Ellen de Vries, BSci(Hons), PhD
Postdoctoral Research Associate | Yale School of Public Health | Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases
Laboratory of Epidemiology of Public Health (LEPH) | 60 College St. | New Haven, CT 06510
Contacts: [email protected] Twitter Google Scholar
B.Sci in Genetics – University of Melbourne, Australia
Diploma in Languages (Italian) – University of Melbourne, Australia
Honours, Plant Sciences – University of Adelaide, Australia
PhD in Molecular Genomics/Virology– La Trobe University, Agriculture Victoria, Department of Defence (Defence, Science and Technology Group)
I just really like genetics, I guess.
And viral pathogens are just little blobs of genes……. right?
I’ve always been interested in biological sciences and basically just want to do some form of good for the world while I can.
I grew up in country Victoria, Australia, surrounded by a lot of dairy farms and I spent time talking with the local farms at the pub about their issues with biological pests and the impact on their livelihoods, so my initial plan was to get into agricultural sciences and work with them. I did a lot of agricultural and plant genetics up until my PhD, which I only picked up because it sounded cool and I liked the institute I would be in.
I ended up working on viral genomics, thankfully with a heavy emphasis on agriculture still. Think on zoonotic disease like avian influenza, Japanese encephalitis virus, Ross River virus etc. Viruses that have an impact on the human population as well as agriculture. Surprisingly (at least to myself), I really enjoyed my research during my PhD and wanted to pursue a career focusing on pathogens but coupling wet-lab components with the dry lab bioinformatics and coding.
My work in Nate’s lab will focus on delivering genomic detection and analysis on viruses with a significant impact on public health. Hopefully there will be a lot of different sequencing techniques involved and a lot of fun data to come out of it.
Outside of the lab, I enjoy umpiring/refereeing sports (touch rugby and aussie rules), watching other sports, drinking (all beverages), and cooking ridiculous amounts of food to feed to people.
