COURTNEY SCHREINER
COURTNEY SCHREINER
About me
I am a PhD candidate at the University of Tennessee Knoxville in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology program. I am currently in Dr. Nina Fefferman's lab. I am interested in how wildlife disease management programs could be impacting their social networks and how that could lead to changes in disease dynamics. I work on incorporating animal social networks into mathematical models of infectious diseases in various animal species.
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My previous work at the University of Idaho with Dr. Scott Nuismer involved using mathematical models to explore how wildlife birthing seasons and fluctuating population dynamics can influence the effectiveness of vaccination campaigns with conventional vaccines and self-disseminating vaccines.
RESEARCH
My research interests and experiences lies at the interface between math and biology. I'm largely interested in the ecology of infectious disease, and am excited by questions aiming to prevent, control, and understand the spread of infectious diseases both in wildlife and human populations. I enjoy using mathematical models to explore the drivers of disease dynamics, how to control the spread of infectious diseases, and what ecological and evolutionary role behavior plays in the spread of infectious disease. My interest for disease ecology does not stop at wildlife populations, I am also interested in how microbes move and propagate in the built environment, and how we can use that knowledge to limit risk of disease to occupants in buildings.
How microbes move and propagate in the human built environment
Microbial communities including bacteria, fungi, viruses, and their metabolites form their own ecosystem within the human built environment. We call this the microbiome of the built environment. For example, the composition of bacteria, fungi, and viral species you may find find in buildings such as work places, retail stores, or schools. Some of the microbes in such places may include species that are harmful to humans and cause disease. By understanding how a building functions in its operation in conjunction with how microbes move and propagate within it, we can use mathematical modeling to gain insight to minimize risk through building design, or intervention strategies such as more efficient filters on HVAC systems or cleaning procedures.
Vaccinating wildlife populations with baits
Vaccinating wildlife populations is an effective tool to control the spread of infectious diseases in wildlife. Vaccinating wildlife populations has the potential to additionally reduce the risk of spillover by reducing pathogen prevalence in wildlife populations. However what remains unclear is whether or not the time of year that we introduce a vaccine to a population affects the overall effectiveness of a vaccination campaign. This could be especially important in wildlife that demonstrate short defined breeding seasons that lead to large influxes of susceptible individuals in the population.
Read more about this work here: https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.13539
Self-disseminating vaccines
Most wildlife vaccination is done via a bait-style vaccination, however, recent advancements in vaccine technology have given rise to self-disseminating vaccines. These are vaccines capable of spreading to additional individuals beyond the initially vaccinated individuals. There are two main types of of self-disseminating vaccines, transmissible and transferable. Transmissible vaccines can spread similar to how a pathogen can. Transferable vaccines rely on the grooming behaviors of animals and spread via a vaccine-laced gel that is put on the back of an animal where it is groomed off and ingested by other individuals in the population. To ensure the success of these vaccines we need to take in to account the population ecology of the reservoir species to know when and how best to distribute these types of vaccines. In this work we we aim to answer when is the best time to introduce these vaccines in populations with distinct breeding seasons, what characteristics of the vaccines determine success, and for what animals would self-disseminating vaccines be most successful. This work will be available soon to read more.
