Fantastic news! I was just awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Internship Program (GRIP) Award to work with scientists at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) National Wildlife Disease Program (NWDP). My sponsor scientists, Dr. Sarah Bevins and Dr. Jefferey Chandler, will mentor me from October 1, 2017 to March 1, 2018 while I investigate the potential sampling bias or assay variability of wildlife samples tested for Yersinia pestis across the United States.  I’ll be conducting spatial modeling in Fall 2017 and laboratory analysis of coyote blood samples at the USDA laboratory in Fort Collins, CO in Winter 2018. The $5,000 award will support reagents necessary for the laboratory analysis.

A snapshot of the USDA NWDP coyote plague surveillance is provided in a recent report (site) and in the following figure created by Dr. Mark Lutman