Angela Bosco-Lauth

Assistant Professor, Biomedical Sciences

Co-PI, Co-lead Theme 3, lab-based experiment lead RT 2-4

Areas of expertise: virology, infectious disease, veterinary medicine

As a co-investigator for BROADN, my role is to help lead efforts in generating the kind of robust research and discoveries that will break current paradigms of our understanding of the aerobiome. The current COVID19 pandemic has really shown the world how much we have to learn about airborne microbes, and now more than ever we need to understand this complex and understudied “ecosystem.” I’m particularly excited about the opportunity to team up with people from so many disciplines united in a common goal. I hope to use my knowledge about pathogen transmission and laboratory skills to design experiments that will pair with the field-collected and modeling data so that we can truly understand what’s happening to microbes in the air and how that might impact humans, animals, plants, and the environment we share. 

Potential project areas to apply to:

The Bosco-Lauth laboratory studies infectious diseases of humans and animals with emphasis on mechanisms of infection, transmission, and pathogenesis within the host. As part of BROADN, our lab is interested in the factors that lead to lofting of microbes from terrestrial environments into the air, and, for those microbes that can cause disease, we focus on how being airborne affects viability and ability of the organism to infect a host.

The proposed summer REU project will evaluate the microbial composition in and around a livestock operation. Students would have the ability to learn aerosol and soil sampling techniques, as well as bacterial culture techniques and PCR. The project would have both field sampling and laboratory components, and students would learn to work using sterile technique under Biosafety Level 2 (BSL2) conditions.