Team

Dr Laura Bergner

Laura joined the lab in 2014 as a PhD student and became a postdoc in 2018. She has used field studies, (meta)genomics, and phylogenetics to understand ecological patterns in viral diversity. Her current project is developing an epigenetic clock to age vampire bats.

Dr Nardus Mollentze

Nardus joined the lab as a postdoc in 2018 and specializes in large scale, quantitative analyses of infectious disease data, with a focus on emerging viruses.

Dr Jocelyn Pérez Lazo

Jocelyn is a Peruvian vet and virologist who joined the lab in 2021. Her role involves establishing a captive bat colony in Peru and conducting experiments to understand rabies virus infection in bats. She will also monitoring wild bat colonies to study the frequency and duration of rabies epizootics.

Dr Rita Ribeiro

Rita is a veterinary epidemiologist who joined the lab in 2021. She is interested in ecological modelling and the prevention and control of zoonotic diseases. Collaborating with Jason Mathiopoulos, Rita is working on innovative landscape-level models of vampire bat distribution and connectivity in Peru.

Dr Max Farrell

Max joined the lab as a postdoc in 2022. He studies comparative disease ecology and evolution, with a focus on host specificity, virulence evolution, and developing novel approaches for biodiversity science.

Diana Meza

Diana joined the lab in 2018 on a PhD scholarship from CONACyT. She is analyzing a spatially replicated longitudinal serological dataset on vampire bat rabies in Peru and using mathematical models to explore virus-virus interactions.

Megan Griffiths

Megan joined the lab in 2019 through the MRC-CVR PhD Programme. She is using molecular data and epidemiological modelling to explore the feasibility of a herpesvirus vectored transmissible rabies vaccine to prevent spillover of rabies from vampire bats.

Hollie French

Hollie joined the lab in 2021 through the Wellcome Trust Integrative Infection Biology Programme. She is examining how genomic surveillance can guide on the ground prevention of viral ermegence, studying vampire bat rabies in Central America with partners at OIRSA.

Haris Malik

Haris joined us in October 2021 after receiving a Carnegie PhD Scholarship. He is working on developing a betaherpesvirus-vectored rabies vaccine, using lab studies, genomics and experiments in vampire bats.

Avery Holmes

I have always been interested in the natural world, the fundamental patterns it presents, and the ultimate and proximate causes of those patterns. My research interest is viral transmission in wildlife, and my current project involves applying machine learning to virus sequence data to identify epidemiological patterns and differences among several viruses in Peruvian vampire bats. 

Alice Broos

Alice joined the group as a technician in 2014. She now effectively runs the wet lab, with expertise in everything we do: serology, genomics, PCR, and other stuff that Daniel doesn’t understand.