People

TAVIS K. ANDERSON

I am a Research Biologist in the Virus and Prion Research Unit at the National Animal Disease Center.

I received training in evolutionary biology and virology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  I earned my doctorate in ecology and evolution at Rutgers University, and my honours and undergraduate degrees at The University of Queensland.

A few more details can be found at my ORCID ID.

FLUCREW (COMPUTATIONAL)

Alexey Markin – Ph.D. (Computer Science, Iowa State University). Alexey joined the flu-crew in 2020, and his personal webpage has a little more detail on his background (personal webpage).

Garrett Janzen – Ph.D. (Genetics and Genomics, Iowa State University). Garrett joined the flu-crew in 2022 as part of the Penn-CEIRR project. Some of Garrett’s research is linked here.

Thao-Quyen Nguyen – Ph.D. Candidate (Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Iowa State University). Thao joined the flu-crew in Spring 2024 with an interest in interspecies transmission and virus evolution. Thao’s co-major advisor is Prof. Oliver Eulenstein.

Joseph Thomas – DVM, Ph.D. Candidate (Veterinary Microbiology). Joe joined the flu-crew in 2020, and is also pursuing his diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Pathology (ACVP). Joe’s co-major advisor is Prof. Phillip Gauger.

Blake Inderski – Research Technician. Blake joined our team in 2017 and has been leading the United States Swine Pathogen Database initiative, and a number of our general computational projects found on our github page https://github.com/flu-crew

Carl Hutter – Ph.D. (Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas). Carl joined the team in 2023 as an ORISE Scientist associated with the USDA-ARS Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence fellowship program. Carl’s prior research can be found here (Google Scholar profile) and he’ll be developing computational techniques to quantify interspecies transmission of IAV.

Our flu-crew has an active collaboration with the Computational Biology Group led by Prof. Oliver Eulenstein (Dept. Computer Science, Iowa State University). Through this collaboration we work with PhD. students Sriram Vijendran and Sanket Wagle to develop algorithms to identify and characterize the evolution of influenza A viruses.

We are also fortunate to work at the National Animal Disease Center with colleagues Drs. Amy Baker, Bailey Arruda, and Meghan Wymore Brand (spring 2024 photograph with almost the full team above).

FLUCREW (COMPUTATIONAL) AND GSU ALUMNI (and where they are now)

  • Megan Neveau Thomas – Ph.D. (Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Iowa State University). Megan started in the flu-crew in 2020 as an NSF GRFP fellow in the BCB program, defended her thesis in 2024, and is currently completing the final year of her DVM professional training. Megan’s co-major advisor is Prof. Phillip Gauger.
  • Siddhant Grover – M.Sc. (Computer Science). Sid earned his M.Sc. (co-major advisor Prof. Eulenstein) in 2024 and accepted an industry position in data analytics.
  • Zeb Arendsee – Ph.D. (Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Iowa State University). (personal webpage). Zeb is a staff scientist at Regeneron.
  • Jennifer Chang – Ph.D. (Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Iowa State University). Jennifer is a bioinformatician at the Fred Hutch.
  • David Hufnagel – Ph.D. (Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Iowa State University). David is a staff scientist (Informatics) at the CDC (NCIRD/ID/OD/Informatics Team).
  • Rasna Walia – Ph.D. (Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Iowa State University). Rasna is a Data Scientist (Systems Biology) at Corteva Agriscience.
  • Michael Zeller – Ph.D. (Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Iowa State University). Michael was a close collaborator with Phil Gauger and Amy Baker as supervisors). Michael is now an Assistant Professor at the Iowa State University.
  • Kelly Hewitt – ORISE Research Assistant (2016-2018). DVM student at Iowa State University.
  • James Alfieri – M.Sc. (2016). Ph.D. student at Texas A&M University.
  • Emily Dodd – B.Sc. (2016). M.Sc. student at University of Illinois at Chicago.
  • Sarah Dunn – B.Sc. (Honors) (2015). Veterinary technician.
  • Maria St. Jean – B.A. (2015). Industry position in biomedical sciences.
  • Jackson Tomlinson – B.Sc. (2015). M.Sc. student at Georgia Southern University.