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. Eric hopes to apply the knowledge from his MPH as well as his physiology knowledge from his undergraduate degrees as well as his newly acquired knowledge of epidemiology and statistics to study and model the way in which infectious diseases move through a population. Currently in the Petersen Lab, Eric is determining the prevalence and incidence rates of several tick-borne infections and co-infections in U.S. hunting hounds. Additionally Eric is examining the effects of global climate pattern shifts and its effects on influenza in both animal and human populations in the state of Iowa.