About Eric

I completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia in 2007, and then an Honours degree in 2008, and a PhD in Vector Biology in the laboratory of Beth McGraw at the same institute in 2013. During this time, I studied host-symbiont relationships, mosquito fecundity, amino acid and lipid metabolism, and Wolbachia-induced pathogen blocking in the dengue mosquito, Aedes aegypti, and the model organism, Drosophila melanogaster.

From 2013 to 2017, I was a Postdoctoral and Science Without Borders fellow, at the Rene Rachou Research Institute in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, working in the laboratory of Luciano Moreira. This group was part of the Brazilian branch of the Eliminate Dengue Program (now the World Mosquito Program), which deploys Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes to reduce dengue transmission. During this time, I studied artificial diets, Wolbachia-host interactions, Wolbachia-induced pathogen blocking and examined how Wolbachia might be used to reduce Zika transmission.

From 2017 to 2020, I was Postdoctoral fellow, and later Research Associate in the laboratory of George Dimopoulos at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. During this time, I studied the microbiome of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Puerto Rico, and helped to develop a new biopesticide from the bacterium Chromobacterium species Csp_P.