Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biological Informatics 2006

Project Title: Plant Pathogen Dispersal and Infection on a Fragmented Landscape: Effects of Changing Scales and Uncertainty

This project is awarded under the Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biological Informatics Program for 2006. Landscape structure can greatly affect how plant pathogens disperse in space and time, which creates tremendous challenges to developing and validating pest risk assessment models. Using Asian soybean rust (Phakospora pachyrhizi) (ASR) as a model system, the effects of a fragmented landscape and environmental variability on pathogen dispersal will be studied and the uncertainty when incorporating data obtained from different scales will be modeled. Research objectives for this fellowship include: (1) to apply modern simulation techniques to study ecological and plant pathological questions, (2) to increase my theoretical knowledge of uncertainty and scale and its affects on pest risk assessment, and (3) to integrate Bayesian data methods and landscape ecology into studying pathogen detection and dispersal processes.

As part of this training fellowship, research, teaching, and professional training will be accomplished in the labs of Karen Garrett, Kansas State University; Emerson Del Ponte, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande Do Sul, Brazil; and Xiao-Bing Yang, Iowa State University. Teaching and professional training objectives include: (1) to develop and teach short course material on plant disease epidemiology in Brazil, (2) to develop short course material on statistical concepts for presentation at professional meetings, and (3) to mentor students participating in internship programs.