Ellie Field zaps disease By Lindsey Giardino
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llie Field never gave much thought to the insects around her as a child. Now, as a doctoral student in entomology at Iowa State, she’s definitely “the odd one out in the field,” she said, because of her childhood indifference. But she was always curious about pathogen transmission and disease ecology – two lofty areas for an adolescent – which helped her unearth a passion for public health. After earning her bachelor’s degree in biology from Washington College in 2014, Field was in the midst of her master’s program in global health at Georgetown University when she conducted research on dengue, a mosquito-borne viral disease, in India. “I loved working with mosquitoes, learning how to identify them and find their breeding habitats,” Field said. “It wasn’t until my coursework at Iowa State that I was exposed to true entomology and developed a respect and love of insects beyond mosquitoes.” Her future career goal couldn’t be more timely: She hopes to eventually work for the Centers for Disease Control or the World Health Organization, helping to create and train surveillance teams around the world, work with mosquito control districts, and respond to outbreaks, which are on the rise around the world due to warming temperatures. “Working for one of these organizations would enable me to better understand mosquitoes and the risks some pose to human health, ultimately reducing disease and improving human lives,” Field said. A recipient of the Wayne A. Rowley Scholarship in Entomology, Field benefitted from the financial freedom the fund provided this past spring (prior to the pandemic) as she traveled to a mosquito identification workshop in Florida. There, she made professional connections and focused on mosquito taxonomy and ecology. “Florida has such diverse mosquito populations and many active mosquito control districts,
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Ellie Field
“I loved working with mosquitoes, learning how to identify them and find their breeding habitats. It wasn’t until my coursework at Iowa State that I was exposed to true entomology and developed a respect and love of insects beyond mosquitoes.” — Ellie Field so it was really vital to have this experience,” Field said. Armed with the knowledge she gained at the workshop, Field continues to work on her dissertation on the Culex pipiens mosquito. This requires her to maintain a colony of mosquitoes under different conditions, conduct research in Iowa State’s Medical Entomology Lab and help with general surveillance efforts, among other tasks. The lab provides Field with a unique learning opportunity, as it partners with the Iowa Department of Public Health to set mosquito traps across the state and identify and record samples. “A subset of these samples are sent off for
viral testing so that we can monitor what species are carrying what pathogens, and when we start to see these infections and how that relates to human infections,” Field explained. “I have been given a very well-rounded exposure to my field!” Moving forward, Field plans to continue participating in science communication – she currently serves as an administrator for two of the largest science-based entomology groups on Facebook – and working to eradicate mosquito-borne diseases. “Resources may be heavily concentrated on the recently-emerged infectious disease, but malaria, dengue, West Nile virus, and others are still very real dangers,” Field warned. “It is critical that vector species and disease monitoring continues, as lapses in these programs result in lost data, which hampers the ability to understand long-term population trends.” If there is anyone up to such a tall task, it’s Ellie Field. Lindsey Giardino (’17 journ/mass comm & English) is a writer for donor relations and communications at the Iowa State University Foundation
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