Cons Sci Seminar

February 7, 2025

Understanding and mitigating human-wildlife pathogen transmission risk through community-based research

Dr. Marissa Milstein

Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Minnesota

*FWCB Faculty Interview - Research Seminar*

*No sound for first ~5 minutes, apologies for the technical difficulty.

Abstract

While wildlife hunting is critical to the food security for people throughout the world, it is also a potential source of zoonotic disease transmission. In this talk, Dr. Milstein will present research integrating veterinary diagnostics, molecular biology, and ethnographic methods to characterize pathogen spillover from wildlife to humans. She will discuss the community-based research program that she co-developed and leads with the Waiwai, an Amazonian Indigenous community in Guyana, South America, studying wildlife health and the socio-cultural context of zoonotic pathogen transmission. Additionally, Dr. Milstein will highlight research from her work with the White Earth Nation’s Department of Natural Resources on issues related to wild meat food sovereignty and hunter-based wildlife disease surveillance. She will then discuss future directions of her research, highlighting how these two long-term, community-driven research programs will serve as the pillars for establishing a Biodiversity and Health Lab in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology at the University of Minnesota.

Biosketch

Dr. Marissa Milstein is a wildlife research veterinarian studying pathogen transmission at the human-wildlife interface. She is the co-principal investigator of the Konashen Ecosystem Health Project. This project is a collaboration with the Waiwai, an Indigenous Amazonian community who owns and manages the Konashen Amerindian Protected Area (KAPA) in Guyana, South America. Through this long-term partnership, the team co-constructs research questions focusing on zoonotic disease, wild meat and food security, and vector-borne disease. Dr. Milstein also collaborates on wildlife health and food sovereignty research with the White Earth Natural Resources Office and the Minnesota Center for Prion Research and Outreach (MnPro). Dr. Milstein received her DVM and PhD from the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine. She is currently a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology with Dr. Nicholas Phelps.

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