Katrina is a current graduate student pursuing an MS in Epidemiology with a focus on Epidemiology. She completed her undergraduate degree in 2022 at the University of Iowa, where she earned a BS in Public Health and a minor in Spanish. Katrina had the opportunity to experience working with various aspects of public health practice including mental health research and environmental health research and ultimately joined Petersen labs in 2021. She loves being able to use her experiences in both the classroom and prior work experiences to strengthen her contributions to the lab.

Danielle was born and raised in Salvador, BA, Brazil, where she completed her BSc in Biomedical Sciences from the Bahian School of Medicine and Public Health in 2012. During her graduation, she developed a deep interest in cell and molecular biology. Danielle obtained her MSc in Health Sciences from the Federal University of Bahia in 2014, where she investigated the prognostic role of BRAF mutation in papillary thyroid carcinomas.

Tyler is an undergraduate student at the University of Iowa pursuing a BS in Public Health, with plans to graduate in the Spring of 2020. His main academic interests in public health are epidemiology and infectious diseases. Currently, Tyler is working under Dr. Christine Petersen to help her research in monitoring the status of vector-borne diseases within the canine population in the United States. He's also working on his honors project with Dr.

Kurayi is pursuing his MPH in the department of epidemiology. He obtained my BA with a focus in Biology from Luther College in 2015.  He is an international student from Zimbabwe, but he was born in the Netherlands. He is currently working on completing his capstone project in order to complete his masters in public health. His capstone project focuses on developing an educational board game to help public health agencies teach families about the risks associated with diarrheal disease.

Geneva Wilson completed her MPH at Saint Louis University in 2015 and is pursuing her PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Iowa.  Geneva has always had a great interest in infectious disease and human health going back to her time at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she majored in Biological Anthropology.  Geneva’s current dissertation work focuses on Clostridium difficile as an environmental contaminant in the healthcare setting.  She is also conducting a study to determine the effect of proton pump inhibitor medication on the intestinal microbiome of C.

Eric Kontowicz graduated with his MPH from Michigan State University in 2014 and is currently pursuing his PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Iowa’s College of Public Health. Eric’s MPH work focused on recreating a questionnaire to help evaluate factors and behaviors of HIV discordant partners (only a single member of the relationship is HIV positive), and this experience helped ignite his passion for infectious diseases.