NEVBD-TEC Summer Internship Program

Today marked the last day of my internship, and it is very safe to say I will miss it. I have met many amazing researchers, biologists, collectors, and many others! Working under Dr. Ashley Kennedy has not only inspired me to further advance in the world of Medical Entomology, but to be the best student and person I can be.  These last two weeks we have been able to revisit bird-banding, check out many insect collections from the 80's, and enjoy many teambuilding activities! I was also able to participate in the VBD Intern Symposium, where I got to share all of my awesome summer experiences with other interns, as well as see what other labs were studying! This has been one of the best internships I have ever been a part of, and has truly taught me about a whole other world of entomology and public health! Thank you NEVBD, DNREC, and everyone a part of this journey! Celebration of an Amazing Summer!

 It is time for my last blog post.. how crazy that 10 weeks have flown by and summer has come to an end! The experiences and knowledge I gained here will be carried with me for the rest of my life, whether it be basic research and field work skills, public interactions, or looking out for mosquitoes! I was also incredibly lucky to have a great group of girls with me, consisting of my co-intern and summer sanitarian, who made everyday feel like a new adventure!  In my final blog post I will tell you all about the organization of our data that we collected. On the field, once a trap is collected, whether BG Sentinel or Gravid, we would place a small piece of paper inside the trap that included the location, the date, time, and approximately how many mosquitos seemed to be inside the collected mesh/bags. At first, this was a horrifying experience as you are sticking your hand inside a bag that contains possibly hundreds of mosquitos, but as time went on, it became very routine! O...

 As my internship with Suffolk County Vector Control comes to an end, I have had the chance to look back at how much I have learned throughout the summer. Over the past several weeks, I have participated in mosquito and tick surveillance, nekton trapping, vegetation sampling, and other fieldwork that has given me a much better understanding of both vector control and environmental science. During the final part of the internship, we continued working with many of the sampling methods we had learned earlier in the summer. By this point, activities like mosquito and tick sampling had become much more familiar. Instead of focusing only on learning how to perform each procedure, I was able to pay more attention to the environmental conditions around us and understand why we were collecting the information in the first place. One of the biggest things I learned this summer was how unpredictable fieldwork can be. Weather constantly affected our schedule, and conditions could look complet...

 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 ...