Skip Navigation
Menu

Julia Brennan Wins the E.B. Moore Forestry Award for Outstanding Student

I found my way to the EENR department through the Aresty summer research program where I spent many long days collecting ticks for research at the Center for Vector Biology. After that summer I got involved in different research projects and switched into the EENR major. Throughout my time at Rutgers, I have been involved in a wide variety of research projects looking at ticks, mosquitoes, and the pathogens they vector. I have taken a variety of classes like dendrology, silviculture, mosquito biology, and molecular ecology among others. For my senior thesis, under the advisement of Dr. Dina Fonseca and Dr. Henry John-Alder, I used knowledge I learned in class about forest management, and skills I had learned in my research, to study relationships between forest management and tick populations. Both Dr. Fonseca and Dr. John-Alder were integral to my academic career, and I am extremely grateful to have had them as advisors and mentors.

After graduation, I will finish my research with the Center for Vector Biology at Rutgers before heading to Virginia Tech to start a graduate program in Entomology. A large part of my research at Rutgers focused on tick ecology and understanding how ticks are interacting with our natural environment. I will continue to study tick ecology and tick-borne pathogens at Virginia Tech under the advisement of Dr. Gillian Eastwood. I plan to apply the skills I learned through my George H. Cook and other research to future projects in my graduate studies. I am very excited to move to Blacksburg, VA with many beautiful natural areas and opportunity for lots of interesting ecological questions. I am also looking forward to the opportunity for international field research at Virginia Tech. After graduate school I would ideally like to pursue a career with USDA APHIS, but I would be happy doing just about anything that allows me to be outside.

May 2022