Featured Principal Investigator: Krisztian Magori, West Nile Virus Researcher
The Center for Environmental Studies at the Urban-Rural Interface is happy to announce that Dr. Krisztian Magori has joined us has a postdoctoral fellow. Krisztian describes himself as a quantitative disease ecologist, using mathematical and statistical methods to investigate the connections between hosts, pathogen, and their environment in general. Krisztian is originally from Hungary, where he studied at Eotvos University, obtaining an MSc in Ecology and a PhD in Biological Physics. He is particularly interested in disease transmitted by biting insect vectors, such as mosquitoes, ticks and biting midges. In the last 8 years, he has been researching various aspects of dengue fever, West Nile virus, hemorrhagic disease, and Lyme disease as well as the vectors that transmit them. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Environmental Studies at the Urban-Rural Interface, he will lead a project investigating the effects of urbanization and deforestation on West Nile virus transmission risk through effects on urban stream hydrology and water quality. The project will primarily focus on the state of GA, using surveillance data collected since 2001 by the GA Department of Community Health. Our project involves faculty and staff at the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, the Georgia Department of Community Health, the Center for Disease Control, the US Forest Service and the School of Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The project will demonstrate the linkage between urban stream hydrology, water quality and human health, and the effects of climate change and urbanization in the South-east on mosquito-borne infectious diseases." If you would like to obtain more information about his research at kmagori@auburn.edu or http://kmagori.weebly.com