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Doctoral student Lauren Cybulska was accepted to the prestigious United States Geological Survey (USGS) Virtual Student Federal Service internship program where she will be working in conjunction with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), other federal agencies, and international organizations in the development of a Pandemic Risk Assessment Tool.
The internship is a nine-month remote program which runs from September 2021 through May 2022. Interns are selected based on their academic and research backgrounds and are placed with different agencies in the U.S. federal government to work on unclassified projects.
Cybulska and team will be using a “One Health” approach to assess where the risk of infectious disease from animals into human populations may occur. This model’s development includes evidence-based analyses using data collected from remote sensing, on-the-ground surveillance reporting, and other information sources.
In addition, she is assisting with a project based in Southeast Asia where the USGS is building a multidisciplinary decision support tool to help natural resource managers increase their understanding of the interaction among food, energy, and water resources and people.
Cybulska is a second-year PhD student in the Environmental and Planetary Health Sciences program. She has a strong interest in emerging infectious diseases and her background includes zoonosis research. Her master’s capstone involved examining the effects of microclimates on tick distribution in Austin, Texas. She was also a project assistant with the Orangutan Health Project where she studied reverse zoonotic disease transmission from humans to orangutans in North Sumatra, Indonesia. Currently, she is working on her dissertation which involves the surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in dogs and cats.
“It is truly an honor to have the chance to work with the United States government in this capacity,” Cybulska says. “This project could have profoundly influential effects in terms of human, animal, and environmental health; and I never imagined that my passion in zoonosis research would ultimately lead to such a unique opportunity.”
