Brunner Lab

Jesse showing off a turtle at a local pond.

Jesse is an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Washington State University. He completed his PhD with James P. Collins at ASU in 2004 and was a post-doc with Richard S. Ostfeld at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. His research focuses on the evolutionary ecology of infectious disease, especially the many facets of disease transmission. [C.V.]

Jenn and honorary lab member, Logan, bullfroggin'

Jenn is our lab manager, shared with the Crespi Lab, and all around research facilitator. She has been a technician in several labs and so brings a great deal of experience to the lab. She is still hoping to convince us to do flow cytometry.

Sarah showing her excitement about her experiment!

Sarah completed her B.S. in Biology at University of Missouri-Kansas City. She is interested in the evolution of infectious diseases, particularly the evolution of parasite virulence and host range. Her research has led her to thinking about the causes and consequences of coinfection for ranavirus infections. She is from St. Louis, MO, and is an avid fanatic of the Denver Broncos, St. Louis Cardinals, and Halloween.

Alex likes multidimensional puzzles.

Alex is from Sacramento, California. He got his bachelor's degree in the History of Science from California State University, Sacramento and then joined the lab in 2013. He started working on the biology ticks, but decided that while he is still thrilled about science, he wants to convey that enthusiasm to students as a teacher.

Kai sampling near a river in Tibet

Kai is a senior zoology major at WSU. He is very interested in herpetology, behavior, and diseases of herpetofauna. He spent two summers helping survey the reptile and amphibian diversity at southern Tibet, and helped describe a new viper species they discovered. He has been working on a system to quantitatively study the longer-term behavioral responses of amphibian larvae to predators.

Anjulie collecting samples during an experiment.

Anjulie joined the lab in 2014 as part of the NSF-funded Undergraduate Math-Biology program. She has been conducting an experiment to evaluate three non-lethal methods for detecting ranavirus infections using bullfrog tadpoles. While it is all new to her, she catches on fast!

Angie hiking.

Angie defended her M.S. thesis in 2013. Her paper on the the persistence, and thus potential for water-borne transmission, of ranaviruses in the face of aquatic community members (i.e., microbes and zooplankton) is forthcoming in Diseases of Aquatic organisms. She is now a technician in Dr. Louise-Marie Dandurand's lab at the University of Idaho.

Scott with an alligator---a happier herper you will not find!

Scott joined the lab in the Fall of 2012 after finishing a M.S. on Box Turtle relocations (the manuscript can be found here) at Towson University. Unfortunately, much of his research ended up also being about Ranavirus in turtles. He decided to pursue more direct conservation work instead of a PhD. We wish him well!

Brooke helping setup tick cages in New York.

Brooke received her master's degree from SUNY-ESF in 2011. Her research (Reeve et al. 2013 in EcoHealth) was on the effects of three natural challenges on stress and susceptibility to disease of wood frog tadpoles. She also conducted research on the suscpetibility of Kihansi Spray toads to Bd and endosulfan. After teaching English in China, searching for wood frogs in the Northeast, and working for the USDA ARS in California, she just returned to Florida.

Heather Mayer.

Heather graduated with general biology major in 2014 and is planning to attend graduate school with a focus on genetics or disease.

Betsy in front of a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan.

Betsy graduated with a zoology major in 2014.

Jenna on one of her many hikes.

Jenna started her undergraduate degree at WSU in 2011, and is hoping to graduate with a double major in Ecology and Environmental Science in 2015. Her second semester at WSU, she started volunteering in the lab and then assisted with a large mesocosm experiment. She also conducted an independent research project on the degradation of Ranavirus during freeze-thaw cycles. After graduating, she hopes to work in the field of conservation biology and conduct research that promotes environmental wellbeing.

Deanna, Lynne, and Alex: Jesse's Angels!

Deanna, Lynne, and Alex were an amazing trio of undergraduates from SUNY-ESF. They were instrumental in the large, mesocosm epidemic experiments we ran in 2010. Lynne received her M.S. at Texas Tech and is now working on a PhD at Oklahoma State Univeristy; Deanna has been a research technician for the USFWS, Michigan State University, a project working on Cheetahs in Kenya; and Alex is working for IDEXX and completing a masters in public heatlh.