Biography

Katie Berger graduated from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 2006 with a Bachelor’s degree in Microbiology and a Master’s degree in Natural Resources from the University of New Hampshire in 2008. She joined the CVBD in the fall of 2008 where her dissertation research focused on identifying microclimatic components of a tick encounter risk index using a combination of fieldwork, remote sensing/GIS tools, and retrospective analysis of historical tick abundance data for the state of Rhode Island. She graduated from URI with a PhD in Environmental Sciences in December of 2011 and currently works with the CVBD on projects dealing with ecology and tick encounter risk as well as the continued development of a geographical user interface, in collaboration with URI’s Computer Science and Statistics department, to more efficiently process long-term NOAA weather data for life science research applications.