TriCEM is excited to announce the winner of the 2023 Steve Meshnick Travel Award – congratulations to Rachel Keener!
Rachel Keener Is a rising 5th year PhD candidate in Dennis Ko’s lab at Duke University School of Medicine. She earned her BS in Genetics at the University of Georgia after studying how novel Drosophila species respond to Wolbachia bacteria. Currently, Rachel studies human genetic resistance to infectious diseases. Specifically, she plans to use this travel award to present her work on a putative plague receptor at Infectious Diseases Through an Evolutionary Lens conference in October.
This travel award was developed to honor Professor Steve Meshnick’s (UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health) contributions to TriCEM. Steve was internationally recognized for his global work in understanding, preventing, and treating infectious diseases, particularly malaria and HIV/AIDS, and his long history of impactful training of graduate students. The award supports one student per year to present their research or learn new methods that advance their research goals in infectious disease, global health, or evolutionary perspectives in epidemiology.
