Evelien Bunnik
Like many researchers, Evelien Bunnik was not surprised by COVID-19.
“It was a matter of when, not a question of if this was going to happen,” says Bunnik, who holds a doctorate in immunology and virology. “It’s probably going to happen again. I hope that next time people will take it more seriously earlier on and that we will be better prepared.”
Prior to COVID-19, Bunnik divided her time at UT Health San Antonio between lecturing on topics like immunology and researching the development and maintenance of protective immunity in people who have experienced malaria.
It wasn’t long after UT Health began having staff and students work from home last spring that Bunnik started thinking about ways to shift her lab’s focus to help in the fight against COVID-19. “What we do for our malaria research is essentially the same as what we’re trying to do for COVID,” she says. “We’re using the same tools and the same approaches that we already have in the lab.”