each week, we visited the sites to monitor the chickens and collect blood samples, which are tested to determine whether the birds have been exposed to West Nile Virus. This surveillance helps detect virus activity early and provides valuable information for mosquito control before human cases occur.  I also had the opportunity to participate in bat banding, where I primarily served as a scribe because I have not received my rabies vaccine and was not able to handle the bats directl...

 As I am closing my time a the Department of Public Health in Philadelphia, I find that I have grown quite fond of the work done at the Vector Control sector. While not always glamorous (many mosquito bites and one too many ticks hitching a ride on us) I find that active field work- rain or shine- is exactly what I enjoy doing.  Throughout the program we have done various things to aid in the collection, identification, and record keeping of disease spreading mosquitos. I learned how to take dips, which involved collecting samples of mosquito larvae in stagnant water in order to identify the types of mosquitos present in an area. Furthermore, I learned how to set and collect BG and Gravid traps, which focus on attracting and capturing human-seeking and gravid mosquitos respectively. And most importantly, I learned essential skills including but not limited to how to handle critical disease carrying organisms, how to process and take record of said organisms, and how to properl...

As the internship continued, I was able to build on the field skills I developed during the first month while being introduced to several new projects. By this point, I felt much more comfortable with the sampling techniques we had learned, which allowed me to focus more on understanding why we collect the information and how it contributes to public health decisions. One of the highlights of this part of the internship was participating in nekton sampling. We set fish traps, identified the species we collected, and recorded our observations. Before this internship, I had never considered how fish populations could be connected to mosquito habitats. It was interesting to see how aquatic ecosystems are monitored and how collecting information about these environments provides a broader understanding of the conditions that influence mosquito development. As we rotated back into mosquito and tick surveillance, I started noticing how much conditions could change from week to week. Altho...