Dr. Christine Ellis
 |
2018
Dr. Christine Ellis
Animal Science
Class of 1983
Dr. Christine Ellis, class of 1983, said he has been blessed to wear a bunch of different hats over the course of her career. She has practiced veterinary medicine for 12 years, worked as a Research Fellow at the Centers for Disease Control researching mosquito-borne diseases, and is currently at the National Wildlife Research Center. It is one of only four institutions in the world solely dedicated to research on wild animal species.
She started hew NWRC career with the Rabies Project, working on the development of oral rabies vaccines and vaccine baiting systems for wildlife (specifically raccoons, skunks, foxes, coyotes, and mongooses).
Four years ago she began collaborating on a pilot research project exploring the use of volatile organic compounds analysis to diagnose disease in animals. The work is important for several reasons. Bovine tuberculosis can infect people (in the early 1990s approximately 20 percent of human TB cases in the US were caused by the bovine TB pathogen instead of the human TB pathogen).
Development of a method to perform "hands off" surveillance for the presence of disease in livestock (breath) or wildlife (feces) would be beneficial for veterinarians and wildlife managers domestically. Internationally, in developing nations where bovine tuberculosis is present at high prevalence rates, this technology could be used not only to monitor livestock and wildlife for the presence of the disease. It is feasible that the technology could be adapted to perform disease surveillance for both bovine and human tuberculosis in people as well.
She was awarded an APHIS Science Fellowship in 2014 to continue this work for the next four years. These days about 65 percent of her work is related to this project. The other 25 percent she still works with the Rabies project.