Jason K Blackburn,

Dr. Blackburn is a medical geographer with a research focus on zoonotic disease transmission and persistence. He has worked on anthrax ecology since 2003 and the spatial ecology of brucellosis since 2006. He has worked on both disease systems across the world, including Africa, Southeast Asia, the Former Soviet Union, and North America. He applies spatio-temporal and ecological niche modeling, combined with animal movement ecology and patch use analysis, to map disease risk areas and variation in persistence and outbreak intensity. He also applies KAP surveys and public health surveillance to study disease impacts in communities where these diseases spillover into humans. Dr. Blackburn founded the Spatial Epidemiology and Ecology Research Laboratory (SEER Lab) in 2007 at Cal State Fullerton, moving it to be jointly housed in Geography and the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida in 2009. In 2011, the lab expanded from a GIS and Remote Sensing lab to include a suite of biosafety level 2 and 3 (BSL-2, BLS-3) labs to safely handle Bacillus anthracis and Brucella spp., the bacteria that cause anthrax and brucellosis, respectively. SEER Lab performs laboratory diagnostics and pathogen characterization procedures to better understand the pathogens involved in active outbreaks. Here at EPI, SEER lab maintains the Martin E. Hugh-Jones Bacillus anthracis Collection, a global reference collection of bacteria. With these facilities and this collection, SEER Lab can study the phylogenetics and spatial patterns of pathogen distribution using a combination of PCR and whole genome sequencing, genotyping, and bioinformatics. SEER Lab works from the pathogen level out to the landsacpe level. This ‘book ends’ approach expands SEER Lab’s capabilities to perform controlled laboratory experiments informed from environmental data collected at outbreak locations. Since 2018, Dr. Blackburn has worked on melioidosis, a disease caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. Dr. Blackburn leads a project in Vietnam focused on the spatio-temporal patterns of melioidosis in humans and livestock and pathogen characteristics across the region. SEER Lab is a diverse and dynamic research group composed of undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs, and faculty.

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