Tick Encounter Resource Center

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URI Center For Vector-Borne Disease

Dr. Thomas Mather

Dr. Mather came to URI in 1992 from the Harvard School of Public Health, and now serves as director of URI's Center for Vector-Borne Disease. For the past several spring/summer tick seasons, Dr. Mather and experts from the Center have led a series of unique community-based workshops in high tick-risk neighborhoods where they demonstrate tick control and tick-bite prevention strategies. His work has received state and national recognition and is funded by the National Centers for Disease Control, the US Department of Agriculture, the National Institutes of Health, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Megan Dyer

Megan graduated from URI in 2005 with a Bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences. Since then, she has been working as a research assistant at the Center for Vector-Borne Disease, where she works on several projects dealing with tick control and ecology, as well as pathogen transmission. She is the technical field specialist in charge of a community based tick control study evaluating the 4-Poster tick control device in Narragansett, RI. The 4-Poster is a device developed by USDA that attracts white-tailed deer to a baited station where they are treated with a tick-killing pesticide, interrupting tick reproducation and the tick life-cycle.

Erin Rainone

Erin graduated from the University of Rhode Island in 2002 with a Bachelor's degree in Wildlife Biology and Conservation. She has worked as a Natural Resource Associate at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Indian Head, Maryland and most recently joins us from the Molecular Microbiology and Immunology department at Brown University. Now, as a research assistant for the Center for Vector-Borne Disease she is involved with a variety of ongoing projects relating to tick control and awareness. In addition, she has taken an active role in planning important events and activities for the Center's community outreach program.

Alumni

Kimberly Kowal Arcand

Kim, a graduate in biology from the University of Rhode Island, started out in multimedia development with URI's Computer Science department. She then worked on producing interactive, educational games for URI's Center for Vector-Borne Disease on the topics of Lyme disease and tick awareness. She is currently the Media Production Coordinator for the Chandra X-ray Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Her work includes astronomical visualization, multimedia development and related outreach activities as part of the CXC's Education and Outreach Group that serves the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a mission funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. She has received awards from NASA and the Smithsonian Institution and continues to be a part of the developing field of scientific visualization.

Nate Miller

Nate received a Master of Science degree in Animal Science from the University of Rhode Island in 1998 studying ticks and their reproductive hosts. Since that time he has continued working in the Center for Vector-Borne Disease as a research associate on all aspects of tick ecology, control, pathogen transmission and anti-tick vaccine development. Currently his main focus, along side Dr. Mather, is working on unique community-based workshops in high tick-risk neighborhoods demonstrating tick control and tick-bite prevention strategies.

The 3D Group for Interactive Visualization

Dr. Jean-Yves Hervé

Jean-Yves Hervé joined the Dept. of Computer Science and Statistics in 2000. His main research interests are computer vision, modeling and simulation, and their application to scientific visualization, robotics, and bioinformatics. In a previous appointment at École Polytechnique de Montréal (Québec) he was involved in a number of industrial application projects. Current research projects include real-time interposition in Augmented Reality, space perception for "smart monsters" in video games, modeling and simulation of pedestrian evacuation, and pedestrian visual tracking for surveillance applications.

Brian Mullen

Brian has been Project Manager for the 3D Group for Interactive Visualization at the University of Rhode Island since 2005. He graduated from URI with a degree in Computer Science and a minor in Digital Art. He also completed a certificate in Digital Media from The ICPNM Academy. Brian's main areas of focus are scientific modeling & animation, web development, and game art content creation. He's also taught courses at URI and RISD CE on topics including: 3D Modeling with Maya, Unreal Game Design, and Character Animation with Maya.

Tomás Francisco YAGO VICENTE

Tomás Francisco is a Research Engineer at the 3D Group for Interactive Visualization. He was born in Zaragoza, Spain. He obtained a Ingeniero Superior en Informática degree fom the Centro Politécnico Superior, Universidad de Zaragoza(Spain). He was a European Union Erasmus Exchange Student at the Royal Polytechnic Institute (KTH) of Stockholm, Sweden. He came to URI in March 2007 with a Spanish government scholarship to carry out his master's thesis as part of the International Engineering Program (IEP). Tomás first joined URI's 3D Group for Interactive Visualization as a Research Assistant under supervision of Professor Jean-Yves Hervé. After he succesfully defended his thesis he was hired as Research Engineer.

URI Graduate Students

Matthew Iandoli

Matt graduated in 2005 with his Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Since then, he worked as a clinical research assistant for special projects at the Quality Assurance Review Center, a UMass Medical School affiliate, assisting with radiation oncology clinical trials, and at EpiVax, Inc. as an assistant project manager for grant and corporate funded projects. He joined the Mather lab in 2007 as a Master’s candidate in Cell and Molecular Biology.

Emily Troiano

Emily received a Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences from URI in 2006. After graduating, she joined the Mather lab as a Research Intern. Emily worked on a variety of projects for the Tick Vaccine Research Laboratory, including gene expression studies and proteomics.

Are you concerned about the serious health threat caused by ticks?

Would you like to make appropriate tick-borne diseases prevention programming more widely available? If you answered yes to these questions, please consider supporting the Tick Encounter Resource Center at the University of Rhode Island. Proceeds help support tick-bite prevention programs.