derek McFarland

UnderGraduate Fellow

Derek has returned for his second summer with the Tick and Wildlife Ecology team.

What do you want to do this year as opposed to last year?

“This year is very different. I’m going to be leaving halfway through the summer, which is really kind of exciting. I’m working on projects with viruses in the ticks. I have to take the samples from Tyson to the Medical School at WashU, to Dr. Boon’s lab. He is going to help me process them and look at whether or not the viruses are in the insects. Solny and my previous mentor, Letícia, brainstormed a way we could integrate my true passions for ecological research with the more human medicine research.”

You said your true passion was for ecological research?

“Yeah. Especially wildlife. I want to get my Veterinary Medicine degree (DVM) at some point. Last summer I decided to get my PhD also, in something like disease ecology, maybe animal science. Something so that I can be in a lab instead of a clinic all the time.”

Derek worked with Solny Adasteinsson's Tick & Wildlife Ecology team during summers 2018 and 2019. Learn more about their prescribed fire and tick-borne disease ecology research here.