Research Statement

Born and raised in Brazil, I quickly found out I like to work on epidemiology of diseases occurring both in humans and animals. I don't consider myself a researcher of a single disease - I have worked on rabies prevention in dogs, rabies occurrence in bats, leptospirosis occurrence (both in humans and dogs), dengue, Zika and chikungunya occurrence in humans and mosquitos, yellow fever occurrence in non-human primates and mosquitos and with PRRS and PED in swine.

My research interests involve understanding why diseases occur in the populations they do. This has led me through many fields – classical epidemiology, molecular epidemiology, immunology, spatial analysis that I try to put together in trying to understand disease occurrence. This brought me to research the occurrence of PRRS and PED in the U.S. swine herd. Both diseases pose different challenges - e.g., genetic variability within each virus, which ends up reflecting in the potential for cross-immunity to drive disease occurrence. Additionally, animal movements, which recording is not always straightforward, and other potential events that may lead to transmission (extreme weather events, veterinary/personnel visits to farms, feed suppliers, quality of biosecurity at the farm and of trucks visiting the farm) exist and make understanding the occurrence of those diseases challenging, yet stimulating – I do believe we can do better at preventing their occurrence at the farm level. My work with swine in the U.S. reflects that.