Megan Wise de Valdez

I am currently an assistant professor and program coordinator of the biology program at Texas A&M-San Antonio. My current areas of research are mosquito ecology in Bexar County and surrounding areas of Texas. I started at Texas A&M-San Antonio in Fall of 2010 as the first tenure-track faculty member in the biology program. At that time we were housed in an elementary school with no laboratories, only 4 microscopes, and 50 students in the program. We have since moved to our new permanent campus where there are 3 gorgeous buildings and 4 state-of-the art laboratories and all the spoils that come with them. We also have over 150 majors, some going off to become dentists, doctors, teachers, and hopefully some future professors. I am currently one of the advisors for the Biology Club, a student-run organization on campus.

I received my undergraduate degree in Biology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1992. I also earned my Master's there under Dr. John Janovy Jr. in parasitology where I described a new parasite species and studied the transmission ecology. In 1998 I joined the workforce as a research scientist at Schering-Plough Animal Health where I conducted numerous studies on a vaccine for coccidiosis in poultry. In 2000 I left Schering-Plough to start my Ph.D. at Colorado State University with Dr. Janice Moore where I studied parasite-induced behavioral alterations in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infected with mermithid nematodes in response to predation risk.

After graduating with my Ph.D. in 2005, I started my post-doc with Dr. William Black IV also at Colorado State University where I had the opportunity to conduct research on novel methods (Aedes densonucleosis virus, and cage/fiield trials of RIDL - Release of Insects carrying a dominant lethal) of controlling the Dengue virus vector, Aedes aegypti . The research was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Grand Challenge Grant.