Isabella Cattadori, Collaborator, United States

Dr. Isabella M. Cattadori is an Associated Professor of Biology at the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Penn State and Adjunct Professor at the School Life Science and Bio-Engineering at Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (Tanzania). Prior to these, she held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at the University of Glasgow (UK) and a European Union Marie Curie Individual Research Fellowship at the University of Stirling (UK). Dr. Cattadori is a population ecologist interested to identify the mechanisms that affect host-parasite interactions within the host and how these shape the dynamics of both players at the host population level. Her studies have practical relevance to the understanding of how heterogeneities in host susceptibility to infection and transmission, together with parasite life-history strategies, climate and seasonality, influence the spread and persistence of infectious diseases. She uses an interdisciplinary approach that combines laboratory and field experiments with molecular tools and modeling. While she has primarily worked on rodents (rabbits and mice) her studies span from zoonotic infections of livestock to vector-borne infections by ticks, flies and mosquitoes, using helminths, bacteria and viruses.