TickNet Canada Scientific Symposium

Dr. Aucott is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. He attended the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where he graduated Alpha Omega Alpha, and is a diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine with sub-specialty training in Infectious Disease and Geographic Medicine at University Hospitals of Cleveland.

Dr. Aucott joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 1996 where his focus has been on clinical research in Lyme disease. In 2015 Dr. Aucott joined the Division of Rheumatology at Johns Hopkins where he is an Associate Professor of Medicine and the Director of the Johns Hopkins Lyme Disease Research Center. He is principal investigator for the SLICE studies examining the long-term outcomes of Lyme disease. The longitudinal cohorts of patients in enrolled in his studies have resulted in a biorepository of blood samples that is a resource for research collaboration. Dr. Aucott’s research interests center on the pathophysiology, diagnosis and treatment of post-treatment Lyme disease and has resulted in over 70 peer reviewed publications.

Dr. Aucott is active in medical education and he is the program director for the Lyme and Tickborne Diseases Fellowship training program at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Aucott is an internationally recognized expert on Lyme disease and post-treatment Lyme disease. He has served on groups sponsored by the Institute of Medicine, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services where he was the Chair of the 2018-2019 HHS Tick-borne Diseases Working Group.

Maria Diuk-Wasser research focuses on unraveling the socio-environmental factors that contribute to the emergence of vector-borne diseases, with a particular emphasis on tick-borne illnesses. She studies these diseases as interconnected natural human systems, taking into account pathogen distribution and abundance, human exposure influenced by human ecology and behavior, and social vulnerability. Her research utilizes a combination of empirical and analytical approaches and encompasses various spatio-temporal scales, ranging from molecular to ecosystem levels, and she employs modeling frameworks informed by both laboratory and field experiments.

Maria Diuk-Wasser completed her PhD in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at UCLA and gained postdoctoral training and an Assistant Professor position at the Yale School of Public Health. Currently, she holds a Professorship in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology at Columbia University. Throughout her career, Diuk-Wasser has led multiple large-scale federally-funded programs focused on understanding the patterns and processes underlying the emergence of tick-borne diseases. Some notable examples include 'Emergence of babesiosis in the United States' (NIH), 'Spatial risk model for Ixodes scapularis-borne Borrelia' (CDC), 'Tradeoffs between specialist and generalist strategies for host immune evasion in a vector-borne bacterium' (NSF) and 'Eco-social interactions influencing human exposure to ticks and the Lyme disease agent in anthropogenic landscapes.' (NSF Coupled natural-human systems Program).

In parallel to her research, Maria Diuk-Wasser plays a leadership role of the Northeast Regional Center for Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases http://neregionalvectorcenter.com.