UMBS Summer Lecture Series: The value of basic scientific research: How water fleas might teach us how to fight fungal infections in people

Dr. Meghan Duffy, Associate Professor and researcher at the University of Michigan, will give the Pettingill Endowed Lecture in Natural History at the U-M Biological Station, open to students, faculty, researchers, and the public.

Dr. Duffy's research focuses on the ecology and evolution of host-parasite interactions, with a particular focus on freshwater systems. She is especially interested in the intersection of ecology and evolutionary biology, including how rapid evolution affects host-parasite interactions, and how ecological context influences host-parasite evolution. Her research uses a combination of observational studies of natural populations and communities, manipulative experiments in the lab and field, and mathematical models. Most of her research focuses on the ecologically important freshwater crustacean Daphnia as host; Daphnia have long been a model system in ecology and evolutionary biology, and are emerging as a model organism for studies of host-parasite interactions.

Dr. Duffy received her B.S. in Biological Sciences from Cornell University in 2000. After a brief stint working as a field technician in Antarctica, she moved to the Kellogg Biological Station and Michigan State University for graduate school. She received her Ph.D. in Zoology and Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Behavior from MSU in 2006. From there, she moved to the University of Wisconsin for her postdoctoral research, which was supported by an NSF postdoctoral fellowship in biological informatics. From 2008-2012, she was an assistant professor in the School of Biology at Georgia Tech. She joined the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology faculty at U-M in August 2012.