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Like many in our pre-pandemic world, Emory College of Arts and Sciences senior Christie Jones hadn’t given much thought to potential health impacts from the ways people interact with the environment.
Then came an undergraduate research job in the lab of Emory disease ecologist Thomas Gillespie. Her work identifying the mites, biting flies and other ectoparasites on bats helped give new insight into the role that relationship may play in transmitting
Bartonella, the bacteria behind several human diseases.
By the time COVID-19 brought renewed attention to other diseases caused by germs spreading between animals and people, Jones was well into her own research in addition to graduate-level coursework.