Student Spotlight – Trisha Ramsdell

In her first semester in the Master of Public Health program, Trisha Ramsdell discovered that she really missed the lab. However, with some well-timed advising, she soon learned that epidemiology and microbiology are well paired for understanding how infectious diseases spread.

Since then, Trisha’s home away from home has been in Professor Christian Tschudi’s lab, where she studies trypanosomes, the unicellular parasites that are the causative agent of African trypanosomiasis, commonly known as sleeping sickness. This microbiological approach to further understanding the parasite is important to population health as both people and livestock in sub-Saharan Africa are exposed to the disease through the bites of infected tsetse flies. Trisha’s thesis applies the relatively new technology of single cell-RNA sequencing to the parasite to characterize differences amongst singular cells as they progress through development to their infectious stage.

Trisha has also experienced boots on the ground epidemiological surveillance work through her work with the FoodCORE Team at the Emerging Infections Program. When reportable food-borne illnesses strike, Trisha and her co-workers work with patients, local health departments and the Connecticut Department of Public Health to track similarities amongst cases and identify potentially high-risk occupations such as food handlers, in an effort to prevent further transmission of disease. In between outbreaks, Trisha has honed her data management skills and taken the initiative to improve protocols to further enhance food-borne illness surveillance.

Teaching has further refined Trisha’s data analysis skills. She has served as a teaching fellow for both the Applied Analytic Methods in Epidemiology and Principles in Infectious Diseases courses. “Teaching provides the opportunity to help students connect with difficult material, while solidifying your own skills and understanding,” says Trisha.